Five Things You Should Never Do
1 – Put your fingers in an electrical socket.
2 – Pee in the pool.
3 – Drink pool water, because chlorine and see #2.
4 – Cry over spilled milk.
5 – Release a book over a holiday weekend, because, apparently, it takes quite some time for it to appear for sale in the Kindle store when you do.
I cannot apologize enough for pushing back my release date, and then having the book appear a day later than promised. It has been a wild and crazy few weeks, but, still, I do not condone my tardiness and beg your forgiveness.
The book is out there now, for those who would like to check it out.
Club Storyville on Amazon
Club Storyville on Smashwords
Don’t forget, Smashwords offers a preview twice as long as the “Look inside” on Amazon, so it’s always worth a stop by that page even if you plan to buy on Kindle.
And, here’s the Author’s Note from Club Storyville, which gives a little insight into my very special bond with this story.
Author’s Note
Up until I was nine, I had my own brassy southern grandmother. After more than forty years in Southeastern Ohio, she still said “hoce” instead of “house,” “skoo” instead of “school.”
She was born in Lynchburg, Virginia in 1907, many years younger than her next youngest sibling. Her brother was a minor league baseball player, and she was a beauty, so that was a good time in her life and she enjoyed a long youth when most women didn’t. It was only when she moved to Richmond to “make her fortune,” as my dad put it, that she met my grandfather, and she didn’t give birth to my dad until 1947, not long after her forty-first birthday.
As a boy, my dad would go by train to visit my grandma’s family in Virginia. I inherited my love of trains from my dad, and my love of the South. We traveled southward a lot when I was growing up too – Virginia Beach, Charleston, Atlanta, Nashville. Forget the Mason-Dixon Line. I knew I was south enough when the kudzu started crawling over everything and every restaurant served sweet tea.
That said, this is not my story. It is the story of another time, of a different, more divided South. I believe the only way to write a story like this is to fully embrace it, both the good and the bad, so I have done my best to stay true to the attitudes of the time.
Club Storyville is only a story. Storyville, however, was a real place, a slice of American freedom open in New Orleans between 1897 and 1917. It has been my privilege to spend so much time there over the past few months.