Excerpt from A Plot for Pridemore

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a plot for pridemore, amazon, author, barnes & noble, fiction, mercer university press, southern fiction, Stephen Roth, writing

My book doesn’t come out until May, but you can pre-order it on Amazon for the very appealing price of $17.63. If you’re more of a Barnes & Noble fan, you can find it here for the even lower price of $17.27.

“But Stephen,” you might ask. “I don’t even know what this book is about, and I’ve never read any of your work.”

I thought you might say something like that. Below is an excerpt that sets up the central dilemma of the story, and should inform your decision of whether or not this kind of fiction is your cup of tea. Please let me know what you think.

Chapter One

The man in the charcoal suit gave a thin smile that barely registered a blip on the sincerity meter. His handshake was cool and soft. Maybe he was easing his grip because of the mayor’s advanced age. Or maybe he was just a wimp. Either way, the mayor knew right off he didn’t like this guy. And he didn’t feel too swell about his decision to come all the way to St. Louis to meet him.

“Trent Dodge,” the man said, “VP of North American Operations.”

“How are you, Trent? I’m Roe Tolliver, mayor of Pridemore, Missouri.”

Dodge led the mayor into a conference room that overlooked the glass towers of a suburban office park. He invited the mayor to treat himself to some coffee in one of the tiny Styrofoam cups that lined a nearby tray, but Roe politely declined.

“So Mayor Tolliver, how can we help you today?”

“Well, sir, as you know, my fair city was honored to be considered among the top five candidates for the new plant that Sunnyside Farms is going to build.”

Dodge nodded.

“But we didn’t make the next round. And I just wanted to follow up to see if there’s anything I can do to make you feel more comfortable about keeping Pridemore in the running for this wonderful facility you’re going to create.”

He paused to allow a response from Dodge, but none was forthcoming. You pudding-headed fool, the mayor thought to himself, you should have accepted the damn cup of coffee.

“It’s no secret that Pridemore has fallen on some hard times,” he went on. “We were hit pretty hard by the farm crisis and have had a few big companies leave town. But I think our situation could work to your advantage. As your people know, we have a 500-acre industrial park that’s just itching to be developed – prime commercial real estate where you can build and expand as you please. And you’d be Pridemore’s largest employer right off the bat.”

Still no response. But Dodge was kind enough to offer one of his thin-lipped smiles.

“The people of Pridemore have an incredible work ethic and a great passion for agriculture,” the mayor added. “I’m sure that was plain to see when your team came to visit us.”

Dodge suddenly stirred. “You mean the light show?” Actually, it was a twilight ceremony the mayor had carefully orchestrated in which Pridemore residents lined Old Highway 54 and held up candles as the Sunnyside executives drove out of town. It made for a hell of a front page photo in the next day’s Evening Headlight.

“Yes, I heard about that,” Dodge said. “That was a nice touch.”

“Well, thank you. And I can assure you, it came from the heart. Because the people of Pridemore—”

“—Let me stop you.”

The mayor let out a tiny hiss, but smiled politely. He wasn’t accustomed to being interrupted.

Dodge opened his leather binder and pulled out a map of central Missouri. Pridemore and four other towns of similar size were circled in red ink.

“Just bear with me a second, because I want to show you something that I think will address your concerns.”

He ran a pale index finger across the map until it found Pridemore.

“You guys are here, right?”

The finger ran an inch or so to the east.

“And the new Highway 54 is here, eight miles away. Correct?”

He peered at the mayor through designer glasses that were probably worth more than the average Pridemorean’s paycheck.

“Those eight miles are why you didn’t make the cut. Wherever we decide to put the new harvesting center, it is vital that it be along the Highway 54 corridor. We’re going to have trucks coming in and out of the center every single day and night. We’ve got to be on the highway.”

The mayor nodded grimly. This was nothing new. Highway 54 had been a burr in Pridemore’s ass since the state decided to redirect it 10 years ago.

Dodge moved his finger up the highway a couple of inches.

