In this collection of 47 stories you'll head down a twisted road called "Actual Mileage" with award-winning writer Max Zimmer as your driver. Take the passenger seat, buckle up, hang on tight, and get set to experience fits of gutbusting laughter, some heartwrenching tearjerkers along the way, and brief encounters with real-life characters you'll relate to and find hard to forget. Most all of them are real -- although what Zimmer sometimes does with them is fiction and even slips at times into fantasy. Some samples: In "Getting Ants Drunk," a couple spend a humid summer afternoon on their deck serving drops of Malibu Rum to ants that fall from overhead trees onto their table. In "Under the Floor," a trap door in the concrete floor of a garage takes a man back forty years to his first rustbucket Porsche Speedster and the still incomprehensible breakup of his young first marriage, then returns him to the present having learned how to love what he's lucky enough to have had a second chance at. In a VFW club in "Amazing Grace," a bellydancer does an astonishing dance with a sword balanced on her head; afterward, she comes to the bar where you buy her a drink, learn that she's a pipefitter by day, and hear her spellbinding story about working on a Hoboken rooftop the morning the planes came down the Hudson just over her head and plunged through the towers. In "No Requiem," members of a car club meet one last time to celebrate its life, honor its death, share stories, and toast their surviving friendship. In "Jimmy," a New York street guy sails the sidewalks of the East Thirties in a mangy overcoat, unlaced workboots, dreadlocks, an indestructible smile, and a passionate determination to repay a two dollar loan. In "Veterans Day," an uncle takes the orphaned son he inherited from a Vietnam veteran to the back woods of Pennsylvania for an afternoon of car building with a couple of his buddies. In "Distance Traveled," two Jersey guys sip mojitos in their chaises on a Dominican Republic beach and compare notes on how far they've ever driven for a girl they loved. And in "Ghost Riders," a Maryland couple search the Atlantic Seaboard for other folks with Speedster replicas to go cruising with, a quest that starts as a dream and ends up coming real in a phenomenal gathering of Speedster replicas and their owners from all across North America. These are just a few samples of the stories gathered in this exuberant collection. All 47 were originally published in Kit Car Builder magazine under the heading "Actual Mileage." Enjoy the ride!
About the Author: Called a raw new voice in American fiction by Rolling Stone magazine, Max Zimmer has published stories, poetry, reviews, articles, short biographies, liner notes for jazz albums, a humor and human interest column for Kit Car Builder magazine, and two novels of a trilogy, Journey and Of the World. His first published story "Utah Died for Your Sins" was awarded the Pushcart Prize. He is the author of the groundbreaking trilogy If Where You're Going Isn't Home, the ten-year story of a boy growing up Mormon in 50s and 60s Utah with a dream to play jazz trumpet. Born in Switzerland, brought across the Atlantic, raised in Utah, he taught fiction writing at the University of Utah and later, after moving east, at the State University of New York at Oswego. From there, he gravitated toward the city, lived and tended bar in Manhattan, and eventually moved to the northwest corner of New Jersey, where he lives with his wife Toni. His lifetime interest in cars was sparked when he saw his first Porsche from the seat of his bike at the age of thirteen. He went on to own two 356 models - a 61 Super 90 Cabriolet and a 55 Speedster - and build a super widebody Speedster replica. Learn more about Max at www.maxzimmer.com.