Make It Right: A Novella and Eight Stories

"Secrets involving death and shame have a way of rising up in your throat, and for a moment I felt like I might throw up. I fought it, though, and began to feel better when I saw the round barn looming on my right, growing larger as we approached. ... The way it tugged at me felt even stronger than before, and I knew the time would sooner or later come when me and Shane would go inside." - from Make It Right, the novella by Ron Yates. The characters in these stories are defined by bad choices that reverberate, resulting in multigenerational damage. Realistic landscapes are strewn with wreckage. Each story - through people, places, and conflicts we recognize - asks, how can this mess be fixed? Readers will want to dig for answers, and those who look for rays of hope will find them. They are the ones who can eventually Make It Right.

About the Author :
RON YATES has been learning to write for most of his life. He whipped out good essays in high school, but his adolescent energies were largely devoted to tinkering with old cars, drag racing, drinking beer, and trying to stay out of trouble. Although encouraged by his English teachers to pursue higher education, Yates, after graduating high school in lackluster fashion, spent time languishing in factory jobs. An aching back and a caring girlfriend prompted him to explore other options. His enduring love of reading and nascent knack for writing guided him to a degree in English and a career teaching high school. Years later he earned an MFA in creative writing from Queens University of Charlotte. Yates, who lives near Mt. Cheaha on the shore of beautiful Lake Wedowee, has published stories in a variety of journals including Hemingway Shorts, KYSO Flash, Still: the Journal, The Oddville Press, and Prime Number Magazine. He has a son and daughter and is married to his sweetheart, Carol Yates. Ron Yates writes about writing and other subjects at ronyates.net.

Review :
Advance reviewers have had good things to say about Make It Right: "Yates' characters are great because they are -- most of them -- very typical Southern blue-collar folk who are fully realized enough to resist being typecast. Some of the stories, "Inertia," "I Sank the Mandolin," and "Barbecue" come to mind, turned my thoughts immediately to their kinship with Denis Johnson's writing. There's something about the dark, slightly unhinged quality of the characters, the gritty and visceral writing, that speaks to the connection. If a slightly less drug-addled Johnson character lived in rural Alabama, he'd be here in these pages." --Jessica Upshaw Glass, from her blog, Discursus "I loved the book, how deeply imagined the stories are. What's unique about it is how innocent the central characters are, even those who've seen a bit of the world, and how heartbreaking their situations and actions. I like, too, how Deliverance and "Dueling Banjos" serve as a motif throughout the book" --Dan Mueller, author of How Animals Mate and Nights I Dreamed of Hubert Humphrey "Each story is filled with flawed characters, choices both made and unmade, with consequences that inevitably reveal some of our darkest human truths. The writing is direct and deceivingly simple, and yet the world Yates creates here is tragic, beautiful and so heart-breakingly real." --Heather Labay, Goodreads review "This novella and collection of short stories are set in the Deep South. Not all in the same small town, but the feeling of balmy summers, checkered pasts, and small-town familiarity permeates each piece. There is a running theme in each story of unfinished business, wrongs that haven't been reckoned, a looming comeuppance. Each story is told simply with characters that immediately spark curiosity and sympathy, each one working through past mistakes and missed opportunities. ... There is a darkness and a depth to each story and a few of them made me shudder with secondhand dread. It was a deeply affecting read, I highly recommend it." --Mollie McFarland, Goodreads review