Greetings!

Absent from action since Rubbed Out came out in 2014, Wads is back.

It’s now 2016.

Wads’ friend, Garnett Fishbine, a small pork producer, is arrested for the murder of the manager of a nearby corporate hog farm.

While Garnett had reason to kill the man—the factory farm and the meat packing company that may have financed it had forced him to near bankruptcy—Wads believes the killer has to be someone else.

Proving it requires him to take on Big Agriculture and corrupt local and county officials, all while getting his Kwik Trip store ready for the grandest open house you’ve ever seen.

Here comes Bucky Badger, Mister Peanut, the University of Wisconsin Marching Band, and the Klements racing sausages!

Most who have read this story summary on the back cover of Killing Ham, when they finish that last paragraph, they say, “Oh, gosh, this is a hoot. I’ve gotta buy this book.” And they do.

You can, too. It’s now up on Amazon, both as a real book and as an ebook.

For your reading pleasure

Right now and right here, here’s a John Wads short I found when I was updating Hyper Fiction, 50 stories for people in a hurry - Book 1 last week.

Extreme Pizza

“THE CHALLENGE, should you choose to accept it, is to create an extreme pizza. Signed: The Great Jimmytown Pizza Bake-off Committee.”

Barb Larson put on her most lascivious of smiles as she slid the card in front of John Wads. “You up for it, partner?”

As he read the card, he massaged the furrow between his eyebrows. “If I were to do this with you,” he said, “there’s gonna be a proviso.”

“And what would that be?”

“It’s got to be a deep dish pizza. That’s the only way we can heap on the toppings and blow out the competition.”

________

SIX TEAMS of pizza chefs pushed their preparation carts into the high school gym on the appointed day to find that TV cameras and overhead screens had been set up for the audience, so they could see every detail that went into making an extreme pizza.

Larson and Wads, in their Team Library shirts and chef’s hats, rolled out their pizza dough, Wads making a show of twirling and tossing the dough, ending with a missed behind-the-back catch. The dough flopped on the floor.

He picked it up and brushed it off.

She, though, shot him the evil eye and thrust a finger at a nearby waste can.

While Wads got rid of the less-than-clean-dough, she rolled out a new circle of dough. Again Wads went into his routine of twirling and tossing it.

This time he made the catch behind his back.

Wads patted the dough into a deep dish pan, and Larson came alongside him, flute-edging the dough. Wads next slathered on the tomato sauce and dusted it with his special mix of Italian seasonings.

“Toppings,” he said, with a jerk of his head toward the assortment Larson had set out. In layers, he piled on Gorgonzola cheese, diced tomatoes, black olives and green olives, Asiago cheese, a pound of taco-seasoned browned hamburger, rings of pineapple, anchovies, shredded seven-year-old sharp cheddar cheese, banana peppers, Vidalia onions, diced salt-cured Italian ham, fire-roasted rosemary potatoes, and pepperoni, all topped off with shredded smoked mozzarella.

Wads brought out his Stanley steel tape. He made a show of measuring the height of the product—three and a quarter inches.

To that, Larson gave him a thumbs-up.

She and Wads followed the other competitors, carting their creations to the bank of pizza ovens.

When the pizzas came out, Larson and Wads went back to work, Wads laying on two lips made from bananas sliced lengthwise and Larson, eyes and eyebrows—Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups for the eyes and coconut curls died green for the brushy eyebrows.

Together, the chefs then created a mop of hair with licorice whips. For their finale, Wads jabbed a habenaro pepper in the center of the pizza for a nose, and Larson placed a witch’s hat to the side and set a mini-broom across the bottom of the pizza.

She gazed at it. “Come Halloween, Wads, what say we make one again? We serve it at the bar with free beer? Of course, everyone will have to come wearing an extreme costume. You and me, we could be Annie Wilkes and Freddy Krueger. And you could slash the pizza—I mean slice the pizza—with your fingernails.”

Until next time, keep reading.

Jerry & the Sheriff