Easy Money & Other Stories

Welcome to the borderland where the outskirts of New York City overlap with the Long Island suburbs. Meet Tiny the giant, Muscles, Scooter, Potatoes, Babydoll, and Thunder - formerly known as Big Fat Hoss, the Jersey Strangler. In these darkly funny tales, men and women face the consequences of their terrible decisions. People living close to the edge of ruin wander even closer and wind up face-to-face with criminals. When an unemployed, alcoholic carpenter picks up an old acquaintance in a local dive bar, she leads him into a world of trouble he never imagined he'd find. A teenager gets his eighty-two-year-old grandfather high then looks on dumbfounded as the old man becomes a diehard stoner, dealer, and drug mule. Two over-worked young women take an extended smoke break from a job they can't imagine getting any worse. It gets worse, much worse. A small-time mobster who can't keep his mouth shut gets it shut for him once and for all. Absurd, grotesque, raunchy, vulgar, and violent, these stories are also often hilarious and oddly touching. Steve Potter drove a plumbing supply delivery van around New York City and Long Island by day and attended classes at Queens College by night. His stories, which have been published in indie lit mags such as Midnight Mind, Pindeldyboz, Thieves Jargon, and The Raven Chronicles, reflect that dichotomy, inspired as much by the workaday life he's led as they are by the books he's read. He writes about literature at bookfreak.us.