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Breakfast with The IHOP Five

17 Friday Feb 2017

Posted by ghosteye3 in A Plot for Pridemore, author, fiction, stephen roth, Uncategorized

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a plot for pridemore, fiction, Ihop, southern fiction, Stephen Roth

ihop-five

Linda Fray sat restlessly through her friends’ discussion of the coming Apocalypse until she could stand it no longer. She had just spent $350 on a pair of cowboy boots and, dammit, she wanted to show them off.

“What do y’all think?” she said, kicking a leg out from under the table and revealing a pointy toe of turquoise leather. “Pretty nice, huh?”

Her four friends leaned over their breakfast platters for a closer look. Rob Ratzenberg was the first to comment, as was often the case.

“They’re a little on the flashy side for my taste. You aren’t gonna ride in them, are you?”

“Of course she’s not riding in them,” Gracie Picket said as she stirred Sweet ‘N Low into her coffee. “Those are dancing boots, not horse boots.”

Calwood Bachelor and Frank Bastin sipped their coffees and smiled dimly, a reaction Linda expected from two men who hadn’t changed their wardrobes since the Reagan Administration.

“I bought them off Bootopia.com,” she said, hitching her jeans leg to show a little more leather. “They were pricey, but a girl’s gotta treat herself every now and again.”

“Well, they are lovely,” Gracie said. “And you should treat yourself every chance you get. God knows what the months ahead have in store for us.”

“That’s right, sister,” said Calwood said. “A hard rain’s a-gonna fall.”

The others nodded grimly, like soldiers about to parachute into battle.

For years, they had met once a week—every week—for breakfast. Sometimes the meeting place was at Waffle House or Cracker Barrel, but mostly it was IHOP—the International House of Pancakes, as Gracie steadfastly called it. The coffee was better there, they all agreed and, well, so were the pancakes.

Originally, it was just three of them—Gracie, Rob and Cal. They became acquainted through an adult Sunday school class Cal taught for many years at the First Baptist Church of LeFarge. It was a popular class, regularly drawing 20 or more churchgoers after the early-morning worship service. Cal had a good grasp of the Bible, and, as a former Navy SEAL who served in Vietnam, he had credibility as a leader of his peers. He was skilled at bringing Scripture to life through personal anecdotes, humorous parables, and current events.

Some of his content was a little too current, apparently, as the pastoral staff started getting complaints from church members that Cal’s lessons had taken a decidedly political tone. Cal eventually lost his class, and left First Baptist a few weeks later with a defiant gesture that members of the congregation still sometimes talked about. A long-time usher, Cal raised his brass collection plate over his head during one Sunday morning service, and slammed it down on the church’s carpeted aisle, sending spare change and little paper envelopes flying everywhere. He strode out of the sanctuary, growling something about Jesus casting out all the moneychangers.

Gracie Picket, a former school teacher, and Rob Ratzenberg, a retired Yankee from New Jersey, left the church, too, albeit under calmer circumstances. That’s when the breakfast meetings began. At first the three of them brought their Bibles to the IHOP, but studying the events of two thousand years ago soon gave way to impassioned talks about more immediate, juicier topics. Soon, the leather-bound Bibles went back to gathering dust on bedside tables in their homes.

Four years ago, Frank Bastin joined the group. Frank knew Cal, and he had just sold his Bastin Carpet Corner outlet store for a pile of money. The weekly breakfasts fit nicely into his newly uncluttered routine. Linda Fray joined a few months after Frank. In her late 50s, Linda was the youngest of the five by far. However, she was trying to be a little more social since losing her husband to a heart attack, and her Aunt Gracie had always raved about the dynamic conversations she and her friends were having over their eggs and toast. Linda decided to give it a try. After a few breakfasts, she was hooked.

They initially called themselves The Breakfast Bunch, because it seemed natural for a group that met once a week to have its own moniker. The serving staff knew them by a different name, however, one they muttered each time the group commandeered the corner booth for two hours before leaving its usual 10 percent tip. “Here come The IHOP Five,” they would say with about the same amount of affection one might reserve for terms like “rat infestation,” or “irritable bowel syndrome.”

Cal overheard the name one morning while on his way to the bathroom, and he relayed it to the group. Everyone liked it. IHOP Five sounded apt for a discussion group that had started to take on some edgy topics.

