The Gutbucket Quest

Piers Anthony · Ron Leming

Jul 2014 · Open Road Media

About this eBook

A blues musician is blasted into a parallel world in a novel that’s “a houserockin’ good time” cowritten by the New York Times–bestselling author (Booklist).

Slim’s a Texas bluesman of a certain age, down on his luck and just about broke—but hey, that’s what the blues are all about. He loves his music: “Not the popular blues, homogenized, synthesized, and zombilized; but the real down-home gut-bucket blues.” Then one day the music loves him back. In a single hot burst of lightning that comes straight up out of the ground, Slim finds himself in Tejas. It’s a little bit magic and a whole lot different, but the blues are the same. 

And the blues—manifest here in the form of a maple-necked, pearl-gray Fender Stratocaster with blue-chrome pickups, aka the Gutbucket—need him and need him bad. The Strat’s fallen into the hands of T-Bone Pickens and his Vipers, who want to suck up all its power and turn it to evil. Slim’s off and running on the Gutbucket Quest, with the help of his new mentor, rhythm guitarist Progress T. Hornsby, and a purely unstoppable blues singer named Nadine. 

Ratings and reviews

This story is never far from my thoughts when I'm playing a show.. a good player actually can feel the tendrils of "blues power" going out to his/her audience. When it happens, its amazing.

About the author

Piers Anthony has written dozens of bestselling science fiction and fantasy novels. Perhaps best known for his long-running Xanth series, many of which are New York Times bestsellers, he has also had great success with the Incarnations of Immortality series and the Cluster series, as well as Bio of a Space Tyrant and others. Much more information about Piers Anthony can be found at www.HiPiers.com.
Ron Leming is a writer, artist, musician, and bodybuilder. Gutbucket Quest is his first novel, and Anthony’s twenty-second collaboration.