Author Bio: Winner of the IAP Award for Fiction and a 1997 Charles Angoff Award, Todd Pierce currently teaches at Florida State University. He holds advanced degrees from the University of California at Irvine (MFA), Oregon State University (MA), and Florida State University (PhD). Born in California, he presently lives in Tallahassee, but has also lived in Oregon and Sydney, Australia. He is currently finishing a novel, The Sky Like Tamara Blue. Link to the The Literary Review / WebDelSol Home Page for Todd James Pierce. Email Todd James Pierce NEW! Click Here for Writers Resources (If trouble loading, press RELOAD, as these pages are often busy.) This site maintained by Kerry Davies. Last updated 5/1/99.		Todd James Pierce -Fiction Home Page- Excerpt from Dinner at Charlie's by Todd James Pierce The Literary Review - Spring, 1998 This wouldn't have happened except for John. For him, and his bass boat, and the trouble he'd fallen into with his wife. You see, John got himself transferred to Florida not long before I moved there: he had a job with the Forest Service; his wife, Sam, with a local high school. They'd married young, had trouble off-and-on, and the previous year, when they were both thirty-nine, tried to start a family, an arrangement that did not turn out so well. She had two miscarriages, leaving them sad and lonely, desperate for whatever satisfaction might come their way. As for me, I'd once lived in California and had gone to graduate school there. I thought working for a college would be a good life-a good life in the sense that I might enjoy myself and at the same time help others. In my earlier, more idealistic days, I wrote short stories, mainly about men like myself, and in these stories I tried to capture through lies the sadness and pleasures of my own life, though I now doubt the success of all this. Not that any piece of writing contains the absolute truth-it's all a bunch of raged lies when you get right down to it-but rather I had projected the wrong lies to get at something I believed true. Dinner at Charlie's, Part 1		Stories have appeared in journals, including: American Short Fiction Chatachoochee Review Greensboro Review The Literary Review The Missouri Review New Orleans Review South Dakota Review South Carolina Review Speak Magazine & Others Web Selections: Dinner at Charlie's part 1 part 2 part 3 Smoke part 1 part 2 The Last Good Night part 1       Copyright Todd James Pierce, WebDelSol, TLR