Initially, the IHOP Five bonded over subjects common to their end of the generational spectrum: grandchildren, local gossip, rock music of the 1960s, the status of their retirement funds and new ways to find cheap prescription drugs. But, as the years went by and each of them spent more of their time blinking into the luminous glow of laptop computers and high-definition TVs, their conversations turned to politics.

It helped that all of them were on the same ideological side of the “what in the hell is the world coming to?” camp, though with slight variations. Frank felt certain that the country was headed toward a currency meltdown in which it would one day require a trailer of cash to buy a loaf of bread, while Gracie envisioned a one-world government where U.N. troops would ship senior citizens like her to internment camps. Cal feared a Chinese invasion, while Rob theorized that vaccines might someday trigger a zombie apocalypse. Linda thought most of these ideas were horseshit, but she shared her friends’ distrust of politicians, the mainstream media and the government, and she thought that it might be time for change of a revolutionary sort.

One way the IHOP Five liked to think they differed from other AARP members who gathered over breakfast every week was that they were not content to just gripe. They prided themselves on being a scrappy, can-do bunch that could pinpoint problems and devise solutions. For a long time, their actions involved letters, e-mails and phone calls to the local newspaper or a congressman’s office. When that approach lost its luster, the Five switched to other tactics. Some of them were a little loopy, even for deeply conservative LeFarge, Georgia.

“We need to do something about the sexting,” Gracie said, setting her cup in its saucer and giving the others a strident look. “It’s getting out of control.”

Frank and Rob chuckled. Linda covered her mouth to keep the grits from spilling out of it.

“Sexting?” Cal asked. “What the devil is sexting?”

“It’s all over TV and the Internet,” Gracie said. “Don’t you ever watch TMZ?”

Cal ran a napkin over his mouth. “I’m pretty sure I have better things to do.”

Gracie turned her gaze to Linda, who was obviously expected to say something. As the junior member, it often fell on her to explain recent pop culture phenomena that might have whizzed past her friends.

Linda took a long sip from her orange juice, trying to think of the right way to put it. After all, most of these people were Baptists.

“Well, it’s a form of texting you people do—sometimes not-so-young people do it as well,” she began. The other members of the IHOP Five leaned toward her, Frank and Rob wearing expectant grins, Gracie looking proud and determined, like she was about to lead a march on Capitol Hill.

“It’s a form of texting where, if you want to get the attention of someone you really like, you send them a photo of…yourself.”

Cal still looked puzzled. “What’s wrong with that?”

“Well, sexting involves a recent type of photo.” Linda stopped, but Gracie nodded at her to press on. “Usually a photo of your genitals.”

Cal grimaced. “You mean to say, if a boy likes a girl, then he would text her a picture of his, ah—”

“—Penis,” Gracie said. “That’s exactly right.”

Frank and Rob giggled. Cal shook his head. “Good God in Heaven,” he muttered.

“It’s completely foul,” Gracie spat, “and we need to do something about it.”

“What can we possibly do?” Frank said, smiling at Gracie. He was a life-long entrepreneur and the most levelheaded one in the bunch. He regularly sparred with the retired school teacher, though usually in a playful manner.

“Well,” Gracie said, returning Frank Bastin’s smile with an exaggerated grin of her own. “I thought we could start by asking the City of LeFarge to pass a public decency ordinance that bans sexting. I’ve
got a friend on the council who can show us how to write one up.”

Rob Ratzenberg let his fork drop, making a clatter on his half-finished plate. “I thought we were done with this procedural, government crap. It’s a lot of work, and nobody gives a damn.”

“Don’t they?” Gracie replied. “A sexting ban is the kind of thing that might get some play in the national press. Then people will indeed give a damn, as you so eloquently put it.”

“I’m tired of writing letters and drawing up petitions,” Rob said. “I’m ready for action. I thought that was what we were moving toward.”

“It is,” Cal said softly, eying the last bite of his blueberry pancakes. “But please keep your voice down, Robert.”

The group stewed over the sexting issue a little longer, until the waitress came by to refill their coffees and ask they needed anything else. Just the check please, Cal told her. Split five ways, if she didn’t mind.

“So who’s free this Saturday night?” he asked once the waitress moved on to the next table.

The other four looked at each other. There wasn’t much to do in LaFarge on a Saturday night, beyond checking the listings to see if the Bijou Twin had anything decent playing, which it usually didn’t.

