Fred Afflerbach's first published work appeared in truckers' tabloids in the early 1980s. That's when he discovered the writing life was akin to transcontinental trucking. You drink buckets of coffee and sit for long periods alone with your imagination.
The duty and joy of fatherhood later supplanted the call of the open road and Fred shifted gears. Still an independent operator, his trucking radius was confined mostly to Texas. Yet Fred continued writing about the road. Studying journalism at Austin Community College, he sometimes drove his eighteen-wheeler to night classes. He graduated cum laude from Texas State University in 2007 and since has earned numerous Texas Associated Press awards for writing and reporting for Central Texas Newspapers.
Today he writes freelance from his home in Central Texas and is finishing his second novel, another interstate road trip.
Roll On celebrates the freedom of the open road. The reader rides shotgun in an aging yet durable Peterbilt diesel rig on an interstate odyssey with longtime independent truck driver, Ubi Sunt. Traversing the Painted Desert, the Black Hills of South Dakota, and through the nation's breadbasket into the gritty northeast, you will meet misfits, wayfarers and dreamers . In the literary tradition of escape and return, and journey to enlightenment, Ubi faces tough choices. The highway is home but the road is changing. And his only daughter offers an ultimatum: Settle down or else.
