When two brothers running the last family-operated funeral home in a small, western Kentucky town see the end of their business approaching, the younger sibling decides to explore more unusual avenues of postmortem business. Author and west KY native, Clayton Tune, visits Sounds Good to discuss his new, fictional book set in Murray, Kentucky.
From Goodreads:
"The Burgers Brothers' Family Funeral Home is dying, and Donnie Burgers wants out. When Donnie expresses his desire to sell the company, he expects the passionate resistance he receives from his younger brother, Frank. What he didn't expect from his brother was the first covered, bulky trash bag now hiding on the closet floor.
Convincing Frank to close the home won't be as easy as Donnie imagined. When a local, stuttering cop begins asking questions about a recent grave robbery, Donnie realizes his brother's plan to save the family business is disturbing more than just their relationship."
Although he grew up primarily in northern Virginia, Clayton Tune was born and attended college in western Kentucky. As Tune began to elaborate on a concept that began as a running joke between friends, then a 1,000-word short-story submission to an online publication, western Kentucky slowly crept in as the backdrop for the morbid and comedic The Burger Brothers' Family Funeral Home.
"Murray kind of came up, I guess as a surprise," Tune says. "I started putting this book together in 2018. I'm writing about this small town and this funeral home in this small town, and as I'm writing this book, I'm noticing that some of these places and these roads and the exact locations are all real spots. I'm saying it's in this made up town, but it's actually Murray. So after about six months of trying to get around it, I just thought, you know what, just make it a real place. I didn't expect it. I was writing what I knew."
When asked if western Kentucky residents would be able to pick out specific places and individuals, Tune explains that while the locales are real, the figures remain fictional. "I've not written anybody in particular into the book. I've had family members contact me and say, 'oh, I see this person in your family in this book.' But it's never anything that I've planned. Likely, we all know people who have these personalities, but it should not be somebody saying, 'this is this person exactly.' But as far as locations go, absolutely, I think people will recognize where I'm talking about. I do mention actual street names. I will mention locations like the court square, parts of Paducah, parts of Murray, I think the Asbury Cemetery shows up in parts of the book. Murray Cemetery shows up in the book. So people should be able to get a feel for...the real spots. Actual restaurants, businesses, those are changed, but they should be able to know exactly where I am."
Tune says, like most writers, he had tried writing several times before, but Burgers Brothers' was the first project he was excited to continue. He attributes this persistent interest to the two main characters, Donnie and Frank. "I didn't have any plan for where it was going to end up. I just thought, okay. I have this first scene [in which Donnie finds Frank's dirty trash bag on the floor of the closet]. I have these two personalities - an older brother who doesn't want this funeral home anymore and the younger brother who will do anything he can to keep it. What happens next? I just kept writing and laughing and thinking, here's something crazy, how are they going to deal with it? So really, it was a mystery for me to write it. That was part of the fun...just seeing what happens. I developed this character of a small town police officer...he's been in Murray, you don't know why he's still there, but he has this difficult time speaking. He has a stutter. All of these odd, interesting characters are part of the reason why I kept thinking I have to finish the story. I want to see where it goes."
Tune credits Stephen King's book on writing method, in which King describes his process of writing a specific number of words a day, as inspiration for his own process for Burger Brothers'. "I made this goal of no matter what, I will put down 500 words a day. That seems realistic. And I did. So every day, maybe six days a week, I would sit down, and I would write. I would not go back and read what happened the day before. I would just keep pushing through. I eventually increased that to 1,000 words a day. The interesting and fun part was, I had no clue what I was going to write. I'd say probably 95% of the time, it just flows out of you. Writers talk about [that]....that the characters kind of write themselves, and I did not believe until I wrote this. It really does happen. They just kind of come out as long as you'll sit down and do the work."
"It is pretty exciting seeing a finished product. I put on my website...that one of the only reasons that I write is just [to] write stuff that I want to read. I read to be entertained. So that's what I hope that this story is. It's really just something fun for people. It's a dark comedy about a family in a small town who runs a funeral home. It's supposed to be fun. This being part one of the book...it originally started as this 500-page epic that got cut in half. The second part will take more of a turn, and it will focus more on Land Between the Lakes and what they find there," Tune concludes.
The Burger Brothers' Family Funeral Home is for sale now. The sequel to Burger Brothers is set to release in Fall 2020. For more information on the book and the author, Clayton Tune, visit Tune's website.
