This book is available in digital format at Amazon.com for 99 cents.
Inspired by friends who have self-published successfully, I gathered what I considered to be similarly themed stories, including one that I workshopped at the Casa Marina writers group here in Key West, and jumped in. The cover background is an abstract painting I created last winter.
The good news is that I get to control the entire process. The bad news is that I have to control the entire process. Although this book will get no publicity, it would not have gotten much from a traditional publisher either. This book will be released in two formats. Available on Kindle as well as in hard copy. If you do not have a Kindle, you are really missing out. For instant gratification, you don’t have to buy the device, you can download the app. Just key in “download Kindle” in your browser and voila!
I used to read Alice Munro, actually I still read Alice Munro but also Megan Abbott and Vicki Hendricks – modern literary crime queens.
Why the fascination with crime stories? What’s up with reading all the horrible things people do to other people?
First of all, I never read or write gore. Aside from being icky, it is ultimately boring. But I also must admit that although I love transcendent stories that encourage and inspire, I never quite buy them completely. Proof of this is that I live in Florida and have never been to Disneyland. How many people can say that? I will admit that I am troubled by a deep suspicion that I would actually really love Disneyland for all the same reasons everyone else does – nonetheless I suspect that while Cinderella may be holding hold one of your hands, the other one is covering your eyes or at least picking your pocket. That makes me a skeptic. But that’s good, I used to be a cynic so things are looking up but shoot me if I become an optimist. That would be the end of me having anything meaningful to say, but friends tell me not to worry – at least about the optimist part.
I am fascinated by characters who move toward crises step by step, seemingly unable to avoid traps set largely by themselves, especially if they are otherwise intelligent. What I enjoy most is deciphering odd lines of logic, mental pathways that dictate action and weird assumptions about life that dictate limits.
And passions that threaten the instinct for survival are always the best – as if somewhere the tenuous safety rope has frayed. Were they always like that? What separates one sociopath from another and can they change. How is their sociopathy revealed and who gets caught up in their web? Do you ever really know anyone?
A pivotal moment for me was reading The Dillinger Days – when I was about 12 or 13 years old. It was a hardcover book that eventually fell apart, the spine broken, pages smudged and brittle from use. I wanted to understand how they veered from the normal. What happened? Was it their own doing? Did it come from the outside world or reside within?
Another really important formative book was “In Cold Blood” that mysterious tome that may come closest to answering the why of it all.
So here are four short stories, my foray into the weird world of mostly ordinary people caught up in their own particular destructive lines of logic and imagination.
I hope you read them, and if you do, I hope you like them.
I bought this book and read it. The four stories are all very different from one another, each one compelling in its own way, yet you can tell they were written by the same author. Jessica’s done herself proud with this original take on crime fiction.