For release to book section and web editors, columnists, talk radio, feature writers, bloggers.

Further information:  Ray Abernathy (email) This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it

Save the Short Story 10 at www.rayabernathy.com

Washington-based Writer Ray Abernathy  Launches New Short Story Collection With Online-only 10-day Free Offer

Washington -- May 20 -- Ray Abernathy says if you go to his website every day for the next 10 days, you can download his new short story collection — Here and There, Now and Then (Amazon Booksurge 2008) —  story-by-story and save yourself the $14.99 it would cost you to buy the book through Amazon.com.

“This is a good little book and I don’t want it sitting around and gathering dust on a virtual bookshelf,”  Abernathy says.  “I want to have people reading the stories and talking about the book right from the start.”  He’s hoping the short story collection and a companion novel, Dirty Billy (Amazon Booksurge 2007)  will find a mainstream publisher, but for the time being both are available only online through his website or Amazon.com.

The 10 stories in the collection span the last 50 years and are set in seven different cities — Atlanta, where Abernathy grew up, Peoria, New York, Santa Fe and Washington, DC, where he now lives and works. On his website, a literary/commentary blog called From the Left Bank of the Potomac, Abernathy will post daily background pieces sharing his motivation for writing the story being given away that day.

According the the book jacket: “This is a melange of little stories about people making choices that alter their lives in unpredictable ways.  For a man like Tommy Kincaid in Intrigue on the Acela Express that means following a trail of popcorn across a railroad station lobby and learning that no matter how masterly you are at flirting and fooling around, you can always meet your match.  For a young country boy like Kenny-John in Calling All Fish it’s taking a chance and finding it’s possible to pee uphill without getting you feet wet, as long as you’re standing on the running board of a 1939 Chevy pickup.  And for a boss’s son like Charles Wickersham Wadley in All Head and No Ass, the life altering experience is three months on a construction job with a mentor named Ludi Williams, er, Mr. Ludi Williams.”

The stories in Here and There, Now and Then dig deeply into racism, alcoholism, sex, religion and politics. In Last Chance for Mellie, a middle-aged woman gives up on her “steady” of 17 years and reaches out for a new love.  The Waitress is about a shy young woman who impulsively decides to write her telephone number on the back of a customer’s credit card receipt.  In Best Friends, a NYC police detective purposefully oversleeps and misses out on the ravages of 9/11.  The Traffic Ticket tells of a confrontation between a police officer on his first day on the job, and a grandfather who decides to violate a traffic law for the first time in his life.  Jimmy-Z is a story of a mild-mannered parking lot attendant who reacts violently when a supervisor turns his barely tolerable world into an intolerable one.  In Nick Quits Drinking, Abernathy takes us on a New Year’s Eve ride with a man who is giving up the bottle for the last time, and in Pete and Max Take a Walk he shares a Trillinesque New York moment with a retired arbitrager who’s worried his much younger wife is playing around — with another younger woman.

###