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[music] -This Tennessee author hails from Mississippi, but he's lived in Jackson long enough he calls it home.

He spent 50 years working retail jobs, and he's also been writing and selling his own books.

Straight ahead on Tennessee Writes, we're me.. or E. Rogers as he prefers.

We'll find out how he began writing and about his latest book, which offers his advice and thoughts on politics, religion, and more.

Grab your coffee and find a comfy chair because Tennessee Writes s.. -Books about Tennessee.

-Books that come from Tennessee authors.

-Books and stories with a Tennessee twist.

-West Tennessee PBS presents Tennessee Writes.

[music] -Welcome to Tennessee Writes, the show that gets up close and personal with Tennessee authors.

My name is Peter Noll.

This show goes beyond the book to learn about its author from their childhood to where their stories come from.

They even offer advice if you want to write your own book.

We put the authors also on the clock as we play the lightning round.

-Tennessee Writes welcomes author Elvis Rogers.

He's a Mississippi native who found his way to Tennessee.

He spent 50 years working in the retail industry.

Along the way, he's also written books, newspaper columns, and short stories.

Tennessee Writes welcomes Elvis Rogers.

-Welcome to the show.

Have a seat.

-Nice to meet you.

-You say six books, but you've got some more in the works.

You must be always writing.

-Actually, I retired from official work last summer, so got.. I've actually got a book of my own that I'm finished with.

Just doing a little bit of final editing, then I'll publish it.

I've got a fictional biography that I wrote for someone I know who's a well-known person in town.

We're waiting to get a publisher.

As soon as that gets settled, we'll get it out.

It's going to be great.

Starting to work on another book for a person here in town, it's going to be more of an instructional manual type thing.

A totally different type of writing for me.

That'll probably be finished by fall.

-Let's back up a little bit.

I always ask everyone I ever meet named Elvis, how did you end up with the name Elvis?

Is it a family name?

-I've never been asked this before.

I'm the youngest of six.

I actually sat down with my parents and said, why in the world did you name me this?

The answer was my mother named the first five.

They've all got really common names, Ronnie, Pat, Shirley.

My dad named me.

I was born near Tupelo, 1959.

A common thing to do, a fad for a little bit.

There's a lot of guys running around named Elvis down there.

-You are named after- -Elvis Presley.

--the king.

-Yes.

-You go by E. Rogers.

-I got really tired of Elvis early on.

Probably in junior high, I just quit being Elvis and started being E. I tell my wife, if anybody calls me Elvis, they either don't know me very well or it's somebody from way, way back in my childhood.

-You go by E?

-Yes.

-By Tupelo, like a small town outside Tupelo?

-Biggersville.

-How big is it?

-Let's count the people this morning.

Maybe 300 people.

-Wow.

Then you found your way to Jackson, Tennessee.

What was that journey like?

-That journey was like I keep marrying women from Jackson.

That's how I got here.

-You've never left?

-That's why I've stayed, yes.

-Then we mentioned 50 years in retail.

I worked retail high school and college.

The retail hours are nights and weekends and hard on your feet.

-My feet are shot.

I don't have any health problems except from.. From the knees down, I'm totally wasted.

Yes, retail.

The joke is I probably ran half th.. I've worked in retail everywhere from corporate level to store level to travel jobs.

It's just been retail at all ends of the spectrum.

I just got burnt out on it.

My legs gave up on me.

I just said, man, it's got to stop.

What I do, I went immediately and got a little part-time retail job.

-[laughs] You must be good at it.

You must enjoy it.

-It's what I feel comfortable doing.

It's what I've done ever since I was a child.

The thing about it is I don't have stress.

I don't have responsibilities.

I'm doing more things now that I like.

I actually enjoy work more that I'm just one of the guys.

That worked out pretty good.

-With that much, yes, I would call you an expert in retail.

What do you think of all the changes in retail or the retail apocalypse, as some people are calling it?

-It's always evolving and it's always reacting t.. If it ever stops changing, they're in trouble.

The last thing I heard was yesterday I was reading articles that Walmart's going to phase out their self-checkouts.

That's a biggie for everybody.

I don't know anybody that really likes them.

I like them, but do you like them?

-Personally, I don't.

I just feel like if I was getting a discount for checking my own groceries, then I would be okay with it.

-I think people giving themselves a discount is what's driving it away because shrink has skyrocketed.

They found out it's a lot cost-efficient to pay somebody to check you out than to lose it all at the self-checkouts.

Of course, that's a very small percentage of people, but very small percentage will drive you out of business.

You think about all the money they got invested in it, so it's got to be such a huge decision to step back from it.

Admitting you were wrong a lot of times works, and that's a good step in their case.