“Now here’s Farley, which, between you and me, stands a very good chance of winning the bid. They’re similar to Pridemore in size and all the other factors. Except they’re on the highway, which makes all the difference.”

He closed the binder and ran his hand across it like it was a dear pet. “Make sense?”

The mayor tried to collect his thoughts, seething at the arrogance of this man at least 30 years his junior trying to treat him like some junkyard dog, condensing his city (his life’s work!) down to some arbitrary dot on a map. Arthritic knees or not, he felt like taking this Trent Dodge fellow by the collar and tossing him and his wingtips onto the parking lot seven stories below.

Thankfully, the nimble coolness that had served the mayor well in his many years as a trial lawyer took over.

“We’ve offered you a generous incentive package,” he said. “One I know the other towns can’t match. And we can get even more generous if need be. It won’t be easy, but we’ll do whatever it takes.”

He paused for dramatic effect. “We can make up for those eight measly miles.”

Dodge frowned and looked at his binder. “Well, we have other concerns about Pridemore that kept you from being a serious candidate for Sunnyside Farms.”

The mayor was losing his patience. “Like what, exactly?”

The vice president of Sunnyside held back for a moment, as if he really didn’t want to throw this final punch because it was going to hurt. But he did anyway.

“Well, for instance, we feel you have a glaring shortage of skilled labor.”

That did it. Screw this garden party, the mayor thought. He slowly rose and slapped both hands on the oaken table.

“We are talking about a hog processing plant, right, Mr. Dodge? You take hogs and you cut them up and you shrink-wrap the pieces, correct? You can call it harvesting or whatever bullshit thing you want. But it’s basically a filthy, fly-infested slaughterhouse, isn’t it? So exactly what kind of skilled labor are we really talking about here?”

Dodge nervously eyed the door. But the mayor wasn’t done.

“The people of Pridemore have harvested soy beans and corn, they have built houses, they have built roads, they have manufactured computer chips and automobile parts. I’m pretty damned sure they can hang a pig upside down and bleed him into a garbage bin.”

“Okay, I think we’re done.” Mr. Dodge stood up and held out his hand.

“No thanks,” the mayor said as he turned away. “I don’t care for cold fish.”

He slumped into the back of his Chrysler New Yorker and beat his fist a few times against the leather upholstery.

“Went that well, huh?” Rufus Stodemeyer asked as he started the car. The Pridemore City Council president often acted as the mayor’s chauffer when there was out-of-town business to be done.

“That Godforsaken highway is going to be the end of us. Maybe it already is,” the mayor said.

Stodemeyer shot him a concerned look through the rearview mirror, no small feat for a man who most days had about as much compassion as a Burmese Python.

“You want some Italian food?” he asked. “I know a good place on the Hill.”

“Just drive.”

The mayor said nothing for two hours, until they veered off the four-lane Highway 54 and onto the two-lane blacktop now known as Old 54, which dissected Pridemore and had served as its economic spine for generations. In its heyday, the highway was the main route for travelers headed from the cities to The Lake of the Ozarks. Back then on summer weekends, Pridemore’s downtown swelled with people dressed in loud Bermuda shorts and loafers with no socks, flashing credit cards around, indulging their kids with sugary treats and smiling easy because they were on vacation. They hailed from exotic places like Ames, Nebraska City and Sioux Falls. They left ten-dollar tips on the restaurant tables. They made a big deal about “bargaining down” for ridiculously overpriced heirlooms and yard ornaments. The out-of-towners, for a few months at least, made Pridemore a little oasis of big-city bustle.

That was one hell of a long time ago, the mayor thought as he gazed out his car window at the empty storefronts and boarded-up buildings lining Main Street. Sad as it was to imagine, Sunnyside Farms and its filthy, sewage-belching hog plant – and its 300 jobs – were the last chance at a better life for the town he had led for nearly 50 years.

“Hey Rufus.”

“Yeah?”

“What happened to us?”

“To us?” The councilman looked at him, eyebrow arched.

“To this town. What happened to this town?”

“Oh,” said Rufus, lowering his shoulders like it was a question he got every day.

