Amazon recently informed my publisher Avventura Press we can’t get copies of my latest book Up Shit Creek: Confessions of the Crushers Motorcycle Club and Other Stories delivered until after Oct. 3.

Screw Amazon billionaire boss Jeff Bezos and the space ship he rode in on.

So we had to cancel our Saturday, Oct. 3 book launch at Buddy Boy Winery in the Cove in Perry County where the stories in the book are set.

Maybe we can reschedule a shindig before snow buries the Cove. Even in a blizzard I know William and Coreena Warner will dig out. We will, too. Stephanie and I were very much looking forward to launching our book at the Warner’s backwoods hillbilly heaven and hope to do just that in the future.

To say the least, members of the Crushers Motorcycle Club are not happy.

“Shit happens,” said Hairball with a shrug.

Yeah, it sure does.

“Shit happens” is one of the book’s themes snaking its way through the stories like a mean Cove copperhead that accidently got peed on during an outlaw biker beer bash in the mountains.

So I bought the Crushers half-a-keg of Pabst and called on the spirit of my late Cove friend and Pagan’s Motorcycle Club Appalachian Chapter president Sonny Drake who plays as meaningful a role in the book as we did to each other growing up together as Cove next-door neighbors.

When I asked Sonny if he would lay down the law to the Duncannon, Pennsylvania brothers he contacted Crushers president Sarge and made it clear that up shit creek or not we still got our paddles.

For now we hold our oars steady.

We row always into the storm.

“Got it?” Sonny asked Sarge.

“Got it,” Sarge said.

As I anxiously await a new date for the launch party I sit with my madman thoughts and crank up the Red Album, Grand Funk’s 1969 release that helped provide a soundtrack for Sonny and me laughing our way through our untamed youth racing through Perry County in his gray muscle car GTO taking no shit whenever and wherever the shit storm hit.

Yeah, I know, shit happens.

Deal with it.