Category: Excerpts
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Momma and Eddie said goodbye to Magnolia and me in the driveway at the home of the Beasleys. I’m going to call them the Beasleys, like my daddy did, because they didn’t really seem like regular grandparents to me.
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My name is Magnolia Shakes, and I was born on July 28, 1970. Exactly eight years later my daddy died in an act of self-killing out on the interstate near where we lived.
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+ Accident, Dallas, Dolls, Fiction, Happy Birthday, Interstate, Novel Excerpt, The Shakes, Wizard of Oz+
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One day Eddie and my mom sat me and my sister down in the living room after supper to tell us something important. Eddie said he had gotten a promotion and that he was being sent to work in Chicago. I didn’t know why the hell anyone would want to…
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+ Chicago, Fiction, Grandparenting, Kiss, Novel Excerpt, Oshkosh, Summer of 1979, Winnie-The-Pooh, Wisconsin+
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Nobody really knows why my daddy did what he did. Some say it was a sickness of the heart. Others say it was a sickness of the mind. I think it was probably both. I was just a kid when it happened, so it probably didn’t matter what I thought,…
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Sitting in the dry dirt above the desert floor, with legs crossed, the founder of the Church of Everlasting Super Freshness and self-proclaimed living patron saint of Albuquerque, was looking down upon Giza, New Mexico sprawled out there like a neon hothouse whore. It was a Buddha belly bowl of…
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Gary Glasscack boasted that he had the largest collection of pornography in all of Giza, New Mexico. He bragged about it any chance he could. He especially liked to bring it up in conversation with young female interns at the Giza Revealer newspaper where he worked.
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Giza, New Mexico, population 53,219, sat in a narrow stretch of hot land running from the prosperous north to the downtrodden south. To the west, desolate hills rose up and up through picturesque valleys eventually leading to a mountainous region and beyond, then diving into expansive bombing ranges of evil…
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Uncas’ car was a brown-colored old Saab that’s seen better days. There was a metallic squeal when Wilburn opened the passenger-side door. The smell inside was odd. There was trash strewn about. “Sorry about the mess,” Uncas said, embarrassed. “My wife and I are having marital problems and I’ve been…
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He stepped inside. It smelled like a newly built house dipped in medicine.
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CEREAL AFTER SEX 