“I don’t know, Roe,” he said after a minute. “I guess we just outgrew our usefulness.”

The mayor thought about this a second, then cleared his throat with the same low, guttural grunt he used in city council meetings when he wanted people’s attention. For the first time in his life, he was officially out of ideas.

Happy Birthday To You

Tags

birthday, boys, disney world, family, fatherhood, fourth, kansas city, kansas city royals, parenthood, parenting, playgrounds, summer, toddlers

Dear Son,

Saturday is your fourth birthday. I hope you will enjoy it. Nothing could top your third birthday, which we celebrated by spending a week at Disney World. You may remember your birthday dinner at Chef Mickey’s in the Contemporary Resort, the procession of Disney characters who stopped by our table, working you into a sugar-fueled, nap-deprived frenzy. You became so uncontrollable – rolling around the floor, hooting and screaming, doing somersaults out of our booth – that we had no choice but to put you in time-out right next to the gift shop and below the monorail station. Your mama and I felt awful about it, but that was the only way we could calm you down. It was really the one black mark on a trip that involved four Disney parks, countless character encounters and, amazingly, us training you how to go potty on your own.

Your fourth birthday, which will be spent with your friends at an indoor inflatable playground, won’t hold a candle to Disney World. But it will be the celebration of a year in which you continued to grow and thrive and learn so many things. As already mentioned, you graduated from diapers (at least during the day). You spent almost the entire summer at the swimming pool, finding the nerve to hold your head underwater, paddle around the shallow end, and even jump in all by yourself. You rode a big-boy bike with training wheels, learned the basics of football, soccer and basketball, and saw your first movie in a theater (Turbo: the animated tale of a snail who has the need for speed). You sat still and paid attention in your pre-K class, earning innumerable smiley faces on your performance chart. You learned that a pepperoni and sausage pizza from Casey’s General Store was the best food in all the world, except for your mama’s own spaghetti and meatballs.

The year 2013 was a challenging one for our family. You were a joy and inspiration through it all, however, even after you stopped taking naps on the weekends. When the weather was nice out, we toured the area playgrounds, including your beloved Penguin Park. When it was lousy outside, we did puzzles, played “catch” in the basement, and watch the same episodes of My Little Pony over and over again. We took you to your first Kansas City Royals baseball game, where you sat through two innings, devouring a hot dog and Cracker Jacks, before moving on to the outfield playground. You began a fascination with dinosaurs, and the T-Rex Café became your favorite dining spot.

Through all of this, you talked, sang and laughed constantly. Not a day passed when you didn’t say or do something that cracked your mama and me up. You showed a knack for one-liners, as I sometimes documented on my Facebook page (Me: We don’t ever whine in this house, now do we? You: Yes, but we can pretend to whine). You were smart-alecky, sassy and spoiled, but a blast to be around most of the time. When you got out of hand, you would reluctantly accept time-out, serve your punishment, then greet us with a grin and a hug. You were happy most of the time, and you never held anything against us for very long. Every single day, you said “I love you” to us, and that more than made up for all the unfinished meals, spilled bath water, and arguments over TV time.

These are just a few of the observations I can conjure up from what was another memorable, discovery-filled year with you, son. I know your fifth year is going to hold even more adventures, shenanigans and hilarious quips (“We ran out of batteries!” you said when the house lost power last summer). I can hardly wait for it to begin.

Love,

Daddy

Friday, First Date

Tags

1980s, billy joel, binanca, dating, fiction, high school, Stephen Roth, teenagers

Caroline Clooney was not the prettiest girl in the 10th grade class at Calvary Presbyterian School. She didn’t talk much, either. But she was blond and popular, and she had clear, tan skin. She embarrassed easily and had a laugh that made up for not having much to say.

Pete had been thinking about Caroline for most of the school year, and he even talked to her a couple of times. One Friday after school, she knocked on the door of his house selling magazines for the Spirit Squad. They exchanged nervous laughs and Pete bought a subscription to Popular Mechanics. He thought about that encounter all weekend, rehearsing it over and over in his mind like a favorite skit from Saturday Night Live. Pete decided that when he got his driver’s license, the first thing he would do was take Caroline Clooney out on a date.