“Well, you’re all invited over to the ranch, then. Please don’t feel like you need to bring anything. We’ve got plenty of food and beverages. And wear something you don’t mind getting dirty.”

Cal Bachelor leaned over his breakfast toward the others. He was a massive man whose voice reached a surprisingly squeaky pitch when whispering a critical piece of information.

“I think it’s time,” he said, “that we got about the business of learning how to defend ourselves.”

What Was Your First Favorite Book?

03 Thursday Mar 2016

Posted by ghosteye3 in A Plot for Pridemore, author, fiction, my life, observations

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charlotte's web, e.b. white, fiction, reading, Stephen Roth, world book day

Happy World Book Day! Can you think of one book that instilled you with a love for reading? I was in second grade when I received Charlotte’s Web as a Christmas gift. Our teacher had read it to us in class, but I wanted to revisit it by myself. Up to that point in my life, I had found reading to be difficult, monotonous, and sometimes even painful. That all changed with the first chapter of “Charlotte’s Web,” where Fern rescues a runt piglet from her father’s ax. I’ve loved books and reading ever since.

Charlottes-Web

I’ve Moved on. My Facebook Account Hasn’t.

22 Wednesday Jul 2015

Posted by ghosteye3 in current events, humor, media, my life, observations

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author, Facebook, facebook sucks, fiction, hallmark, linkedin, social media, Stephen Roth, technology

One of the curious things I have noticed from my six years of participating in social media is that your online persona is not very good at adjusting to change. You might move to a new city, marry a new spouse or find a new job, but social media refuses to let go. Unless you take some drastic, cold-blooded measures, your accounts on Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. will operate under the assumption that the 2015 version of you isn’t a whole lot different from the 2009 you.

But how many of us have not gone through a significant change in our lives over the past six or seven years?

I’ll give you a personal example. From 2006 to 2013, I worked for the same great, big corporation in Kansas City. When I reluctantly joined Facebook in 2009, I began “friending” a lot of my coworkers, because it seemed a good way to keep up with colleagues I didn’t see or talk with every day. It also seemed like a savvy way to network within a large organization. A lot of people I worked with were aggressive in connecting with their coworkers on Facebook, perhaps for the same reason.
007Stephen
Long story short, I left the company for a new job in Kansas City at the end of 2013. Changing employers after so many years was stressful and challenging, but I eventually adapted to my new environment.

My social media, however, has not.

I still have all those old co-workers in my digital world, many whom I have not seen in the real world in nearly two years. LinkedIn is always encouraging me to connect with other people at my old company, even though LinkedIn knows damn well I don’t work there anymore. My news feed on Facebook is filled with posts by former colleagues. Many of the posts recount amusing things that just happened with coworkers at the place where I used to work. Back in the day, those posts were kind of funny. Now, they just make me nostalgic.

I have since blocked a few of those Facebook friends.

I know what I need to do. I’m not stupid. I need to sit down and coldly, calmly assess which friends from my past I want to keep, and which ones I need to cut loose. Many of them would not notice or care if I unfriended them today.

So I will do that sometime, after my child is put to bed and the laundry is done, and I am not exhausted from all the other things I had to do on that particular day. I will sit down, crack open a beer, and start clicking those little gray boxes next to some of my Facebook friends’ names.

It’s a small, almost silly problem to have, all these people in your digital Rolodex who are no longer an active part of your life. Still, given how big a role social media plays in many of our lives, I wonder what it does to our psyche? Even after you’re ready to move to a new chapter of your life, your social media accounts remain firmly rooted in your history.

And what happens when you make the ultimate move, to that Big Social Network in the Sky? Should your accounts be deleted, or should they be used to memorialize your life? These are questions that are being taken very seriously. Facebook recently unveiled a new policy that allows users to designate a “legacy contact” to manage their wall when they die. Many wills and trusts now contain similar language about what to do with all the social media accounts when the trustor passes on.

Like it or not, these are the kinds of things we have to deal with today. Makes me want to go delete my Facebook account right now. I would do it, too, if it weren’t such a big part of my life.

