Tom Sterner

Momma's Rain Tom Sterner

Publisher Marketing: A native of Colorado, I live in Denver with my wife, Kathy. Between us, we are blessed with six adult children who also reside in the metro Denver area. I've spent a fair share of my life outside the lines, started riding Harleys, roaring across the nights with fellow madmen and singing in rock & roll bands before I was of legal age to drink in bars (that didn't slow me down much though). Family has always been my number one priority, my children the single dynamic that dragged me back when I was dangling over the edge. Life with them gave me direction and heart to write my shortest novel, be there . momma's rain is the opening book in the saga, Amerikan Kamp: Frail Monsters/Wounded Souls. Six-year-old Jackie snuck into the bread last night. He ate the last two slices. He took quite a beating when Momma informed Daddy. Jackie's lips are stuck shut with dried blood, his forehead bruised from being slammed into the corner where he's standing, smiling inside. His belly's full. They can beat him all they want. The next morning he is gone and his four-year-old brother, Phillip, with him. Where did they go, the police want to know. Momma was born in a chicken coop behind her grandfather's mansion in the Ozarks, Missouri before he hung himself and blew his brains out over gambling debts and slave blood. Her father was the ashamed half-breed offspring of this white man and his Cherokee slave woman. At four-years-old, she was abandoned to a Catholic orphanage along with her two older sisters. Daddy was born on a ranch in Colorado Springs, Colorado. His twin brother was left in an outhouse at a campground in the mountains on his fourth birthday. His momma, unhappy in her marriage to a ranch hand, had found herself a new man who refused to take on the responsibility of two little bastards. She kept Daddy, threw the other one away. Her new man disciplined the boy with an iron hand and a coal shovel. I lived the life and Momma told me the stories of life before me. She didn't like it much that I wrote things down and made songs to sing out of the fabric of our lives and her tales. She needed me though and I think she was desperate to tell it all, to give her life substance. I swore an oath not to breathe a word of it to a soul until she was gone. She is passed, the grass grown long over the paths she walked. I am the son alive in the mist, no umbrella, of Momma's Rain. Contributor Bio:  Sterner, Tom tom (wordwulf) sterner wrestles with creativity: graphic art, music, photography, & WORD. A native Coloradoan, he lives in Denver. Tom's artwork, music, photography, & written word have been published in magazines & on the internet by various folk, including Howling Dog Press/Omega, Carpe Articulum Literary Review, Skyline Literary Review, The Storyteller, & Flashquake. He is winner of the Marija Cerjak Award for Avant-Garde/Experimental Writing & was nominated for the Pushcart Prize in 2006 & 2008.