As You Were
Page 21
It turns out it might kill you, too.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
THE FIRST THING I I have to acknowledge is that this collection is the severely abridged, Cliffs Notes version of events, or as my big sister said, “Bubba, you are barely scratching the surface of what they did to you.”
Excerpts from As You Were appeared in Mystery Tribune; RED INK: International Journal of Indigenous Literature, Arts, & Humanities; The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature; Yellow Medicine Review; Open: Journal of Arts & Letters; Watershed Review; FIVE:2:ONE Magazine; and BULL: Men’s Magazine. I want to thank each of the readers and editors for letting it be so.
I am eternally grateful for the guidance I received from Stephen Graham Jones while writing As You Were. I hope the lessons learned echo throughout whatever I commit to paper in the future.
I’d especially like to thank Michelle Dotter for pulling this manuscript from the slush pile and polishing it into what it is today.
I owe my sister, Debbie, an enormous amount of gratitude for helping me slog through memories that she tried so hard to forget for so many years.
And my father, for without you, this book would not exist. I might have even become a well-adjusted member of society. But what fun would that be?
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
DAVID TROMBLAY served in the US Armed Forces for over a decade before attending the Institute of American Indian Arts for his MFA in Creative Writing. His essays and short stories have appeared in Pank Magazine; Michigan Quarterly Review; RED INK: International Journal of Indigenous Literature, Arts, & Humanities; The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature; Yellow Medicine Review; Open: Journal of Arts & Letters; Watershed Review; FIVE:2:ONE Magazine; and BULL: Men’s Magazine. He lives in Oklahoma with his dogs, Bentley and Hank.