Stephen Roth is the author of the humorous novel, A Plot for Pridemore. Be sure to “like” his author fan page at https://www.facebook.com/StephenRothWriter

About Atticus

14 Tuesday Jul 2015

Posted by ghosteye3 in author, current events, fiction, observations, Uncategorized

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fiction, go set a watchman, harper lee, southern fiction, Stephen Roth, to kill a mockingbird

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For those people who are already vocally distraught about how Atticus Finch is portrayed in Harper Lee’s new/old novel, Go Set a Watchman, I have a couple of things to say:

1. Get a life.

2. Maybe you should reserve your judgment until after you have actually read the book, which just came out today?

As it does for many fiction readers, To Kill a Mockingbird holds a special place in my heart. I remember exactly where I was when I first read it, how the characters came alive for me, and how I felt a strange sadness when I completed the book. I wanted the story to continue. I wanted to learn more about Scout, Jem, Atticus, and Boo Radley.

Now, in a way, the story will continue. However, I do not plan to be among the first to read Go Set a Watchman. I want to wait a while. I have no illusion that this book will be nearly as powerful as To Kill a Mockingbird. As has been reported, Harper Lee’s editor recommended that she shelve the manuscript for Go Set a Watchman, and re-work the good parts of it into a new book. That is how To Kill a Mockingbird came about. In my mind, the “sequel” released this week is more of a nostalgia trip for Lee’s legion of fans, sort of like bootlegged studio sessions of Beatles songs we all know and love. I don’t think we should expect Watchman to be in the same class as Mockingbird.

To those readers who are appalled that Atticus Finch might have some racist tendencies after all, I think they need to put his character in the context of the times. He is a white, male establishment figure in a small Alabama town in the late 1950s. He is also, at the time that Go Set a Watchman takes place, an old man. Is it really so surprising that he has some fears and reservations about the prospect of integration?

Again, I have not read the new book (and, more than likely, neither have you). I do not know how poorly Atticus is portrayed. I know I loved him in the first book, and I loved Gregory Peck’s portrayal in the movie. If it turns out that Atticus is kind of a bigot in his older age, how is that different from a mostly decent family member who has some abhorrent views we disagree with? Most of us know people like this in our families. Do we negate their better qualities and focus entirely on the negative ones? Do we shut them out of our lives? Maybe, in these uncompromising times, that is exactly what we do.

I’m going to reserve judgment until I have read the book, but people are complex. All of us have a dark and ugly side. In a way, it’s somewhat reassuring to me that Atticus Finch might have one, too.

Stephen Roth is the author of the humorous novel, A Plot for Pridemore.

Be sure to “like” his author fan page at https://www.facebook.com/StephenRothWriter

Book Review: Soil

05 Friday Jun 2015

Posted by ghosteye3 in book review, fiction, Uncategorized

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a plot for pridemore, fiction, jamie kornegay, mississippi, soil, southern fiction

imgres
Many of us are taught from an early age that, with a little hard work and ingenuity, we can have it all. We can have a beautiful, loving family, make lots of money, achieve our professional goals and, along the way, possibly change the world. Follow your dreams, we are told by everyone from Disney princesses to the commencement speaker at college graduation.

Jay Mize has a gorgeous wife, a young son, and a cozy little bungalow in town. That’s not enough for him. Jay has a dream – to till some land, develop a new way of growing crops and, in the process, change how life is sustained on earth. The dream gnaws at Jay until he decides to pursue it, and the results are disastrous. Within a year, the river has flooded his farm, his wife and son have left, and Jay is slowly starving to death. What he finds one day floating on his ruined land adds a macabre twist to Jay’s struggle, and sets up the central dilemma of Jamie Kornegay’s excellent first novel, Soil.

Set in a Mississippi town, written in wry prose, and populated with remarkably defective characters, Soil is reminiscent of the darkly comic works of writers likes Clyde Edgerton, James Wilcox, and others. Crazy shenanigans in a Southern town are not exactly unplowed literary ground, but Soil offers a contemporary perspective on an old lesson: be careful what you wish for. Jay’s isolated quest for greatness, fueled by cable news conspiracy theories and doomsday scenarios, drive him to madness. That madness leads to some stunningly bad decisions that get Jay into a heap of trouble. Kornegay writes about this descent with sharp, vivid passages that are sometimes harrowing enough to make your stomach spin. The descriptions of the ramshackle house and devastated crops on Jay’s property are equally powerful. It’s clear that the writer has an intimate appreciation for the natural forces that make the Delta such a strange, tormented place.