Pretty soon, that fateful day arrived. Pete sat beside his phone for 30 minutes, school directory spread out in his lap. He picked up the receiver, dialed the first four digits of her number, then hung up. This went on for another 30 minutes before Pete reached that seventh digit, and Caroline Clooney answered the phone.

“Hello?”

“Hello, Caroline?” Pete said. Then he paused because he didn’t know what else to say. He never expected to make it this far.

“Yes.”

“This is Pete.” Another pause. “Pete Miller from sixth period biology.”

“Oh,” she said, laughing in that adorably embarrassed way. “Hi, Pete.”

“I was just wondering,” he said, then he paused again. How to say it? How to encapsulate what he wanted to do in just a few words? There were so many ways to go about it. Dammit, Miller, he said to himself. You’re losing her. Just spit it out.

“Hello?” she said again.

“I was just wondering what you were doing Friday night, because if you aren’t doing anything Friday night, I wanted to see if you might like to go out to dinner with me and maybe go to a movie, too?”

“Oh,” she said.

“Well,” she added.

And what she said next was very telling, though Pete would not catch on until years later.

“Well, Pete, that sounds fun. I’d love to do that, but I’ve got this thing…this thing I’m doing… You know, my sister’s on the swim team and she’s got a… Actually, my mom and dad have this, uhm…and they wouldn’t really like it if I, uhm…”

Pete heard a long sigh, like someone was very slowly letting air out of a balloon.

“Oh, what the hell? I’ll go out with you. What time?”

Pete told her the time, then got off the phone as quickly as he could. He ran across the family room and did a David Lee Roth jump-kick into the oversized sofa.

Friday rolled around, and Pete spent much of that afternoon preparing for his date. He took a shower, slapped two splashes of Drakkar aftershave on his face, and reveled in the burn. He put on a buttoned-down shirt and khakis, and set his Billy Joel’s Greatest Hits tape at just the right romantic songs to play in the car. Finally, he unsheathed a tube of Binanca he’d gotten in his Christmas stocking, sampled its mint-fresh taste, and put the little bottle of breath freshener in his back pocket for later. He didn’t want to leave anything to chance.

He picked up Caroline in his mother’s burgundy Buick Park Avenue. “Where do you want to eat?” he asked.

“Somewhere where no one can see us together,” she said. “I mean, where we can be alone.”

“Great,” Pete said. Mr. Joel did most of the talking after that, crooning about how she’ll take what you give her as long as it’s free.

Pete drove to the only Mexican restaurant in town, a place called La Fiesta. Which was an appropriate name, Pete thought, as he and Caroline strolled through an entryway adorned with piñatas, Corona labels, and red, white and green streamers. The atmosphere was definitely celebratory.

The place was crowded. It was La Fiesta on a Friday night, after all. After what seemed like an eternity, the hostess led Pete and Caroline to a table near the bar. As Pete sat in his chair, he felt the tube of Binanca split open and explode in the seat of his pants. A light mist rose over the table. “Shit,” Pete said.

“What’s wrong?” Caroline asked.

“I’ve got to go to the bathroom.”

Once safely in a room labeled, “Senors,” Pete disposed of the ruined breath freshener and surveyed the damage. Sure enough, there was a big, wet area on the right butt cheek of his khakis where the Binanca resided.

“Shit,” he said. No amount of paper towels would fix this mess.

After a few minutes, he returned to the table. They ordered cheese dip and two Cokes. They actually talked, mostly about what Caroline was up to – Spirit Squad and National Honor Society and some other things. Pete didn’t even bring up the idea of driving to the secluded cul-de-sac at Cantering Downs, the new neighborhood in town. He settled instead on Beverly Hills Cop II – two hours of blissful movie watching when he didn’t have to say or do anything.

“Thanks,” Caroline Clooney said when he dropped her off in the circle drive in front of her house. “I had a good time.”

