Wise-cracking Wiley Cantrell is loud and roaringly outrageous -- and he needs to be to keep his deeply religious neighbors and family in the Deep South at bay. A failed writer on food stamps, Wiley works a minimum wage job and barely manages to keep himself and his deaf son, Noah, more than a stone’s throw away from Dumpster-diving. Noah was a meth baby and has the birth defects to prove it. He sees how lonely his father is and tries to help him find a boyfriend while Wiley struggles to help Noah have a relationship with his incarcerated mother, who believes the best way to feed a child is with a slingshot. No wonder Noah becomes Wiley’s biggest supporter when Boston nurse Jackson Ledbetter walks past Wiley’s cash register and sets his sugar tree on fire. Jackson falls like a wet mule wearing concrete boots for Wiley’s sense of humor. And while Wiley represents much of the best of the South, Jackson is hiding a secret that could threaten this new family in the making. When North meets South, the cultural misunderstandings are many, but so are the laughs, and the tears, but, as they say down in Dixie, it’s all good.

Shaking the Sugar Tree

Or at least it would be in my new novel.


Mysterious man purchases beer for housewarming party. Casual invite. Gaydar off the charts. What could it mean? Doesn’t he know that I’m just a cashier? Was this Prince Charming come at last, not riding a white horse but wearing hospital scrubs? Would my son finally have a second parent, a complete home? And me: Would I finally find real love, a companion in my old age, a mate, a husband?


The words flowed easily, and I was more than three thousand words into it when Noah wandered into the kitchen.


I had never written a book like this, though. I was used to the conventions of the horror genre. What was I writing, exactly? Romance? Drama? Slice of life? Romantic comedy? Would there be an audience for such a book?


Chapter 86