Other characters resonate in Soil. Danny Shoals is a hot-rodding deputy with a keen eye on replacing his uncle as county sheriff. Unfortunately, Danny’s eye for every short skirt in town, along with an urge to peep under other folks’ window shades at night, threaten to destroy his plans. Sandy Mize is Jay’s pretty but long-suffering wife. Her inner conflict over whether or not to save her marriage make Sandy a sympathetic character, but not a helpless one. Her sparring sessions with the delusional Jay contain some of the book’s strongest dialogue.

It’s natural to categorize this novel as Southern fiction because of its locale and storytelling style. But the weaknesses that most of the main characters carry – grand ambitions, flawed logic, extreme narcissism – know no geographic boundaries, at least in this country. Soil is a cautionary but entertaining tale about what can go wrong when we want something just a little too much.

Stephen Roth is the author of the novel, A Plot for Pridemore.

Be sure to “like” his author fan page at https://www.facebook.com/StephenRothWriter

What to do with All These Books?

02 Tuesday Jun 2015

Posted by ghosteye3 in A Plot for Pridemore, author, fiction, stephen roth

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

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A year ago, when the first copies of my novel arrived, it was exhilarating to open that cardboard box and hold the hard-bound product of several years’ hard work in my hands.

Since that time, I have sold more than 100 copies of A Plot for Pridemore from my personal inventory. I still have another 25 copies sitting in a basement closet, just waiting to be read.

So here’s the deal: if you are looking for a good summer read, or a possible Father’s Day gift for a friend or loved one who enjoys fiction, send me a quick message with your mailing address. For $15, I will mail you a signed copy of my book.

It has been a blast promoting and sharing my book with readers over the past year, but I really need to find a home for these copies of Pridemore, and free up some extra closet space while I’m at it. Send me a comment (I will not post it publicly) if you’re interested. Thanks!

Interview with the Southern Literary Review

28 Thursday May 2015

Posted by ghosteye3 in A Plot for Pridemore, author, fiction, stephen roth, Uncategorized

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a plot for pridemore, allen mendenhall, fiction, mercer university press, southern fiction, southern literary review

A few weeks ago, Allen Mendendhall posted a view nice interview with me on the Southern Literary Review‘s website. I thought he asked some great questions that really got me to think about why I wrote things a certain way in A Plot for Pridemore. What follows is the the conversation in its entirety:

AM: Pridemore, Missouri—the setting for your novel, A Plot for Pridemore. Why this place in particular?

SR: Missouri has been my home for the past 26 years, so it made sense to write about a part of the country that was very familiar to me. I also felt that basing Pridemore in Missouri would allow me to start the story with something of a clean slate. Readers have preconceptions and expectations when you write about events that happen in places like Florida, Texas or Alabama. Few people living outside of the Show-Me State have a strong opinion about Missouri. I felt that could work to my advantage in portraying Pridemore as kind of a struggling Anytown, USA.
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AM: A Plot for Pridemore is your first novel. What did you find most challenging about writing the book?

SR: I think the biggest challenge for a first-time author is the lingering fear that what you are producing is not quality work. While working on Pridemore, I felt that I had a compelling topic, and I enjoyed writing it, but I didn’t know if it was any good until people starting reading the manuscript. It was very important to me that I selected a handful of professional writers to read my first draft, in addition to the usual collection of family and friends. When my writing colleagues reported back (some with surprised looks on their faces) that they thought my book was pretty good, I was genuinely relieved. Their feedback gave me the resolve to continue improving the manuscript and to seek a publisher.

AM: I can think of characters from history and literature who seem similar to Mayor Tolliver. I’m assuming this figure didn’t spring fully formed in your mind in a single moment of creative genius. How did he come about?

SR: I would have to say that Roe Tolliver is a composite of a few different people I have known over the years. I was a newspaper reporter for much of my 20s and 30s, and I was blessed to meet a wide range of scoundrels, blowhards, narcissists, and all-around colorful characters while covering city politics and business. I also came to know many fine, capable public servants and business leaders. However, I leaned on some of the more outlandish characters from my reporting days to create Mayor Tolliver. Of course, a lot of his quirks and motivations came from my imagination as well.

Incidentally, I believe that reporting is a wonderful education on how the world operates when you are a young adult. The pay and career track aren’t so great, but reporting is an excellent way to learn how to write, and what to write about. You also meet an incredible array of people. Neil Young once said that he would rather travel in the ditch than in the middle of the road because he “saw more interesting people there.” The same could be said of newspaper reporting.

