Someone Left the Cake Out in the Rain: Stories of Innocence Lost

"In his debut fiction collection, Zachary stretches his imagination and pulls off a literary adventure about lives that are by turns messy and heartbreaking and glorious. Taking the reader to different corners of the world, Zachary's stories are infused with a journalist's eye for detail and a storyteller's knack for invention."
- Katie Hafner, author of The Boys, a Novel
"Zachary weaves one penetrating tale after another in this delicious sprawl of a collection. He will introduce you with tenderness and good humor to a truck thief and an elephant hunter, a kidnapper named Goodnews and a hapless canoe racer, a hopeful Little Leaguer and a girl visiting her father in prison, while taking you to such far-flung locales as upstate New York, Nigeria, South Florida and Kosovo. You can trust Zachary for a scintillating ride."
- Bryan Gruley, author of the Starvation Lake trilogy and Bitterfrost
"Zachary has put together a terrific collection circling and engaging worlds of hope, love, angst, turmoil and the complexity and marvel of being human." -- Ken Wells, author of Meely LaBauve and Swamped!

Someone Left the Cake Out in the Rain presents 24 stories about well-intended, hopeful and flawed people who search the world for meaning and fulfillment. The first three stories, and "The Mike and Rozzie Show," are set in the state of New York, where the author played Little League as a boy ("The Tryout"), attended canoe race near the University at Albany ("Tenandeho") and then majored in philosophy ("Schopenhauer's Defeat"). At 23, having left New York for San Francisco, he wrote "Her First Job," after interviewing female prison inmates. His years as a pre-school teacher gave rose to "Goats," a boy-adventure story is set in Washington's Olympic peninsula, an area hat also gave rise to his agro-parody "The Caldwell Farm." In Florida, the author planted tomatoes for day wages, leading to "Immokalee," a tale of a mysterious farm worker on the make. "The Pleasures of Pain" arose from the author's anxieties over his fragile physique. The "Esquire" parody explores the novel uses of those thick magazines common in pre-Web times. Zachary's "Silicon Valley Story," "Out of Print" and "Carrie Wore a White Bikini," dramatize the ways journalists test their messy alliances with their sources following the disappearance of a tech tycoon; tales he imagined while writing for the San Jose Mercury News. "From Chisinau with Love" and "Leaving Kosovo" - set in Eastern Europe -- are drawn from visits made while the author reported for The Wall Street Journal. The seven African stories owe their origins to his many visits to the region. "The Elephant Man" is loosely based on an animal tracker he met in Cameroon. "Good News from Nigeria" came to him after his Nigerian brother-in-law was kidnapped. "The Minister of Health is Acting," "Ama," "The Harmattan," and "A Tro-Tro After Dark" were informed by the author's extensive research into working conditions for nurses in Ghana and the tensions around the retirement of Ghana's president, and former dictator, Jerry Rawlings. The title story, "Someone Left the Cake Out in the Rain," about two young lovers living near Phoenix, revealed itself to the author while he taught at ASU.
For readers who have enjoyed Zachary's nonfiction books and articles, his collected fiction is a welcome treat. "Always, Zachary's work is a pleasure to read," writes Alan Deutschman, author of "The Second Coming of Steve Jobs." Says writer and director Ellen Moore, "These stories have staying power."
G. Pascal Zachary is the author of six other books, including Showstopper, about the creation of a software program by Microsoft, Endless Frontier, a biography of Vannevar Bush, and his memoir, Married to Africa: a love story. Someone Left the Cake Out in the Rain is his first collection of fiction.