John Herman
 John L. Herman Jr. is the author of "The Innkeeper Tales." He lives in Baltimore, Maryland with his wife, Maggie; the couple has five grown children. Herman has owned over twenty companies outright and has been involved in the sale of more than 300 companies all over America. As the owner of the Abacrombie Bed and Breakfast in the Cultural District of the city, Herman has hosted over ten thousand guests in the last four years, many of whom have much to tell. The award-winning restaurant and bed and breakfast have been written about in national magazines and local publications and were recently featured on the nationally syndicated cable show, Tasty Travels, hosted by Rachael Ray on the Food Network. |
The Innkeeper Tales: Modern-Day Canterbury Tales to Entertain, Enlighten & Empower
You can t make this stuff up. You hear this refrain many times throughout "The Innkeeper Tales." Loosely modeled on Chaucer s Canterbury Tales, this collection of stories is told by business travelers whiling away a very long day when they re stranded at The Abacrombie by an early spring Baltimore blizzard. With Herman (the real-life Abacrombie owner) keeping the food and conversation going, each traveler tells a story drawn from his own life. All the stories are true, coming directly out of actual conversations heard in the inn s breakfast room. Several of the men talk about how their career paths diverged quickly and completey from their original intent (and training). One man talks about his Air Force experience (motion-sick readers, beware!). The rebuilder confesses his uncontrollable urge to make shiny new things out of collapsing old things (including an eminently unseaworthy wooden yacht). Tony, the car guy, is moved to talk about his many beauties and clunkers, some of them homemade almost from scratch. A collector of rare books explains how he got hooked, inspiring another man to tell the tale of becoming addicted to his wife s auction scavenging and old-furniture renovating. But at the heart of the Tales is another kind of renovating: the rebuilding of lives, the refurbishing of the teller s sense of self. Some of the tales are dark. Mike reveals (for the first time) the sexual abuse he suffered as a child. In Danny s Tale, you get a how-to guide for wrecking a business by growing it too fast. But then, in Randy s Tale, you get a long, glorious, hilarious account of amazing successes scarfed out of business failures through intelligence, shrewdness, gut-busting hard work, and, perhaps most of all, a sense of humor. Like the listeners sprawled in the inn s breakfast room, the reader of "The Innkeeper Tales" will have a rich learning and laughing experience. And a big surprise at the end.
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