69

You may have sensed a sexual nuance in the title and subtitle of this short story collection. But nope, that’s just the way your mind works. And how a reader’s mind works is of the utmost interest to a writer, as my job is to get in there and upset the apple cart.

The reason for the title, I’m afraid, is far more mundane. I ran flat out of story ideas at precisely 69 and just because I can I’m publishing this comprehensive collection on 6/5/26, my 69th birthday. Cool, huh?

As for the Wham Bam subtitle, that has to do with the brevity of these stories and not with the misogynist ditty Wham Bam Thank You, Ma’am so popular among horny GIs during World War II.

I wrote the first Wham Bam, The Pass Catcher, a few years ago during a trip to Captiva with the family. I’d promised myself a no-work holiday but when a steady all-day rain hit on day three I opened the Pages app on my iPad and started tapping on the virtual keyboard. A thousand words later I’d finished my first super short short story.

Read it aloud to the fam. They liked it. Especially its brevity.

At the time I had no idea the can of literary worms I’d opened with that first 1000 word foray. Apparently, after decades writing long form fiction, an enormous dam made of words and unexamined but festering plot lines was ready to burst.

I’m dead honest when I tell you I have no idea where the majority of these stories originated. Stories like After the Wedding, Sidewinder, and The Girl on the Harley Sportster 883 literally wrote themselves. I just sat there at my computer and hit the keys. Some unseen, mysterious force did the rest.

And not a single story like another. All unique. All original. Plots, themes, and characters as diverse as the schizophrenic country of their origin. In fact, that is the common thread tying these stories together: AMERICA.

A complex word: AMERICA. A complex land. A complex people. Amazing we haven’t torn one another asunder. Though, of course, there’s still time.

Time, right. Ten minutes, max, to read the longest of these stories. Some you can read in five. They’re best read aloud. Or sit back and let me read them to you. The audio version is to kill for.