Gulf Coast Stories [Kindle Edition]

John Aalborg (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Review

If Raymond Chandler and Ernest Hemingway had a baby, it would be this great collection of short stories. Witty, gritty, hard hitting and great fun. Vivid and so very real. --Perry Gambsy, Publisher, Street Wise Publications, Sydney AU

Product Description

"Gulf Coast Stories — Journeys Away From The Beaches" — 100 pages — John Aalborg's distinctive and poignant short story collection illuminates the volatility of the human character in six different, literary shades of good and evil. "Morton's Fork Crossing": Bull Schaffner, Aalborg's signature, wannabe private investigator finds himself in a community of backwater Florida misfits. While working to locate a stolen 18-wheeler he falls in love with the missing driver's girlfriend only to discover that his choices for the future are typically limited. "Giorgio Possum": An old man misses the young wife he treated badly. "Passion's Perch": Young love powered by imagination, a classic American car, and parental guidance fueled by alcohol. "Furby Mountain Florida": On the day after he receives seriously bad news, a truck driver is invited to ride along with a garbage hauler who wants to take the man's mind off his troubles and see life in a different way. A hungry little Furby does his sweet part. "Exile": The quest by a 14-year-old illegal and his sister to solve the mystery surrounding the middle-aged American who is trying to befriend them. "Bible School Tattoo": A seasoned tattoo artist and his beautiful but atheist nurse/wife ink a Christian girl.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
John Aalborg is a traveling, card-carrying member of the working class who can write. Thanks to the invention of the portable laptop, he has been able to type his hard-boiled, originally handwritten crime novels into digital form. (Two of these novels and this collection of short stories are now available on Kindle). Along with internationally published "over the road" articles (including Newsweek and Cosmopolitan) Aalborg wrote the entire Axel McKay radio-play series aired coast-to-coast on the WLAC Nashville Network, numerous magazine publications of trucking experiences in foreign countries, and continues to write a monthly road column by "Mo'hammer and Cheater". Never boring and often controversial, Aalborg's pithy and morally suspect characters, both male and female, bring the reader into a world rarely seen.

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Product Details

• Format: Kindle Edition
• File Size: 122 KB
• Sold by: Amazon Digital Services
• Language: English
• ASIN: B00408B08O
• Text-to-Speech: Enabled
• Lending: Enabled
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #483,361 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)

More About the Author

John Aalborg, aka "Mo'hammer" -- no TV interviews, no book signings, no letters and pleas to book publishers. His book-length work, however, is anything but neutral or fugitive, and, like Elmore Leonard, "I leave out the parts readers would skip." Aalborg is a no-nonsense, truck-driving, diploma-free, card-carrying member of the working class, and his novels are hard-boiled page-turners. His girlfriend, Cheater, calls his ever-present notebooks "splurt books", but after the notes are pounded into the keyboard you can taste them.

Aalborg has spent his life working jobs rich in personal experience -- all the while jotting down those experiences in notebooks or on legal pads. Three years living off the German black market (culminating in his being deported back to the USA); five years as a licensed locksmith in the City of Miami, where many of his less ethical assignments were for law enforcement; five years as an EMT for a rural Florida hospital and ambulance crew; many more years driving OTR (interstate) for long-haul trucking companies; and winter respites from the road by working the graveyard shift at local fuel-stops on exits off I-10, where he packed a gun and took care of his own law enforcement.

He has been published in NEWSWEEK, COSMOPOLITAN, and numerous trucking magazines. His "Axel McKay" radio plays were sponsored by Ford and Caterpillar, and aired coast-to-coast on the WLAC Nashville Network. In recent years he has been transcribing novels to disc, manuscripts hand-written on the road. The conversions completed so far include four mainstream novels and a collection of short stories. There is also a small book of meditations sure to uplift the depressed and infuriate the proud. As the legal administrator and confidant of this reclusive author, I have recently persuaded him to continue digitalizing his book-length work and to test the publishing waters via the Amazon Kindle platform. Some rare photographs of the author exist and are published here.

An on-going column -- "Don't Ask Us!" -- is published monthly in Trucker's Connection Magazine.

Much of the above is elaborated on our website: http://bleepfreepress.com

Submitted by John Baumgaertner II -- January 14, 2011

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars If Chandler & Hemingway Had A Baby, November 24, 2010

By 

Perry Gamsby "StreetWise Publications" (Sydney, Australia) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Gulf Coast Stories (Kindle Edition)

If Raymond Chandler and Ernest Hemingway had a baby, it would be John Aalborg, or at least this great collection of short stories. Witty, gritty, hard hitting and great fun, Aalborg has a way of telling a story that just keeps you reading. His own lifetime on the road and living large come through with every plot, character and twist.

I've only ever been to the Gulf Coast once in my life, when I read this book. You can see it all in your mind as you read, his descriptions are vivid and so very real. I love short stories, I teach a course at college on how to write them, then publish an anthology of each course's work and I wish Aalborg had been one of my students!