Editor, Gazette-Journal:

I have just turned the last page of S.A. Cosby’s “Blacktop Wasteland.” It’s a page turner of a novel of a life spent not as one would have desired, but one lived as if events were created out of the dealing of a deck of cards where the playing of each hand brings out the demons of a complex character created out of the damp clay of Mr. Cosby’s creative imagination.

S.A. Cosby has crafted a tale of love and passion in a backdrop of hardship and violent crime and has done so with an eloquence that belies the grittiness of the characters as well as their language and violent nature. The lead character, Beauregard “Bug” Montague, portrays the complexities of a soul conflicted with the demons of his past.

While this rollicking good tale with its language of the street might shock the sensibilities of some, it is to the lovers of the Saturday afternoon matinee of yore entertainment in the truest sense of the word.

A phrase from the novel comes to mind: “...