-Did you see this coming being from the inside of retail about a lot of people going online shopping and that hurting the brick-and-mortar stores?

-It does hurt, but it also helps because it's always adapting.

They've adapted to where they're handling these online orders with pickup at store, another way to get you to the brick-and-mortar building.

It's just a phase we're going through.

It's not going to go one way or the other.

Just like hardcover books versus audiobooks, there's always going to be that market.

There's always people that like to walk into the brick-and-mortar store, smell the popcorn, squeeze the tomatoes.

I would say personally, we do pretty much everything through online except for grocery shopping.

-Some of the grocery stores, you can just pick everything online and then go pick it up and not ever enter the store.

-Yes.

Think about it.

If I'm in the .. I enjoy going to the grocery store, though.

I'm one of those that's going to Colorado Fashion or whatever.

I'm probably always going to walk in, at least to buy stuff I'm going to eat now.

-Now, are you working a retail job right now, part-time?

-Yes, Lowe's.

Part-time.

Inside lawn & garden if you need a lawnmower.

I can hook you-- -Mark that down.

Are they on sale?

-Yes, there's always something on sale.

It's the nature of the business.

I can find you some deals though, man, if you want one.

-Talk to me about your upbringing in Mississippi and how that has influenced some of your writings.

-My upbringing in Mississippi was rural with older parents, a lot of siblings, a small community.

When I went to school, I was the sixth kid from my family to go through the school.

I had all the same teachers.

They all knew me.

You knew everybody in the community, so it was a little bit different.

Actually, the junior college I went to was probably equivalent to a big high school here, Northeast Mississippi Junior College.

Very rural.

I got a taste of the old generations and the old Mississippi.

I can actually remember, when I was a little kid, seeing people that still come into town on a mule and wagon.

I can still remember a lot of the vestiges of that time, people picking cotton, working in the fields.

I never worked in the fields, but I did play in the cotton wagon.

That was my job.

I'd go play in the wagon all day.

That was big fun.

I saw it and I remember it.

I got a taste of the old and taste of the new.

I can remember we were in a farming community.

Everybody went to town on Saturday and it all centered around downtown, and that sense of community.

You see things circling back a lot of times.

We're trying to recreate that now more in a entertainment sphere than a necessity sphere.

I was around actually before the Walmarts where you had to go to different stores to buy different things.

That influenced my thinking a lot.

It's probably another reason probably my favorite writer is William Faulkner because he wrote about North Mississippi and the people of that time and before, so I can really relate to it.

When I read his writing, which is very hard to comprehend, I comprehend it pretty well because he's using a lot of the language that old people used when I grew up.

[music] -E, let's dive into your book, Corruptible Seed.

You call it an advice book.

It's your thoughts and advice on a wide range of topics.

I would have thought, I've got opinions and ideas and though.. should be too, but I've never thought about putting it into a book.

How did it come about?

-Actually, it was probably.. because it is a lot of my own theories and a lot of my own ideas.

If you read the book, so you know, a lot of them controversial.

I'll preface that by saying my opinion's constantly changing.

What I thought in this book two years ago may have changed by now somewhat.

Not totally, but-- -The title, Corruptible Seed.. -Two places.

1st Peter, where he talks about planting good seed in good soil and how if you plant bad seed, which he calls corruptible seed, it's going to wither in the heat, it's not going to take root, it's not going to survive.

The other part of that is Bob Dylan.

I'm a big Dylan fan, so one of my favorite writers.

The last verse in one of his obscure songs, Blind Willie McTell, he's lamenting on how he wants the things that are God's, but when he looks around, all he sees is power and greed and corruptible seed.

I had those two things in my mind.

You know what I like about writing these kind of books is that I'm getting older, so a lot of people are thinking about what's going to happen 50 years after I'm gone.

If somebody's tracing their genealogy or trying to find out about their great-grandfather, they can read my books and they can see what I'm thinking and feeling at that time.

If I live long enough and write more books, maybe they'll see my thoughts and feelings change, but they'll have that track record.

They'll have it on paper.

It's much better than all I know about great-grandpa is he took a lot of selfies and he went to Yosemite National Park once.

I enjoy it for that reason.

Also, it's really therapeutic.

It's really become a hobby.

It's a hobby that's not as physical and expensive.

I like to write.

I've always liked to write, though.

-We've talked to dozens of authors with a Ten.. Either they're from here or they're moved here.

You're the first one to say, my books, the reason I wrote books partially, is to leave a la.. Once the words are put on paper, they're published, long after you're gone, they will survive.

-I think about what I really like to read a book from my.. maybe written in the 1920s, talking about the morals and the culture, and the attitudes, and the politics of that time.

It'd be great.

