Featured Author at Wayman Publishing

My brother treated me to eight days in Rome, Italy a few years ago.  We stayed at a private apartment half a mile from the Vatican and walked everywhere.  Imagine, he a “liberal” from Berkeley and me, a “conservative” from North Carolina, wandering the streets of that city museum of civilization together, napping in the Pantheon, climbing above the dome of St. Peter’s Basilica, savoring chocolate gelato as a street-side lunch.   The talks we had!

Much could be said about that marvelous trip, but for our purposes here, the most important part was barbecue sauce.  Stubb’s barbecue sauce.

At a certain alimentaria (Italian grocery) in Rome, I was amazed to discover bottles of Stubb’s on the shelf, and all the way from West Texas.  Stubb’s was once the favorite at the dinner table with me, my wife, and six children, and it seemed so out of place in Italy.  I guess Stubb’s gets around.

And it’s tasty enough you could slop some on roast possum and enjoy.  Possibly I exaggerate.

A picture of Mr. Stubblefield is printed on every bottle. He’s a handsome older man in a cowboy hat.   We share a lot in common.  His most famous quote is “Ladies and gentlemen, I’m a cook” and   his second most famous quote is “My life is in these bottles.”  I like those quotes.  They’re inspirational.  So, following Mr. Stubb’s example, I will simply say “Ladies and gentlemen, I’m a writer and my life is in these stories.”

Therefore, open up a bottle.  Read one of my stories, either true-to-life or speculative.  What they all contain, I hope, is fun entertainment that offers intriguing, maybe even unsettling perspectives.

Find me at www.chaoticterrain.com.  Then, go to Short Stories.


The orginal posting of this article can be found at Wayman Publishing.  The feature is regarding my story "The Gingerbread Puppet Boy", which will appear in Wayman's anthology, Open Doors: Fractured Fairy Tales, to be released on the first of December.