Character David Earl is a college educated good ole boy, andthroughout Mike Windham’s book, “David Earl’s ABCs,” he shares aninteresting view of the world.

On Friday, Windham will introduce David Earl and wife Becky Bethto Brookhaven when he will hold a book signing at the LincolnCounty Public Library from 3 to 6 p.m.

“He’s not a Jeff Foxworthy redneck, he’s just a good ole boy wholearned a long time that it’s better to ask forgiveness than begfor permission,” Windham said.

The book details 50 stories of David Earl’s adventures of livingin the South, with such rollicking fun as buying a strip club,ruining the job interview of a policeman who had written him aticket, and searching for a solution on what to do with a highschool friend’s ashes.

Windham said the stories began to take shape in his head when henoticed an E-magazine called “Deep South USA.”

“I said, ‘I’m going to see if I can’t write some Southernhumor-type stories, and the first one is going to be how to buy astrip club,'” Windham said.

And he drew his ideas from everyday circumstances. The stripclub story came from a conversation he had with an insurance agentthat insures a gentlemen’s club.

“I got to talking to the insurance agent about the business endof it – that’s a pun – and how the business operates other than thedancing girls,” he said. “How do you walk into a bank and say, ‘Ineed to borrow $250,000 to buy a strip joint?'”

Windham said his book, about half of which he had finished, wasinitially set to publish in June of 2010, but some complicationswith another book that was supposed to print in the summer of 2009pushed the publish date up.

“I went home from that meeting thinking I had a year to come upwith 25 more of these stories,” he said.

So the former journalist buckled down and met the earlierdeadline. The rest, as they say, is history.

“I learned a long time ago to take a pen and paper with you, andI’ve kept journals all my adult life to write and capture myreflections and my faults,” Windham said. “These are based onthings that I know about or watched happen or just thoughtabout.”

And Windham wrote it so the stories would be fun for the wholefamily, and safe for them to read.

“It’s good clean humor,” he said. “You could read it to anybody,and there is some truth in just about every one of the stories.People reading it will say, ‘Hey, I know a guy like that,’ or ‘Ithink I know this guy!'”

So Friday’s book signing will be the beginning of a litmus testfor Windham, he said.

“We’re fixing to find out if the stories are as funny as I thinkthey are,” he said. “In a nutshell that’s it.”