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Josh Deere

Goodreads Author

Born

The United States

Website

https://www.purgatoriumnovel.com/

Genre

Paranormal, Romance, Thriller

Member Since

November 2019

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I am an author, attorney, consultant and speaker. I live in Colorado Springs with my wife, three sons, and two dogs. We are lucky enough to live at the foot of the Rocky Mountains, where we love to fish, hike, camp, and sneak around haunted hotels in Estes Park.

A college friend once told me that I had the "tongue of the Welsh", which he said was a term from a Louis L'Amour novel describing someone with a gift for storytelling. Or maybe that was just his polite way of saying I was full of ... well, you know. But I did grow up in Oklahoma--a place where people are no stranger to a good story. Okies, and people from that part of the country, tend to spend a lot of time sitting with friends and family and enjoying each other's company, whether I am an author, attorney, consultant and speaker. I live in Colorado Springs with my wife, three sons, and two dogs. We are lucky enough to live at the foot of the Rocky Mountains, where we love to fish, hike, camp, and sneak around haunted hotels in Estes Park.

A college friend once told me that I had the "tongue of the Welsh", which he said was a term from a Louis L'Amour novel describing someone with a gift for storytelling. Or maybe that was just his polite way of saying I was full of ... well, you know. But I did grow up in Oklahoma--a place where people are no stranger to a good story. Okies, and people from that part of the country, tend to spend a lot of time sitting with friends and family and enjoying each other's company, whether it be on lawn chairs by a lake, around a campfire, or on a lazy summer day on the front porch. These tendencies generally call for cold beverages and great storytelling.

I remember my grandpa telling stories on his front porch glide-rocker about growing up the son of Lithuanian immigrants who snuck over the Atlantic as stowaways in a barge. He spoke of working dawn-to-dusk shifts at the coal mine, playing professional, depression-era cornfield baseball, and having a pet bobcat that greeted customers in his old general store.

I've heard countless stories of my own father growing up dirt poor as the son of a whiskey-bent, hell-raising West Texas outlaw, and then escaping that life by stumbling upon a scholarship to play football at the University of Oklahoma. He went on to play quarterback opposite Alabama and Joe Namath in the Orange Bowl, and later piloted T-38s and C-130s in the Air Force.

And even now, when I am lucky enough to get together with my old Okie buddies back home, we pick up right where we left off 25 years ago, swapping old tales that generally have us laughing ourselves right off our chairs.

History has seen the rise and prosperity of many great societies, only to witness them eventually crumble into the past. Their greatness has endured, however, through their stories. Think about it: Assyria, Rome, the Chinese dynasties, even societies we aren't even sure really existed like Atlantis and El Dorado, continue to pass on the epic stories of their rise, reign, redemption--or the lack thereof--and eventual fall, down through the ages through the enduring power of storytelling. Even the Bible teaches its profound and holy truths not through monotonous lists of edicts and doctrines, but through story.

Like Sophie told Alie while sitting on a bench in Geneva in PURGATORIUM, "Your past is just your past until you share it, and then it becomes your story. And every story is a masterpiece when told to the right listener."

I believe in the power of story. I believe that we all have stories of our own, whether they be truth, fiction, or something in between. And I believe those stories should be told. After all, they may be the only indication that we were ever here, long, long after we are gone. ...more