“Me, too,” he said, secure in the knowledge that, if he chose to, he would never, ever have to do something like this again.

Book Review: The Night Train

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1960s, back bay books, book review, civil rights, clyde edgerton, dunn, family, fiction, little brown, north carolina, novel, segregation, southern fiction, Stephen Roth, the night train

Some of my fondest childhood memories were the trips we made to Dunn, North Carolina, to visit my mother’s family. I would sit in the kitchen of Grandma’s house or in front of her massive RCA color television in the back room, listening to my aunts and uncles reminisce about life growing up in a small tobacco town in the 1950s and 60s. There was a lot of laughter and the occasional heightened pitch of my mother or one of her sisters recounting a particularly juicy part of a story. Everyone on my mother’s side of my family was a good storyteller, so I guess I come by that honestly.

Reading The Night Train, Clyde Edgerton’s 2011 novel about a small town in the early 1960s, reminded me of Dunn and some of those raucous tales at Grandma’s house. Fictional Starke, North Carolina, is like countless other Southern hamlets before and after Segregation – railroad tracks splitting it into the white part and the black part of town, with little overlap between the two other than in the tobacco fields and at a few businesses. Despite the separation and the history, Edgerton notes, folks on both sides of the tracks seem to share more in common than they would care to admit:

We could accurately say that the railroad divided a community of cornbread, vegetable and chicken eaters; or a community of pet lovers; or a community of rural dialects; of families of men who hunted quail and rabbits; people who owned chickens; women who cooked and sewed; or people who had, in their lifetimes, “worked in tobacco” – picked it, carted it behind mule or tractor, tied it to sticks, hung it in barns to cure, took it to market, complained about suckering and sand lugging.

Sunday mornings, however, encapsulate just how far apart the two sides of town are:

The truths of their pasts gave each group a different God (one of deliverance, the other of dominion), a different mode of worship service (one with energy and joy trumping solemnity and fear, the other almost reversing that). And their histories brought hardships to the people of West Starke not understood by the people of East Starke, and guilt to the East not understood by anybody.

Somehow, despite their upbringings and social pressures of their town, two teen-aged boys – one black and one white – slowly become friends. As with a lot of kids suddenly old enough to form their own tastes, it is music that brings them together. Dwayne Hallston has discovered James Brown and instructs his all-white band to memorize every song on the Live at the Apollo album. Larry Lime paces Dwayne through James Brown’s dance moves, but Larry Lime’s real passion is piano jazz, which he’s learning from a hemophiliac musician called the Bleeder who plays a club on the outskirts of town.

Both Larry Lime and Dwayne love The Bobby Lee Reese Show, a local TV variety show featuring the latest country and rock acts every Saturday night, hosted by a transplanted Yankee with a strange knack for connecting with both white and black audiences. Dwayne wants to audition on Bobby Lee’s show, and what could possibly go wrong with white boys playing soul music on TV at a time when the South is about to erupt over Civil Rights?

At little more than 200 pages, The Night Train is a fast-moving, often hilarious trip along both sides of the railroad tracks in tiny Starke. Edgerton’s skill at developing characters is such that even the most vilely racist ones come off as strangely sympathetic. They’re not bad people, they are just products of a tightly wound caste system that still exists in pockets of small towns and big cities all across the country.

You know from the very beginning of the book that the blooming friendship between Larry Lime and Dwayne is bound to be tested. Along the way, however, there are wonderful boyhood adventures and vivid characters of all ages. And, as with all of Edgerton’s books, there’s some great storytelling. You can almost taste the fried chicken, green beans and buttered biscuits on Grandma’s kitchen table, no matter what part of town you’re from.

Why Wait? Pre-Order Your Copy of Pridemore!

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a plot for pridemore, author, fiction, georgia, mercer university press, missouri, southern fiction, Stephen Roth

As mentioned recently, A Plot for Pridemore is set to hit bookshelves this May. However, if you would like, you can pre-order the book now by visiting my author page on the Mercer University Press website here. You’ll also receive a 20 percent discount and free shipping on your purchase if you hit “like” on Mercer’s Facebook fan page, which can be found here.

