It’s time to give a little love to my new audiobook, Professor Groovy and Other Stories, a collection of four short stories inspired by my college experience as, yes, you guessed it, a hippie girl. Previously, it was only available only in Kindle, but now you can hear me reading the stories aloud. Before I forget here’s the link.
You may read or heard me say this before, but I will do it again: I take what I know and have my way with it. That is certainly true of myIsabel Long Mystery Series and my other fiction. But in this case, I relied on my experience in college for these short stories.
When I arrived at Bridgewater State College — now a university — I was a shy girl who lived a sheltered life. I never dated, except for coercing a boy to take me to the prom. I so enjoyed my classes at Fairhaven High School and look forward to going to college. I was the first of my family to do so. They and I thought I would return home and teach school afterward.
Well, things didn’t go as planned. I found myself attracted to the college’s counter culture thanks to a woman in my dorm who introduced me to her circle of friends. And from there I enjoyed a great social life that included imbibing in all sorts of mind-altering substances. I was no longer shy or sheltered. And, yes, I did graduate with good grades and a teaching certificate. It was too important for me not to do that. But I moved onto another kind of life, which included raising a large family, moving about this country, and, yes, writing.
Here is the pitch for the short story collection: Lenora Dias, her college hippie friends, and a notorious professor try to make sense of life during the sixties. A prequel of sorts to the novel Peace, Love, and You Know What.
When I was in college, I encountered college professors who were figuring things out themselves. Was there a Professor Groovy? I recall one who liked to, uh, socialize with my group of friends. There were others. But what happens to Ned Burke in Professor Groovy did not take place in real life. When Bridgewater’s literary magazine, The Bridge, published the short story in an appeal to alum, one of the editors asked which prof. inspired the character. My lips were sealed.
In Ripple in the Jungle, Lenora Dias meets a friend for coffee at a locals coffee shop. Yes, there was one in the town’s center, Buddy’s, where I hung out with my friends, but this is a highly fictionalized meetup. Lenora is secretly corresponding with a guy she never met who is stationed in Vietnam. She sends him a bottle of Ripple as a gift, but there’s a bit of glass floating in the wine so he doesn’t dare drink it. Yes, I did mail a bottle of Ripple to a soldier and was amazed it even arrived intact except for that sliver.
In Smart Girls Like the Cool Guys, Lenora hooks up sort of with a local guy when she is back home for the summer. The guy has had a rough life along with a self-made tattoo of a dagger with the words “Born to Lose” on his arm. Let’s just say he was an inspiring character, but the story is pure fiction.
Fat Mark Writes It Down: I had a college friend who was indeed overweight and kept a journal in spiral notebooks. But, no, I never read any of them or did anything like Lenora does to one of her friends who has a similar habit. I wish I had.
There you have it. I recorded that audiobook in my son, Nate Livingston’s Mudroom Sound Studio. It’s a quick listen at 1 hour and 15 minutes. Recording this book was a learning process since it was our first. I thank Nate for taking on the project. We are talking about recording the Twin Jinn Series, complete with music he creates. Sounds like a great project to me.
Find Professor Groovy and Other Stories on Audible: here’s the link.
