(Another) Sneak Peek from the book 'The Gospel According to Josh'

Hey, hey, hey...so I wanted to share another little something with you. I just got back the first three chapters of my memoir from my editor and made a few changes and wanted to show it to you first. Barring any major revisions to the rest of the book...I’m giving you a sneak peek into the first 500 or so words. A teaser. Not too much plot but a look at the style. I hope you enjoy (gulp). 

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Chapter 1: An Epilogue Part One—Sort of.

There I was at William Woods University in the middle of Missouri, decked out in a long-sleeved blue flannel lumberjack button-down shirt and faded boot-cut blue jeans, standing next to a podium under a warm spotlight in front of a few hundred wide-eyed college students and some anxious faculty members—vocally paralyzed and desperately wishing I could gather myself just enough to string together a few coherent sentences for this room full of academics.   

It was like I was living that awful nightmare, you know, the one where you’re standing in front of a large group of people ready to say something epic and groundbreaking but somehow you left your house not only forgetting to wear pants but your underpants as well, prompting the crowd to point, laugh, and throw tomatoes at you with their free non-pointing hand. 

However, this moment of paralysis I was having on stage at William Woods University was all too real; I was definitely wearing pants; and this being November, tomatoes were out of season. 

I had never been so stiff in front of a crowd in my entire life. I’d been something of a song and not-so-much-a dance man for a church congregation of more than five hundred people by the tender age of six. Being on stage was as second nature to me as breathing, eating, and sleeping.

But standing next to that podium and sweating under those lights, I began to have what seemed to be some kind of a spiritual, out-of-body experience—which would have been awesome had I been drinking Peyote tea in New Mexico with Tommy Chong and a psychoactive Sonoran Desert toad, but God knows I’m not that lucky, and whatever transcendent experience I was having was happening at the worst possible time. 

I could almost see a part of me floating above my head, finding its way to a seat in the front row—eagerly anticipating whatever was going to happen next. It was like that scene from The Adventures of Tom Sawyer when Tom and Huck were sitting in the rafters watching their own funeral. Except this wasn’t a funeral. This was my resurrection party and I desperately wanted to celebrate with the cafetorium full of spectators in front of me.

But with every silent second that passed, my credibility and grip of mystique and intrigue was being loosened, especially on the younger students whose hands I could almost hear going for the smart-phones on their hips to fill the time being sucked away by the lifeless, question mark of a man standing before them..........

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In a few weeks I’m hoping to send y’all an excerpt from Chapter 2: A Prologue Part One—The Great White Hope. Thanks for playing!