Medium Hero: And Other Stories

Inside this book are stories about insects, piano teachers, talking birds, dead birds, ex-convicts, suicide attempts, tarot cards, and bible verses. Some of the stories happened to Korby and some of them he just made up. It doesn’t really matter which are which.

Up to this point in his life, he has been a professional singer-songwriter, traveling around by himself, playing songs for small audiences, selling CDs out of a suitcase. Occasionally there have been moments where the light shined particularly bright, but mostly it’s just been him and a guitar, making music in living rooms and clubs and the occasional concert hall.

He has met a lot of people, most of whom leaned—like him—toward the fringe side of the social spectrum. He’s written some of them into stories—hunched over a laptop in the backseat of a touring van, or in the lobby of a Best Western, or on the cracked vinyl couch of a rock club’s green room, poking a keyboard with a pair of sweaty pointer fingers.

He loved his dad’s stories. And then when he was seven, the Ramona Quimby books, and then he loved the Great Brain books, and then the Roald Dahl books. Most of his best friends have been characters from books he’s read. He’s been lucky to have the opportunity to read, and he feels like he should pay into the fund that made him rich. He’s always been drawn to fiction because it tells you the truth you need to know. And the truth he needs to know is that, despite considerable advances in science and industry, the world is still a big fat piece of magic.