What’s the point in ordering a book that’s not coming out for another five months, you may ask. Good question! The appeal of pre-ordering is that you’ll be one of the very first people to read this novel. The publisher will send it out to you even before they ship copies to Amazon, Barnes&Noble.com and (maybe) Oprah’s Book Club (if she even does that anymore).

Not sure if A Plot for Pridemore is the kind of fiction you like to read? Here’s a brief description to give you an idea:

For five heart-churning days, the world turns its attention to tiny Pridemore, Missouri, where rescue teams work around the clock to free a mentally challenged man from a collapsed cave.

That’s how Mayor Roe Tolliver envisions it, anyway. Weary of watching the town he’s led for more than 40 years slide into economic oblivion, the mayor hatches a devious and dangerous plan: trap a local man in the bowels of nearby Dragon’s Ice House cavern, start a massive rescue operation, and prompt a media vigil that puts Pridemore on the map for decades to come. Over the course of a year, the mayor and his cronies carry out the convoluted scheme, which involves everything from bilking state money for a bogus tourist attraction to hiring a militia “ballistics consultant” to detonate the limestone cavern. Their success hinges on unassuming pawn Digby Willers, whose simple-minded likeability provides human interest in the made-for-television crisis.

As events unfold, however, forces beyond even the mayor’s control turn Digby’s rescue into a real, life-or-death drama. Get ready for a fast-paced romp filled with quirky characters, hilarious twists and turns, and a small town that just might get its 15 minutes of fame.

The Agony of the “Griefs”

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alex smith, andrew luck, chiefs, denver broncos, football, futility, indianapolis colts, kansas city, kansas city chiefs, losing, NFL, peyton manning, playoffs, sports, wild card

There’s a lot of manufactured excitement here in Kansas City this week. The local NFL team, the Chiefs, is in the playoffs for just the third time in the past 10 years. Kansas City sports talk radio stations are filling air time with roundtable discussions about whether the Chiefs can steal a win from the Colts in Indianapolis on Saturday. The Kansas City Star has interviewed everyone from quarterback Alex Smith to the team’s water boy about the big game. This, according to the local media, is a major sporting event for Kansas City.

Missed field goals in the playoffs, like burnt ends, are a KC tradition.

Here’s the thing, though: everyone in town knows that the Chiefs will lose this game, and probably lose it badly. That is not just because the Chiefs are playing on the road against a team that thrashed them, 23-7, just two weeks ago. It is because losing in the playoffs is part of the team’s DNA. It is what the Chiefs, known to some Kansas Citians as the “Griefs,” do more effectively than perhaps any other NFL team.

Since winning their only Super Bowl in January 1970, the Chiefs have gone an amazing 3-12 in the playoffs. They have not won a single playoff game since January 16, 1994, when Joe Montana led them to an improbable win over the Houston Oilers. That was such a long time ago that the Oilers are now the Tennessee Titans, and Joe Montana has a son who plays quarterback for Tulane. Twenty years is a long, damn time between playoff wins. During that period, there have been a handful of heartbreaking losses to keep everyone entertained, including:

– A 10-7 defeat at home to the Colts in 1996, a game in which the heavily favored Chiefs turned the ball over four times and missed three field goals in sub-zero weather.

– A demoralizing 14-10 loss to archrival Denver at Arrowhead in 1998 in which Chiefs quarterback Elvis Grbac could not convert a fourth-and-one deep in Denver territory in the game’s final minute (Chiefs fans, check out this Denver fan’s gleeful summary of the game if you really want to get steamed). The Broncos went on to win the Super Bowl that year.

Yes, it’s been a while.

– Another loss at home to the Colts in 2004, this time by a 38-31 score. This game is notable for the fact that the Chiefs defense never once forced the Colts to punt. Peyton Manning toyed with the boys in red by completing 22 of 30 passes for 304 yards and 3 touchdowns.

