Dixie Death Diary

Locke Wood isn't just a writer—he's a storm survivor in human form, a Southern myth burning through the page. Born in Virginia, shaped by the Southern coasts, and forged in the backstreets and barrooms of a thousand quiet wars, Locke writes like a man who's run from ghosts and made peace with none of them. His voice doesn't whisper—it haunts, howls, and leaves cigarette burns in the margins. He doesn't write to please. He writes to survive. Midnight Don't Love You Back and Dixie Death Diary are more than books. They're Southern gothic dirges sung over bar stools, trauma-fueled roadmaps through America's overlooked underbelly. Each line's carved with bone, soaked in whiskey, and delivered with the rhythm of a man who's been to hell, borrowed a pen, and made it out with the story still breathing. Locke's work blurs the line between memoir and myth. His poetry reads like shotgun sermons—intimate, brutal, cinematic. Think Bukowski dipped in gasoline, set against Southern sunsets and prison phone calls. Think Tarantino, if Tarantino bled through a typewriter instead of a camera. Each piece he writes is a confession at the edge of a cliff, somewhere between gospel and gunfire. He's a one-man production crew, filming stripped-down short films based on his poetry—backseat confessionals, motel betrayals, and Appalachian monologues—grit-glazed and spoken aloud like prayers for the damned. His indie film project The Last Outlaw Poet brings those stories to life, weaving music, voice, and raw performance into a living, breathing mythos. His Southern roots aren't nostalgic. They're scorched. He doesn't glorify tradition—he wrestles it. He tells stories from the cracks in the floorboards, the silence between gunshots, and the quiet places no one talks about at church. Locke lives where memory and reckoning meet. Where masculinity breaks open. Where pain isn't cleaned up for company. But there's beauty here, too. A strange tenderness in the wreckage. His stories don't end with healing—they end with survival. When he's not writing, Locke's likely somewhere in the mountains of North Carolina with a whiskey glass in one hand, a camera in the other, and his dog by his side. He believes in fire. In the power of voice. In the strange religion of those who still speak the truth, even when it hurts to say it. If you've ever felt too wild, too broken, too much—or not enough—Locke Wood has written something for you. And he's just getting started.