Bob Mustin was born in Louisiana, USA. He attended the U.S. Naval Academy, Louisiana Tech University, and the University of North Carolina, Asheville. He holds a BS degree in Civil Engineering from La Tech and a Master of Liberal Arts degree with an emphasis on creative writing from UNC-Asheville.
He has worked in Georgia, USA, as a structural designer, specification writer, and transportation administrator. He has been an instructor in writing skills, and has served as a mentor. He's also been a North Carolina Writers Network writer-in-residence at Peace College under the late Doris Betts. In the early '90s, he was the editor of a small literary journal, The Rural Sophisticate, based in Georgia.
His work has appeared in The Rockhurst Review, Elysian Fields Quarterly, Cooweescoowee, Under The Sun, Gihon River Review, Reflections Literary Journal, and at thesquaretable.com, raving dove, Sport Literate, The Externalist, Language and Culture, Imitation Fruit, and R.KV.R.Y in electronic form. A creative nonfiction piece won the North Carolina Writer's Network Rose Post Award for Creative Non-Fiction in 2007.
He continues to write and publish novels, short fiction and non-fiction.
Book Genre: Literary, general fiction
Publisher: AuthorMike Ink Publishers
Release Date: March 2012
Step inside Sam's and you can play a game of eight ball, nurse a beer, or get to know a wayward preacher, a reformed hooker, an Iraq vet amputee - or Sam himself. You may watch a baby being born, see a deadly knife fight, or simply hear tall tales. But there's always a rough-hewn truth within the lies, and Sam's there to manage everything from birth to death with a righteous cant. All things considered, it isn't a bad world. Sam's Place is a collection of interwoven short stories that revolve around a local watering hole in the Alabama town of Striven. Pull up a chair and get to know the locals in this powerful and entertaining world that is Sam's Place.
Excerpt:
The door to Sam’s Place creaked open to an oppressive wedge of summer afternoon heat. An aged stick of a man bent and entered. He doffed his fedora – the broad-brimmed kind worn to keep the sun’s malevolence from an already parched neck and face. At the first table, scrawny shooter Donnie eyed the man and spun twin streams of cigarette smoke from his crooked nose.
“Hey, dum-dum,” he called out, “close the damn door.”
The older man stepped aside to allow a young, gaunt woman to enter. Then, with a hard look, he strode to Donnie’s table. “You, sir,” he said in his resonant preacher’s voice, “are a heathen cur.” He grabbed Donnie’s neck with one talon-like hand and squeezed.
Donnie’s face bulged red. The cigarette he’d wedged into a gap between his snaggled teeth fell to the floor, issuing a cascade of tiny embers.
Sam woke from his doze at the building’s rear and fumbled his way around the oaken bar. Shoes scuffled to make way for him.
The spindly woman stood to the preacher’s side, hands together at her breast, as if a dog begging scraps. “Papa,” she said, “you have to let ‘im go. It hardly serves the Lord’s purposes to hurt ‘im now.”
Before Sam could force his round frame into the mildly odorous encounter, the old man let Donnie go.
Donnie squawked, then bent to retrieve his smoke. He eyed the old man. “I know you now, you old sumbitch, you’re that wandering preacher.”
The old man sniffed. He canted into a barely noticeable bow. “Leviticus Withers, God’s servant.” One arm swept in a graceful arc before his daughter. “And Dorene, one of His own angels.” He regardedDonnie with a long squint. “And who might you be? I wish to remember those who malign the Lord.”
“I ain’t m’ligned nothing,” Donnie mumbled. He crawfished back a step and rubbed his throat’s blush.
Samnow stood behind Donnie. He set his hands on the shooter’s bony shoulders. “Hang your hat and stay a while, Leviticus,” he said to the preacher. “What brings you back to good ol’ Alabam’?”
The preacher pressed his thin lips into a smile and handed his hat to Dorene, who scurried away to a wall peg. He brushed at his shiny gabardine coat with the back of one hand, as if to remove something of Donnie from it. “The Lord’s will brought me back to this den of iniquity,” he said, “to save lost souls.” He drew a stack of bi-folded brochures from an inside coat pocket and turned to Dorene.
“Daughter, give each of these sinners a bit of testimony, if you please.”
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