The Shiner (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781482663174)

I was born on the third of August in the year of our lord nineteen-hundred and eighty-six. If not for a hot check my mother wrote for gasoline, I would have been born in the back of a black Z-28 Camaro. My grandfather danced a jig in the hospital when I was announced to the family as a boy; this was a time when only the rich were able to find out the sex of their unborn babe ahead of time. A writer could not have wished for a better family to grow up in, I come from the most brilliant set of people to ever be mired in the struggles of everyday life. When the beer was poured around the table the stories flowed, and the cast of characters I was born to read like a Steinbeck novel. Death and tight budgets became the norm for us; we were poor but we were not trash, and some of the sweetest memories I have are nights where we dared to be joyful in the face of tragedy. I've spent a lifetime trying to figure out how my mother and the rest of us managed to pull through, and that is why I write. You may say that my style is a bit moralist in a sense, and although I write Christian allegory my work would never be found in a Christian bookstore. Come sit by my side and I'll tell you things that could make a whore blush, but I promise there is no dingy alley of the human experience I'll take you down without leading you to the light at the other side.