“The Devil’s In The Cows” On Sale Now

The Devil’s In The Cows is a collection of 37 of my best flash fiction stories, edited, expanded, and just generally given more oompah and whatsis and shizzle.  It’s available in paperback for just $11.95.

My method is simple. I look for a picture, chosen at random from the Library of Congress, and write a story about the impression it gives me. A kind of Internet Truth or Dare, with the dare first, and the truth later. I write each one in the voice of the subject.

Here’s an excerpt from the book, and the reason for the title: The Devil’s In The Cows

I TOLD THAT boy, I told him. You don’t want no part of this farm, nor another. A farm is a jackplane for human boards. Wears you out like a sermon.

    It made ma mere old, and his mother, too. She was beautiful once. Gone to seed, now. The work wore at her. Not the work, no — getting nothing for the effort but chapped grinds a person down. A farm is a twenty-five hour timeclock with no paycheck. She done it for me, and I done it for the farm, and for pere and ma mere, but it dies with me.

    It’s a terrible thing to raise your own to disown you. The girls was no trouble ’cause all girls like frilly things and a farm is a dreary place. First magazine comes into a farmhouse with pictures of socialites, and daughters is plotting an escape. The only mistake they can make is letting some local boy convince them that he’s the ticket out of here. A wandering mind and a weak back is fine for a city dweller, but it’s deadly out in the landscape. The farmboys with a touch of neon about them and their coquettes generally break down and wander back before they even get to a road with two stripes on it. We sent the girls to Augusta to school, and they found fellers with ink daubed all over them and we breathed a sigh.

    “It’s a boy!” my wife said, “We were blessed with a boy, Xavier, and he can help you.” But I already knew in my heart that it was a curse, because I loved that boy so, before he was even borned, that I could never let him like me much.

    He had to see how hard life was here and so put aside a man’s sneaky love for his father and go away someday. I had to goad him from this place. That is a hard thing, my friend — a hard thing…

Buy it now at Amazon.