AM: Tell us about your decision to divide the book not only into chapters but into parts. Is there any subtle significance to that decision?

SR: Since the book covers a full year, I thought it would be helpful to the reader to break the text into the three seasons when most of the action takes place: Summer, Spring, and Summer again. I have no idea if this approach added any value to Pridemore. You are the first person to mention the parts of the book to me.

AM: Where did you grow up?

SR: My father was involved in textiles, so we split our time between Georgia and South Carolina when I was growing up. Most of my boyhood took place in LaGrange, Georgia, which I consider to be my hometown.

AM: I lived in West Virginia for several years and came to know several “Pridemores.” It’s sad and sometimes eerie but also, in a way, strangely beautiful to behold once-thriving cities and towns that are now decaying, their buildings and roads in disrepair, their downtowns now ghost towns. How does this make you feel? Is this something you’re passionate about? Were you making any kind of political statement in your novel by focusing on Pridemore?

SR: I did not set out to make a political statement. However, I know Pridemore’s problems are shared by many American towns as the country continues its shift from a rural to an urban society. It’s a very topical issue, and you don’t have to look very hard to find a feature story in The New York Times or Wall Street Journal about some spunky town in the middle of nowhere that is trying to get its act together, even though there may no longer be an economic reason for it to exist. I think those stories about people pulling together to save their towns are beautiful and inspiring. Hopefully, none of those towns go to the drastic lengths that Pridemore does to revive their fortunes.

I have always loved the intimacy of the small town. The ability to get from one place to the next in just a couple of minutes, and to run into someone you know everywhere you go, are things you take for granted until you live in a city. If the evening news is any indication, those places on the map where you can leave your front door unlocked or let your kids walk alone to a friend’s house are rapidly disappearing. In Pridemore, Missouri, I tried to create a place with that small-town intimacy that readers could believe and visualize. I’ve been told by a handful of readers that Pridemore reminds them of the towns they knew growing up. I love hearing that.

AM: It’s unusual to ask an author about his publisher, but I want to do so only because Mercer University Press seems to be coming out with several books, like yours, that readers of contemporary Southern literature will appreciate and enjoy. What caused you to submit to Mercer?

SR: A few years ago, I started sending out query letters to agents and publishers, but I had not considered pitching A Plot for Pridemore to a university press. Then, in 2011, I attended the Chattahoochee Valley Writers Conference in Columbus, Georgia, where I met Marc Jolley, who is director of Mercer University Press. He encouraged me to enter my manuscript in Mercer’s annual contest for the Ferrol Sams Fiction Award. I submitted Pridemore and, a few months later, received an email from Dr. Jolley asking me to call him. Lo and behold, my book won, and part of the award was a publishing contract. I feel very fortunate to have run into Dr. Jolley in Columbus.

Mercer University Press does produce an impressive number of books, both fiction and non-fiction, that any lover of Southern culture would enjoy. You can check out all of their titles at http://www.mupress.org.

AM: Just a couple more questions. First, A Plot for Pridemore features an interesting relationship between Pete and Angela. What motivated this part of the book?

SR: One of my goals in the book was to give each of the main characters a dark side that would lend them more authenticity. There are no white knights arriving to save the day in A Plot for Pridemore. Pete Schaefer is the newspaper reporter for the Pridemore Evening Headlight whose job it is to unravel the mayor’s devious plan to save the town. I could have drawn Pete as a bona fide good guy, but that just didn’t seem right. His relationship with Angela reveals a different layer to Pete’s personality that even he finds to be a little unsettling.

AM: You were born in LaGrange, Georgia, and now live in Kansas City. Do you feel that Southern authors are under-appreciated at the national and even international level?

SR: Everyone has their own opinion of the South, much of it having to do with politics. I believe that many Americans have an appreciation for the rich cultural gifts the South has given us, from music to cuisine to literature. I don’t think that Southern authors as a whole are under-appreciated. I do think that some of the South’s finest literary writers, from Ron Rash to Charles Portis to Terry Kay, have not received the public acclaim they deserve, but that’s probably true of any genre of fiction.

Bound for the Razorback State

13 Monday Apr 2015

Posted by ghosteye3 in A Plot for Pridemore, author, fiction, humor, my life

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a plot for pridemore, arkansas literary festival, fiction, little rock, southern fiction

The Arkansas Literary Festival is among the finest gatherings of writers and readers in the South, and I’m excited to be a part of the 2015 edition. On Saturday, April 25, I will be on a panel that includes fiction writers Jay Ruud and John Vanderslice. We’ll be fielding questions about the use of history, mystery and humor in fiction. Of course, I will also attempt to work in a few plugs for my novel, A Plot for Pridemore.

