Shards

About the Book

Shards are splinters of colorful glass sprinkled in random patterns. Some are sharp. Others reflect the brilliance of our thoughts. Each piece has the power to entertain, bemuse or surprise. While diverse and seemingly unrelated, here they become an artful collection and storytelling.

About the Author

Ray Paul was born in St. Louis, Missouri on February 25, 1936, and has been a resident of Rockford, Illinois since he was four. He went through the Rockford public school system and attended the University of Wisconsin where he majored in insurance and finance before graduating with a Business Administration Degree.

Immediately following graduation in 1958, he passed up an opportunity to play minor league baseball in the Dodger farm system choosing instead to marry his college sweetheart and begin a career with Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Company. Fifty years later, he is still smitten with Jo Marie and proud of his ongoing relationship with Mass Mutual.

Ray’s writing career had its genesis in college, where he eschewed his business electives for creative writing classes. Though this period primed his heart for creative writing, fighting for a toehold in the financial services industry and being a good father to three daughters precluded any serious involvement. His hiatus from fiction writing lasted almost forty years.

Twelve years ago Ray finally reached a comfortable stage where the demands on his time and energy were diminished. Their older daughters had moved away and started families of their own, and he and Jo Marie had weathered the crisis of losing their youngest daughter to meningitis. With his golf scores soaring and time on his hands, he needed a new challenge. Two college writing classes and a couple of workshops later, he had found a new avocation. With the first click of the keyboard, he began writing himself toward retirement.

In the past eight years, Ray has written Cabbage Requiem, a sequel novel, Between the Rows and now a collection of his better short stories. Twenty-two of his short fiction pieces have been published in a variety of literary and commercial magazines such as Potpouuri, AIM Magazine, and The Acorn. He is currently working on a third novel. In addition, Ray teaches creative writing courses for seniors at Rock Valley College.