The Story Behind The Stories: Part 1

"Aunt Vivien's Wedding" was the first story our late friend Dan Carter sent to Bob.

It was 1992. Both of us were going through major life transitions. After years in the corporate world, Bob was starting his practice as an independent market research consultant. Looking back, we realize he was pioneering the work-from-home movement. Kicking around names for his practice, we privately referred to it as "Underpants Research" as he was definitely dressing the part!

Lucy was eight months pregnant with her son and recently separated from his father.  Not exactly a happy camper. But it was a tremendous help to have her wonderful friend Bob there as support. 

We were living in Austin, TX. Dan was living temporarily in Pacifica, south of San Francisco.  While affordable, in those days the area wasn't considered to be the most desirable. Dan promptly dubbed it "Tulsa by the Sea." 

People with email accounts were rare at the time. Dan wrote his letters and stories on his computer, printed them, and mailed them to us almost weekly. He was an extremely prolific writer. One of his writing teachers quite rightly observed: "Some writers struggle for ideas. Dan has a circus in his head." 

When we'd get one of Dan's stories, it was the highlight of our week, especially the ones about the boy Jesse, loosely based on his own life growing up in northern Louisiana in the 1950's and 60's. 

Over time, as the stories piled up, a thread to the Jesse stories emerged. They held together much like a novel, covering the entire arc of Jesse's time living with Granny Walker, where he was surrounded by an astonishing assortment of aunts, relatives, and local persons of interest. 

The characters he painted in his stories became so real to us, that when he died in 1997, we half expected sympathy calls from the people we'd come to know and love through his writing.

In phone calls and letters, Dan never failed to regale us with witticisms and anecdotes. We'll share some of those memories along the way as we share his stories that we love so much. 

In the meantime, we'll continue the story collection with the circumstances around which young Jesse's life changes dramatically, when there was "A Divorce In The Family."

We hope you enjoy them as much as we have.

With love, tears, and laughter, 
Bob Mueller & Lucy Frost