Polkville man draws inspiration for book series from his hometown

Charles Cloninger has been writing fan fiction and action stories since elementary school.

He remembers his sixth-grade teacher telling him he had too good of an imagination to waste on flipping burgers, and Cloninger has since put his passion into practice and is in the process of releasing a series of books on Amazon.

A Polkville native, he’s had two published and is working on the third in his planned series of nine.

Cloninger has centered his books around Polkville, wanting to draw from real-life inspiration outside the big city.

The first book, released in 2022, is called Homecoming: Hometown Justice, the second is Rebellion, which was released early this year and the third, Aftermath, is in the works.

“I was tired of there not being any books, action adventure books, based on real life, small towns like the one I grew up in Polkville,” he said. “I just wanted to include places I grew up with so people can connect with it.”

Cloninger lived in Polkville until he was 12 when he said he was uprooted and his family moved to Blacksburg, South Carolina, but he said he still spent weekends and summers in Polkville with cousins, grandparents, aunts and uncles.

It was while growing up in Cleveland County that he said he developed a passion for anime, gaming, comics and other nerdy memorabilia.

He said he started out writing fan fiction of Walking Tall, a story about a sheriff named Buford Pusser who single-handedly cleaned up his small town at great personal cost.

Cloninger said his fan fiction writing morphed into something new, and his story took on a life of its own. After replacing all the characters with ones he created, he decided to take it a step further and change the story line.

He said the story is about a man named Alexander Graham Ruler who is discharged from the Marine Corps for not following orders, returns home to quaint Polkville and gets sucked into a drug war that has torn apart his small town.

“I like fleshing out the characters and reconnecting them to the real world. One of the processes I’ve learned in fleshing out characters is make it as weird and outlandish as you can, and then reel it back in so people can relate to it,” he said.

Cloninger said all the characters in his books are based off of people and places he grew up with in Polkville, including an auto body shop and Go Video, which has since been torn down to make way for the new fire department. He said he changed some names and took some creative liberty, but many of the places are identical to what can be found in the north west corner of Cleveland County.

“His initial plans were to reconnect with his high school love and build a life with them, there's a tragic backstory with that… as fate has it, it's not in store for him. He has to go through a lot of struggles to get his happy ending,” Cloninger said.

Cloninger said he drew a lot of inspiration from his grandfather.

“My grandpa always told me he lived the small town life, and there was nothing better for him and I wanted to give readers a slice of small town humble beginnings. It gives people a look into what happens outside of a big city,” he said.

He said as Alex Ruler goes through conflicts, many of the words of wisdom come from his grandfather.

“One is work ethic. If anything’s worth having, you gotta work hard for it,” he said.

His main character lives on a farm, just like his grandfather’s.

Clonginger said another unique aspect about his books are the anime and pop culture references.

“It’s very action packed, inspired by anime,” he said.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Mr. Miyagi are both mentioned.

Currently, the books are only available on Amazon or Kindle or can be ordered by emailing Charles Cloninger at alexruler2017@gmail.com.

Cloninger said he spent two years in college for business management but had to drop out when his oldest daughter had to have open heart surgery.

“Family comes first,” he said. “Another moral of the story is family comes first.”

He said he took a job at Laughlin’s Furniture and also took up the pen and started writing again.

“I’ve been writing this book for a long time,” he said. “It’s another one of my words of wisdom from my grandfather, is never give up.”

He said writing isn’t just something he loves to do, but it’s a fulfilled promise.

“I promised my grandmother when I was five I was going to make her proud of me, and this is what I decided to do,” he said.

This article originally appeared on The Shelby Star: Polkville man draws inspiration for book series from his hometown