Especially if you see what he thinks about it.

Then you read follow-up books and you might see how that changes.

It's a big fun in that.

I'm sorry, I keep interrupting, but everything that I read, and I read a lot, is I like to read books by authors that revea.. The favorite people that I like to read, their books may not be about them, but you find out a lot about them through the way they write and what they write.

-What are people going to find out about you when they finish Corruptible Seed?

-I think somewhere in this book, probably early on, I preface it by saying, here's my point of view and here's where it's coming from.

You can always figure that out, but I'll just make it easy for you.

My point of view on all this writing was I'm middle-aged, a little older than middle-aged, but let's call it middle-aged.

Middle-aged, white, conservative, Catholic.

Think about that.

Anything I read, that's where it's coming from.

-I was raised Catholic from Minnesota up north, Bob Dylan state.

I moved around a lot working at various television stations.

I moved to Oklahoma and then eventually to Mississippi.

Not a lot of Catholics as there are up north.

You are Catholic.

Were you raised Catholic in Mississippi?

-No, I wasn't.

Actually, I was raised Baptist.

I talked about having been one of six.

I think every sibling in my family is a different religious denomination, all the way from Catholic at one extreme to Pentecostal at the other one, everything in between.

Now, I was raised in a home that was very moral and really stressed moral values and rules of morality, but we didn't go to church.

They encourage your kids to go to church, which they did, and everybody went their own separate way.

I'm not a cradle Catholic.

I converted along about 2000, 2001, somewhere in there.

I'm in a very Catholic family.

My wife is-- two of her aunts are actually nuns.

Her mother might as well be.

Just very Catholic environment.

[music] -E, we have come to the part of Tennessee Writes we call the lightning round.

It's where we ask our authors a series of questions about books, writing, literature, and see how many they can answer in two minutes.

-Bring it up.

-We're going to put two minutes on the clock, and it will start counting down after my first question.

How many audiobooks do you estimate you've listened to in your lifetime?

-None.

-How many pages would the book about your li.. -Oh, 300 or less.

-What animal best represents your latest book?

-A dog.

-Last time you checked out a book from a public library.

-Oh, that's probably 15 years.

-Favorite TV show based on a book.

-TV show and a book.

Pass.

-How many pages is your latest.. -301.

-What's your favorite book of all time?

-Probably Light in August.

-What is your least favorite book of all time?

-Doggone it, that's a tough one.

Pass.

-How often do you check your Amazon reviews and ra.. -Probably twice a year.

-What is the name of the font used in your latest book?

-Gothic Median.

-What celebrity do you want to narrate your book?

-James Brolin.

-Name a book you're reading right now.

-The War on the West by Douglas Murray.

-Name a food or drink that helps you write.

-Tea.

-If you could have a book signing in any city in the world, where would it be?

-Memphis.

-What author, living or dead, would you most like to have dinner with?

-Probably toss up, William Faulkner or Hunter S. Thompson.

-Where would you take them for dinner?

-Rendezvous in Memphis.

-Do you write your books on computer or by hand?

-Computer.

-What book have you read multiple times?

-The one I'd say is my favorite, Light in August.

-How many times?

-Probably four or fi.. -Do you prefer paper books or e-books?

-Paper.

-What actor would you want to star in a movie based on one .. [music] -We always love to hear authors, in their own words, read from their book, the words that they created.

Would you mind giving a short reading from Corruptib.. -I'd love to.

I love to read, so I'll read to you now.

I'm just going to start here.

This is a section about the world at large.

Of course, this book's full of advice and opinion.

Here we go.

"When you leave your front door, you're going to walk str.. into a minefield.

There's no way of knowing what lies ahead, but we can be very sur.. will not be the same, given even a short amount of passing time in this environment.

It's impossible to predict with any degree of accuracy what the end game's going to be, but it now seems to be a moving target that nobody can keep up with, even on a day-to-day basis.

The next election cycle could also trigger any number of reactions, and don't forget that global warming is going to cause the oceans to rise, and the effect is going to be that parts of the East Coast, especially Georgia and South Carolina, will be underwater for sure, 20 years from whatever date today is, because it's a moving target.

It seems it's been that way forever.

Even when it was global cooling and not global warming, it was going to kill us all.

We might be at war with anybody, except the Canadians.

They kind of like us, but we could all end up speaking Chinese or Russian before we know what hit us.

Don't forget my warning about being in the middle of a fourth turning period.

That's a period that should reach its conclusion about 2030, if history holds true.

In fact, things change more rapidly than they used to, and 2030 is only a few years away.

A lot can happen in that time, but if we make it to that time, in one piece, the world's going to look a lot different from now just by the natural progression.

