Front Porches to the Picture Window

Follow Randy Mink in this autobiographical anthology as he takes readers through four different periods of his life. His tear-jerking book, "Front Porches to the Picture Window," features heartfelt stories written in his Hemingway style, writing the simplest and truest sentences he knows. Those tears of sorrow will change to tears of laughter with later humorous stories written in a style that has been compared to Lewis Grizzard.
Randy takes readers from his youth to his later years filled with darkness, depression, and suicidal thoughts as he pursues his dream of becoming a writer. He bears his soul for all to see during his misdiagnosis of Early Onset Alzheimer's and a massive heart attack, where he was clinically dead and visited heaven, only to be sent back to finish his work as a writer. He does all this through faith, persistence, and never giving up on his dream of writing; all while being the caregiver to his mother, who also has Alzheimer's. After his mother's death, he retired from his job of thirty-eight years to return to the front porches of his Appalachian roots to finish all the books he had been writing throughout his life, now as an old man himself.
Randy returns to the home of his youth set for demolition. As an old man, he gives words of wisdom to the young boy he once was, teaching him to never give up on his callings and gifts. As they stand together looking out the picture window where he stood years before, he finds the innocence of his youth again. This is a story of faith, hope, and love from which all readers can relate and draw encouragement for their own struggles and dreams.

Randy Mink is a southern writer with roots that run deep in the hills and hollers of Appalachia. He grew up listening to his dad, friends, and relatives sitting in the shade on front porches and under the sugar maple trees churning up stories from their lives in the mountains. Randy considered them all master storytellers and credits that experience for his love of storytelling and writing. After moving to Hardee County, Florida as a teenager, he won his first writing contest and studied creative writing and English at South Florida State College. He says he's been everything from an outlaw to a mayor and a jail minister. Most of his life, he was a miner who just wanted to become a writer. In June 2020, he retired after thirty-eight years of working in the phosphate mines of south-central Florida. He loaded up the hundreds of stories he'd written through the years, along with his two dogs and many rescue cats, and moved back to his Appalachian roots to finish his books.