It gives me great pleasure to announce the release of We Lived It and Laughed – Tales of Chuluota, Florida by Mark Perrin. This book of personal essays recounts life in the seventies while growing up in rural Florida.

I ran into Mark about six weeks ago while I was sitting at a book booth in Tallahassee trying to sell books. He had a notebook with him, and he wanted to ask some questions about publishing. He said he had some true stories from his youth he wanted to publish. I mentioned that I was an editor as well as an author, and further, I could help him take his manuscript from Word to a published book.

And here we are a few weeks laters with those essays now published in a lovely book of humorous tales from a time and place very far removed from where most of us are today. I laughed out loud while working on the essays because I knew these people! I grew up at the same time 1,000 miles away in Michigan. But I lived in a small town where teenagers had to find their own fun or suffocate on boredom.

Congratulations to Mark and his perseverance and hard work to turn his stories into a wonderful chronicle of a time fast fading from memories and wholly unknown to the youth of today who fight boredom with electronics!

Here’s a little bit about the book:

Mark Perrin recounts the humorous parts of growing up in a small rural town in central Florida in

Mark Perrin recounts the humorous parts of growing up in a small rural town in central Florida in We Lived It and Laughed. Boredom, dysfunctional families, and testosterone equal tales bigger than life.

The characters who populate the stories rise to mythical stature created by a storyteller who recounts some true tall tales from decades ago. Through it all, the author’s dry sense of irony, comedic overtones, and casual style paint a portrait of young men who found a way to survive the perils of adolescence without much supervision.

Instead of resorting to violence or crime, and relying mostly on humor, the boys of Chuluota form their own tribe and find a way to make something out of nothing. All the while, they raise themselves and learn together how to survive by using ingenuity born of boredom.

This collection of reminiscences will transport you back to a time before technology, cell phones, and iPads. Lazy summer days spent devising ways to defeat the boredom of poverty and abandonment from their parents remind us all that humor and ingenuity can create heroes.

From row boat ski tows to brick wallpaper to dead sharks, We Lived It and Laughed entertains with humor and enlightens with honesty.

About Mark Perrin – Mark Perrin grew up in the small town of Chuluota in central Florida. He lived there from 1962 to 1985 and remained in that area for a few more years before moving to Wakulla County, Florida, near Crawfordville, in January 1988. The love of nature and history has been a constant in his life, and the area where he now lives is rich in both.

As a lover of history, he joined the local historical society shortly after moving to Wakulla County where he’s been on the board of directors for many years. The thought of preserving a piece of history was one of the factors that led to the writing and recording of these stories for We Lived It and Laughed.

Mark Perrin operates a small home improvement business. The flexibility of this occupation allows him to pursue the hobbies he enjoys, such as hiking in the surrounding nature, fishing in local waters, searching for old bottles, and using a metal detector in his rural environment.

Click here to purchase We Lived and Laughed