Since you dropped by, I suppose introductions are in order.  At the risk of putting on airs, I'll tell you about myself in the third person.  Bear with me.

        Ray Auldmon is a first wave baby boomer born to a sailor from the Ozarks and a city girl from Chicago.  When he was two they moved back to the hill country where his father's family have lived since the Civil War.  Ray attended a one-room school and worked on the family farm as a child.  After high school he was a carpenter's "gofer" and a shoe factory pieceworker before entering the army at nineteen and going to Vietnam.  Unlike the true vets that he admires and respects, he never stood in harms way and returned to the "real world" better for the experience rather than worse.  The GI Bill made it possible for him to obtain a Masters degree in History.  His college career resulted in two remarkable things:  He discovered his life companion, and he drifted into public school teaching---a "temporary" occupation that lasted thirty-five years because it suited him.

        Auldmon has been writing for 40 years and "telling stories" for virtually his entire life.  (Note:  here in Hawthorn County "telling stories" or "storying" is a euphemism for fibbing or "telling a windy.")  His stories are set among the hill land and its people because they are what he knows.  Although these are fictional tales, they are not purely so.  Real people and actual events inspire them.  Of course the names have been changed and literary license taken for art, decency, and prudence sake.