You Don't Mean That

This collection of short stories represents several decades of the author's experiments with form, ideas, and points of view. From a boy writhing in the confines of a Catholic education to a young woman discovering the limitations of her soul mate through the process of "driver instruction," these narratives run the gamut from humorous, to arcane, to frightening. Some stories in these pages are dredged from early memories, however imperfectly recalled and manipulated. Others are more speculative, projected from the authorial "What if?" Additionally, this book includes sample chapters from three of the author's forthcoming novels-each with a markedly different hero: a small town detective, an acerbic hack writer forced to write Romance novels, and a young man who finds it difficult to break away from the cocoon of academia.