Ralph Ellis
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Ralph Ellis

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Ralph Ellis launched his journalism career in the late 1960s by editing an underground newspaper created to protest his high school’s repressive dress code. His main argument, that Jesus had long hair, didn’t sway the school board. A native of Waynesville, NC, he graduated from the University of North Carolina, where he majored in marijuana, minored in journalism, and wrote a few stories for the school paper, The Daily Tar Heel. His first newspaper job was police reporter for The Times in Thomasville, NC. Thomasville was known as The Chair City because of its many furniture factories—and for the 30-foot-high, steel-and-concrete chair the town fathers built to celebrate that industry. He loved covering the police beat because of the variety. He wrote about murder, bloody car wrecks, and a man who went to the ER because his dog attacked him. When Ralph arrived at the house for the interview, he found out the dog was still in a biting mood. He went to the ER for a tetanus shot, then wrote a story about it. He next became sports editor and county government reporter for a now-defunct weekly in Conway, SC, called The Field and Herald—not to be confused with Field and Stream. As a reporter and editor, he made stops in Myrtle Beach, SC, the wacky golf and pancake house capital of the world; Asheville, NC, before the hipsters took over; Alexandria, VA, where the paper had a framed 1799 issue announcing George Washington’s death; Fairfax County, VA, where he was production editor, the worst job of his life; Charleston, SC, which is charming and hot; and Fort Lauderdale, FL, which is hot. Then he started a two-decade stint as an editor and reporter at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. He left the AJC in 2011 when the newspaper industry had an identity crisis because of the internet. He switched to digital journalism, working for Patch, CNN, and WebMD, and publishing freelance stories in The New York Times and other publications. While still working as a journalist, he began writing fiction. He has completed two manuscripts about a fictional reporter named Ronald Truluck, who breaks the rules of journalism to get the story. The action takes place in the mean streets of small towns and suburbs in the Southeast—the locales Ralph knows best. His first book is The Accident Report, which is scheduled to be published in 2025 by Black Rose Writing. He published a short story in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. He is a member of the Mystery Writers of America and the Atlanta Writers Club. He lives in downtown Decatur, Georgia, with his wife Susan Puckett, a food writer he met at the newspaper. When he’s not writing, Ralph can be found walking around the neighborhood with Zena, the slowest greyhound in North America.
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The Accident Report

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