Introduction By The Author

Of everything I've written...twelve books, sixty-six short stories, plus poems, articles and essays without number, Blood & Gasoline means the most to me. I've written books about everything from zombies to demons to meth addiction and growing up in a small town. Sure all these other stories had little pieces of me in them here and there, peppered throughout like the spread pattern of a shotgun blast, and all of them mean something to me. I've spent too much time with the characters, hiding in the shadows of their world and quietly pulling their strings, to feel nothing.

This book, though...this book was different. It was the only one that felt like it had to be written, for one. In December of 2005 my mom died after a four year battle with cancer and all the other shit that comes with it...infections, heart problems from the radiation, the chemotherapy that seemed to make her worse. I watched her hair fall out and her small frame shrink even more as the pounds slowly withered off.

I wrote this book instead of talking about it, dealing with it in any healthy manner. I wrote this book instead of screaming. This book started as both a Fuck You to the god that killed her and a requiem from the son who loved her, both an elegy and a rebellion. It was the five stages of grief rolled together, leaning heavy on the rage and the denial.

But then the characters started pulling my strings, little by little. They started doing things I hadn't planned on them doing. They showed forgiveness and found love where I went deliberately looking for scorched earth and vituperation.

The book remains all the things I had started it out to be...but only in a peripheral sense. It became what it is, almost on its own. Only a shadow of myself and my life are in this book, but the book, the book is in my fucking heart, and I hope you dig it just as much as I do.

Needless to say it is dedicated to the memory of my mother, and Uncle John and Grampa Floyd, because the Big C got them too early, too.