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Please note, Saturday Afternoon is available on Amazon, for $12.50, plus shipping. However, you can purchase it from me directly for $10.00, plus shipping. The price discrepency is due to Amazon's printing cost increase, which has forced authors like myself to increase the cost of our books on Amazon. Unfortunately, increasing the price of Saturday Afternoon, still only returns a few cents per online sale. Whereas, when you purchase from me directly, I receive a few dollars on every book sold. Just use the form on the Connections page and request a direct purchase. However, if you still want to go through Amazon, you can do so here. Autographed copies of the book will be sent for all direct orders. Saturday Afternoon is a collection of short stories as different from one another as a tarantula and a tornado.
Here is an excerpt from the third story in the collection, The Never Child:
Bill was away on a business trip. Sometimes Summer hated that his work took him away from her. Immediately, his voice spoke up inside her head:
"A musician's what I am, I had no choice in the matter, Sume."
Summer shook her head; she was too practical to understand his artsy-fartsy philosophies. Bill was also a "film buff".
"Films," he said, "are not the same as movies. Movies are common entertainment, like eating fast-food. Films on the other hand, are like a gourmet meal for the intellect."
Summer wondered if Bill knew how pretentious he sounded. This particular conversation occurred right before their own private screening of a "film." It was about Life and Death; a subject Summer believed, was all too prevalent in these "films". In it, the two subjects were intertwined in a way that even Summer had to admit was unique. Throughout the visual narrative was a tree. Bill would point out how a certain color of the tree in a given scene represented such and such a feeling. Whether it was Black & White or Ultraviolet-Florescent Puce, to Summer, a tree was just a tree.
Because that's what it was when she taught Fifth Grade Science. Although, there wouldn't be any discussion of trees, or quizzes to see which of her students could identify an Oak leaf from a Maple this week; it was Spring Vacation. Bill would have been home with her, but his manager, Warren, called yesterday and said he had "the jackpot" for Bill. A word he used for gigs that were higher paying than was typical for a "fill-in musician"—another of Warren's pearls. The man wasn't a music mogul by any means; he was a stage entertainer's manager, who happened to know some people in the local music business. Bill had met Warren at the release party for a mutual writer friend's novel. According to Bill, Warren was between clients and had been contemplating a switch to something more profitable, like musicians.
Bill often told her, his music could earn enough to move them to a high-rise apartment on Park Avenue in New York, instead of their five-room abode. More often though, work for him was scarce and they only had her salary to carry them through.
Someone said something.
"What?"
Summer looked at the television; it was off. She listened, but heard nothing. The young teacher sighed, just her imagination. Then she heard it again: talking. Once again, Summer wished Bill were here.
She went into the kitchen, grabbed a sharp knife, and searched the apartment. It was a small apartment and didn't take long for Summer to discover it came from the spare room.