Looking forward to taking my act on the road again.

Looking forward to taking my act on the road again.

If you happen to be near Little Rock the weekend of April 23-26, you might consider stopping by the festival, which has an impressive lineup of speakers including John Waters, Rick Bragg, and Rebecca Wells. Here’s a link to the entire festival schedule. Most events are free and open to the public. It should be a fun weekend.

I have only been to Arkansas a handful of times, mostly to canoe on some of the lovely rivers in the northern part of the state. I did have one experience in the Razorback State that indirectly influenced A Plot for Pridemore. In the summer of 1993, I interviewed for a reporting job at the Daily Press, a weekly newspaper in Paragould, Arkansas. I didn’t get the job, but the name ‘Paragould’ stuck with me. In the initial drafts of my novel, the fictional town where the action takes place was called Paragould, Missouri. I later changed the town’s name to “Pridemore” in order to avoid any confusion with the real town of Paragould in western Arkansas.

It has been a few months since my last book appearance. I’m looking forward to meeting some cool folks and finding the best barbecue restaurant in Little Rock. Let me know if you have any suggestions!

What They’re Saying on Amazon

06 Friday Mar 2015

Posted by ghosteye3 in A Plot for Pridemore, author, book review, fiction, my life, Uncategorized

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a plot for pridemore, amazon.com, customer reviews, fiction, southern fiction, Stephen Roth

Each Friday, I visit Amazon.com to see how my book is doing. Amazon and Nielsen have a nifty application that can tell authors, roughly, how many books they sold over the past week. Some weeks the results are disappointing. Other weeks they are encouraging. Today, I learned that I sold four paperback copies of A Plot for Pridemore between February 23 and March 1. That’s a pretty encouraging week by my standards.

I also learned today that A Plot for Pridemore racked up its 23rd customer review on Amazon.com. So far, the reviewers have been amazingly kind. Twenty of them have rewarded the book with five stars, while three gave it four stars. Some of the reviewers are, of course, friends and relatives, but many are people I don’t know who managed to stumble across the book and read it cover-to-cover. I am humbled and amazed at how generous they have been to a first-time novelist. Here’s what one reader from Venice, Florida, wrote this week about A Plot for Pridemore:

PlotForPridemore (2)
I enjoyed the book very much. It started out on the slow side but got to the point where I couldn’t put it down. Stephen was very inventive to come up with this plot.

Customer reviews on Amazon.com are very important, I am told. Potential buyers look to these reviews to help them decide if they want to buy your book. Having a lot of reviews–even if they are not all positive reviews–shows that your book is generating “buzz.” That draws the attention of the Amazon people, who may decide to give your work preferential placement in their online bookstore, helping it stand out among the millions and millions of published and self-published books that are sold on Amazon.

There is a lot of content on the Internet about how to get more customer reviews, including stories about how some authors who have tried to bilk the system. It’s my understanding that you need at least 50 customer reviews for your book to get Amazon’s attention, but that might just one of those online rumors. At any rate, it’s a hot topic among newbie authors like me.

Which leads me to my plea: if you have an interest in purchasing and reading my book. I would love it if you would take a few minutes to review it on Amazon. The process is simple and easy. Even if you find that A Plot for Pridemore is not exactly your cup of tea, I would still greatly appreciate any feedback you could provide in the form of a customer review.

If you enjoy reading fiction at all, however, I’m willing to bet that you will like A Plot for Pridemore. After all, the customer reviews have given it an average of five stars on Amazon.

Stephen Roth is the author of the humorous novel, A Plot for Pridemore.

Be sure to “like” his author fan page at https://www.facebook.com/StephenRothWriter

The Rule of Five

30 Friday Jan 2015

Posted by ghosteye3 in A Plot for Pridemore, fiction, satire, Uncategorized

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a plot for pridemore, amazon.com, author, barnes & noble, fiction, kindle, mercer university press, nook, satire, Stephen Roth

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Five years to write.

Five years to find a publisher.

Five stars on Amazon.com.

A Plot for Pridemore is now available in paperback, Kindle or Nook.

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