Book Excerpt

The following is just a little teaser pulled from one of the first four chapters of the novel I'm writing. Enjoy.

One of our favorite road trips led us along a winding, dusty road terminating near the Mississippi River at a place just south of town that we called “The Dunes.” Flooding on the river had created several sizeable mounds of sand along this area and it made for a perfect place to convene gatherings of drunken teenagers to play beach volleyball, pitch horseshoes, and do keg-stands. It was far enough from town that we could be as loud and obnoxious as we wanted with no worries about being hassled by cranky neighbors or law enforcement, yet close enough that we could be home in our beds within twenty minutes after the party broke-up. As the sun cast the Big Muddy into shadow, a bonfire would be built and couples would climb around the backside of the dunes to make out. Invariably, someone would blare some Skynrd or Zepplin from their car stereo and as the night wore on and the piles of empties got bigger and bigger, our discussions ranged from “who’s screwing who” and “what does it all mean” to “it doesn’t get any better than this.” To a group of teenaged guys, life couldn’t get any sweeter. Rather than face the reality of our lives at home, we could make our own reality whenever we wanted.