Pixels of Young Mueller

Pixels of Young Mueller cover

Released 7/11/10 | Amazon

Klaus Mueller dreams of leaving tiny Southland someday to be a rock star. When he chooses stardom over college, however, he learns that his education is just beginning. He endures a series of odd jobs while his music is repeatedly rejected, and he wonders how he will ever achieve success. After moving to the city, where he finds a career and becomes a father, he is torn between the great happiness he has found and the success he still craves. Klaus must reconcile his dreams with reality or spend the rest of his life lamenting what might have been.

Pixels of Young Mueller is the story of an artist’s growth to maturity and of his revolt against his family’s values. The tale of Klaus Mueller, as told in this modern coming-of-age novel, provides new perspectives on classic themes when Klaus confronts the forces that threaten his existence.

Excerpt: Pixels of Young Mueller

ONE

Of Klaus Mueller’s early years during that time known as the Space Age, including his first inclinations toward music and literature and other notable incidents

Klaus dug books. These ones were different colors, but all the same size, and man it was neat-o how you could line them up like a rainbow and they smelled great. On the front of one was a fisherboy, and inside were rhymes that looked different than the writing in other books:

A dillar, a dollar,
A ten o’clock scholar,
What makes you come so soon?
You used to come at ten o’clock,
But now you come at noon.

There were ten numbers, but you couldn’t sing them like letters or make words with them. His mother sang letters to him and taught him to read Dick and Jane, but that was up north. Now they lived on Third Street in Kaintuck, and she had to go to work. He liked her better before she worked in the factory.

The jumblies he loved, who went to sea in a sieve. Cows jumped over the moon to Banbury Cross and Jill went up the hill and some liked it hot nine days old. Jack built a house with rats and cats and old Grundy lived and died in a week:

Solomon Grundy,
Born on Monday,
Christened on Tuesday,
Married on Wednesday,
Took ill on Thursday,
Worse on Friday,
Died on Saturday,
Buried on Sunday
This is the end of
Solomon Grundy.

They lived with Freda’s family, the Stadtchens, who lived on Third Street in a small white house made smaller by the addition of the four Muellers. The house had only two bedrooms, and one of those was a wide hallway that led from the kitchen to the tiny bathroom in back. Julia’s and Mickey’s beds were on opposite hall walls. They were in high school. In the kitchen stood the table where they ate and a wringer washer that squished all the water out of their clothes. One day, Paulette’s hair got caught in there. Maytag. His birthday was in May…