Off-Worlding (Paperback)

Alex Dandridge is a man down on his luck. But things start to look up, literally, when he spots that lime green spaceship.

Its inhabitants, Hathiant and Grumm, invite him on board for an intergalactic adventure. How could he say no?

During his time off-worlding, Alex meets bizarre aliens, battles a crazed warlord, and even finds his own kind far from home. Facing terrible truths along the way, he discovers a greater purpose and uncovers a long-buried secret.

Born on the faraway planet of Lansing, Michigan, Randy D. Pearson always suspected he was different from other Earthlings. His mind housed such bizarre ideas, strange notions that often kept him from sleeping. Stuff like - what if he won an arcade game and had to drive to California to get it? How weird would it be to see two dudes pumping a hand car down the tracks? Did that potato chip just go rogue?

He found the only way to quiet those voices was to commit them to paper. It began with The Weirdos, a poorly drawn comic strip starring Hick and Bunyan. It wasn't great, but he was ten years old, so it's all good.

Randy then turned to short stories, any word count, any prompt, any whacked out idea. He won a bunch of writing contests, which kept him motivated.

As it turned out, the humans enjoyed reading them, so he kept at it. He's probably written 100 stories by now. Some even decent. The best ones were published in various anthologies including Small Towns: A Map in Words, The Washington Square Review, Pets Across America: Volume 3, Promptly Speaking, and Monster Hunter Intern.

In 2010, he finally overcame his Writer's A.D.D. and put his first full-length novel, Driving Crazy, into the world. People liked that too. In fact, one dude bought the rights to make it into a movie. Pretty neat, huh?

Then he created his own short story collection, Tell Me A Story. He wrote it for his dear wife Wendy because she asked him to. Other folks read it, said nice things about it. He smiled.

After that, he purged his mind of a two-decade old story called Trac Brothers.  The humans rejoiced so much that he wrote Trac Brothers II.

With that out of the way, he tackled Off-Worlding, an idea that had been bouncing around his noodle since 1992. No foolin'. He has a 5 ¼" floppy disk from his Atari computer that contains the humble beginnings of the story.

If you want to learn more about this strange little human, he has a website, though he's not at liberty to divulge it.