This record of futility is well-known to the Colts, who have beaten the Chiefs three of the last five times Kansas City has made the playoffs. The people of Indianapolis can’t wait for the Chiefs to get into town. They might even throw them a parade.

Well, maybe the Chiefs are due for a little postseason success, you might say. Maybe they will do better since Saturday’s game isn’t at Arrowhead, you might suggest. Well, that’s possible, I guess. But even if you ignore 20 years of futility, the current-day fact is that this Chiefs team, like so many before, just isn’t all that great. The Chiefs got off to an impressive 9-0 start by capitalizing on weak competition – only one of the wins over that stretch came against a playoff team. Over the last seven games of the season, as the competition has gotten tougher, the Chiefs are 2-5, winning games against hapless Washington (3-13) and Oakland (4-12).

A smiling Peyton Manning is a familiar sight for Chiefs fans.

There’s another long-time bugaboo working against this Chiefs team: the quarterback position. Alex Smith, whom the Chiefs acquired from the 49ers in the offseason, is a capable field manager. He doesn’t make very many mistakes, and he is having a career year this season. However, the Colts have an even better quarterback in Andrew Luck, heir to Peyton Manning and the player that everyone expects to be the Colts’ cornerstone for years to come. When the Chiefs and Colts faced off two weeks ago, Luck threw for a touchdown and Smith tossed two interceptions. No one will be too surprised if those numbers are similar in Saturday’s rematch.

The lack of a superstar quarterback, more than anything else, has been Kansas City’s undoing in the playoffs. In games against Dan Marino, Peyton Manning, John Elway and Jim Kelly, the Chiefs have put up Steve DeBerg, Trent Green, Elvis Grbac and Dave Krieg. Sad, isn’t it? In my opinion, there’s no coincidence that the team’s only real playoff success of the past 40 years, wins against the Steelers and Oilers in 1994, came with a fading but still great Joe Montana at helm. The formula is simple: you need a brilliant quarterback to win NFL playoff games. Other than the Len Dawson glory days of the 1960s and the two seasons they had with Montana in the ’90s, the Chiefs have never measured up in that department.

While this year’s team will probably be hitting the golf course after Saturday, there is hope that Chiefs can someday make some postseason noise. Head coach Andy Reid led the Eagles to several trips to the NFC Championship and one Super Bowl. He is known as a savvy developer of pro quarterbacks like Donovan McNabb and Michael Vick. The fact that he has the Chiefs in the playoffs at all this season is a small miracle. The team went 2-14 a year ago with most of the same players.

Don’t get me wrong. I would love to see all of Kansas City celebrate a playoff victory. No town deserves it more. I just don’t think it’s going to happen this year. But, for the first time in a long time, the future looks good for Kansas City’s favorite sports team. Maybe someday soon, they will steal a big game from one of those great teams like the Colts, Broncos or Patriots. Then, and only then, will the Chiefs no longer be the Griefs.

A Cover for Pridemore

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a plot for pridemore, author, fiction, humor, mercer university press, novel, publishing, southern fiction, Stephen Roth

For months, I have anticipated how Mercer University Press might interpret my novel through their book cover. I gave the publisher a few suggestions on how I envisioned it, but I otherwise had minimal input. Today, I had my first look at the book cover from Mercer, and I have to say that I am very excited and impressed.

The above image portrays the opening to Dragon’s Ice House, a network of caverns on the outskirts of Pridemore, Missouri, where a lot of the action takes place in the second half of the book. Over the years, I had imagined a photographic image of a small-town Main Street as the cover for A Plot for Pridemore, but I have to say that I much prefer the direction the artist took. The image is rustic, mysterious and foreboding. It makes me want to know what’s happening inside that deep, dark crevice.

While A Plot for Pridemore is a humorous tale, there is darkness and suspense to the story and its characters as well. This cover art captures those qualities.

As mentioned here before, my novel will debut as a paperback and an e-book in May. Seeing the cover for the first time is another reminder that something I have long dreamed about is on the verge of becoming reality. I can’t wait to share this book with all of you!