William Stage is "Fool for Life"

Former RFT scribe William Stage is out with a new work of fiction titled Fool for Life.

The novel chronicles the life of a St. Louis process server and freelance writer in search of both love and the parents who put him up for adoption fifty years ago. In other words, this fictional tale very much parallels the real life of the author.

Stage calls it a memoir "embellished to the point of fiction."

So, what's real and what's make-believe in the book? It's hard to tell. It's my guess that beautiful women do not routinely take off their clothes when Stage arrives at their door to hand them a court summons. But I do believe his stories of being attacked and chased off by folks none too happy to have him serve them a subpoena.

In the end, it's Stage's stories of working as a process server that make for the most entertaining reads in Fool for Life. The author has delivered court papers for years and in 2001 even penned a field manual on the subject titled The Practical Guide to Process Serving.

In Fool for Life, Stage takes the reader along as he cruises St. Louis in his Subaru tracking down deadbeat dads, civil-suit defendants and assorted riffraff with the tenacity of a PI. And we, the reader, learn a few tricks-of-the-trade along the way -- like how to use one's shirt as toilet paper and how to tag a person with papers before they know what hit them.

It's Stage's sleuthing skills as a process server that ultimately help him find his biological mother in Michigan as well as the off-spring of his birth father. Growing up as an only child with his adoptive parent has Stage yearning to start a family of his own -- if only he can find the right woman.

Will Stage's character find the mate he seeks? I shan't tell. One thing is for certain, though. She better be a drinker. Stage's character in the book writes not for Riverfront Times (is that a snub?) but for the magazine Modern Drunkard and enjoys nothing more than a cocktail or two, or three, or four. Now that part of the book, I most certainly believe.  

Stage signs copies of the novel tonight at SqWires Restaurant in Lafayette Square from 5 to 7 p.m. Other signings include: Border's Books in Sunset Hills on Sunday from 1 to 3 p.m. and Friday, April 3, at the Creative Art Gallery at 3232 Ivanhoe Ave. from 6 to 8 p.m.

You can find Fool for Life at most area book stores as well as amazon.com.