By 2030, the world's most populous areas will be South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa.

At the present time, there's 10.2 babies born in Africa for every .. 6.5 born in India and 4.4 born in China.

By 2030, there will be a noticeable baby drought in Western Europe and the US.

Seniors are going to vastly outnumber the young people by then.

There is also a greatly improving mortality rate in Africa.

Between 1950 and 2015, the mortality rate in Africa rose by 65%.

At the same time, it dropped by 3% in Europe.

In the 1950s, people in underdeveloped countries could expect to live an average of 30 fewer years than those in the most developed countries.

That gap has closed quite a bit, and Africa has millions of acres of undeveloped farmland that actually covers an area the size of Mexico.

The baby boom in Africa, combined with increases in improvement and access to medical care, clean water, technology, and nutrition, and expanding mortality rate in a largely untapped and underused natural resources, will make it a prime.. for the next industrial revolution."

-When I was reading Corruptible Seed, that reading that you chose, I'm like, oh, this guy reads a lot.

How much research did this take?

-Part of it was just my own ideas.

A lot of it I just knew, and then I did research when I dove deeper into a topic.

Numbers and statistics, you do have to research them.

They're easily accessible though, not hard to fi.. -A lot of time online?

-A lot of time online, but I do that anyway.

-You work in retail.

You're still working retail, 50-plus years, but you've written 6 books.

You've got several in the hopper.

What advice do you give to people that they've got a full-time job, they have a family, but they got an idea for a story?

-The advice that I would give myself and anyone else that aspires to write is you got to have quiet time.

You got to have a good space.

Like my environment, I have an office where I have a library.

I have all my books and all my resource materials.

My computer is sitting there.

I'll have my phone sitting here for looking up grammar and spelling.

Write about things you enjoy talking about and things you enjoy writing about.

Don't get outside your comfort zone.

Have it in mind what you want to do with the book.

Are you actually wanting to sell a lot of copies?

If so, nobody cares about your pet cat.

Some of the books that I wrote that have actually sold well, like Jones Generation or Mirror, Mirror, Off The Wall, which is about narcissistic personality disorder, they've sold well because interesting topics that people are aware of and want to research, and it comes up in their word searches.

I put them on Amazon, and people that are searching Amazon for those topics will gravitate toward them.

These books, actually, the narcissist book has sold very well overseas, which is amazing.

I like knowing somebody far away is reading something I wrote.

-If people want to get your books, where do you send them?

-Amazon.

-Amazon.

-Amazon Online.

-Are they available as just books or audible books too?

-No.

You can get them in virtual reading, or you can get them in paperback or hardback.

I don't have them in audible.

I don't write really for friends and relatives, so I'm not really writing books to sell to people locally here.

That's why I'm trying to get broad topics that people have a lot of general interest in.

Now, I alternate a serious topic book with short story books.

Nobody buys my short story books.

[laughs] That's because I'm a nobody, and no.. I really enjoy writing them.

Everything that I write in my short story books are always true stories, which I like.

It goes back to that same thing of leaving a legacy of what you were thinking and what you were doing.

-How can people stay in touch with you, follow you, if they got thoughts or questions they want to follow up with?

-I'm really easy to find.

You can get me at elvisrogers@yahoo.com with your comments, opinions, and questions.

Call me.

I'm a pretty public person, so my phone number and my address and everything is easy to find.

Feel free to contact me.

I don't mind.

Plus, Facebook.

Just Google me.

Several things will probably come up.

-Is it E. Rogers or Elvis?

-E. I do a lot of various media stuff.

I do the crime scene stories.

I've done quite a bit of radio this past year.

Easy to contact, easy to find, and I'll respond.

-We appreciate you coming by.

-Thank you.

-30 minutes goes by fast, doesn't it, E?

-It really does.

-We've run out of time, but we do want to thank you for coming on Tennessee Writes and sharing about yourself growing up, and your life, very interesting life, and about your latest book and your upcoming books.

-Thank you.

Man, I appreciate it.

-We want to thank you with a All About Home Channel 11 writing kit.

It's a briefcase, notebook, pen, latte mug.

-Doggone.

-All to help you with your future writing.

-My cup runneth over.

I never expected that.

Thank you so much.

-Before you leave, would you sign your book for us?

-Absolutely.

[background music] -Thanks for everything, E. Rogers.

-For comments about today's show or to suggest a Tennessee author for a future program, email us at tennesseewrites@westtnpbs.org.

Tennessee Writes, on air and streaming now.

[music] -The program you've been watching was made possible through the generous financial support of West Tennessee PBS viewers like you.

Please visit westtnpbs.org and make a donation today so that we can continue to make local programs like this possible.

Thank you.

[music]