I attended the Killer Nashville conference this past weekend. It’s generally for thriller writers and there were a lot of good panels on the craft. There were also a lot of panels on self publishing. Why one does it, what the work consists of and what are the opportunities.

I am more excited than ever for my decision. It’s not easy and I’m going through some tough lessons on working with outside vendors right now. That said, the opportunity is tremendous if you do the work and can find your audience. Speaking with successful self publishers who have put in the work and are willing to share their experiences was a charge to my system

I’m writing to tell stories that excite me and I hope will excite readers. I’m publishing to run my own business. These are exciting days. Reminds me of when I took my first leadership position in median. A lot to learn and many ways to be better.

I hope to have First Kills to early ARC readers in September and to all readers in October. I’ll keep you in the loop. Reach out if you want to know more.

I have seen the others.  I have seen the others and I do not like them.  I do not like them because I know what they want.  They want to be in this world.  This world is my world.  It is for me.  This world is Pixel’s World.  And I am Pixel.  

I enjoy sitting in many different places in my world.  I will often sit at one of those places and look at the other world.  Pixel’s Mother calls it the outside, but she doesn’t know everything I do.  There is no reason for her to know.  I know.  I know and that’s enough.  

“What are you doing there, Pixel?” Pixel’s Mother asked and began to stroke my head and body.  I almost always like that feeling, and I always like it when Pixel’s Mother does it.  I signaled my appreciation for her action by stretching my body and tail out under her touch, lifting my head and making a noise that she understands.  “You looking outside, boy?”

I have heard Pixel’s Mother called many things.  Alecia.  Allie.  Lecia.  For some reason Pixel’s Mother’s Sister calls her Sammie.  But she is Pixel’s Mother in truth.  She continued to stroke my fur and we looked out into the other together.  Before she said what she said next, I knew what she would say.  For I had seen it already.  

“Oh, look, Pixel.  Another cat.”

Another cat.  She often said silly things like that.  I know what silly is.  It is wrong.  I know what outside and cat and door and carpet and warm and rain is.  I know what many things are, because of what Pixel’s Mother says about certain things.  So I knew she was referring to the other as a cat.  And she thinks we are the same.  Pixel’s Mother is loved, but she can be very wrong about many things.  The cat thing, for instance.  

I know what I am.  I’m beautiful.  I’ve been told that for as long as I can recall so it must be true.  I have a white and gold face and body.  My eyes are rounded and have gold and black in them.  This is what beautiful is.  The other is different.  It is on four legs, like I am, but that’s where the similarities end.  The other is mottled, grays and blacks in no pleasing pattern crossing its body and its eyes are dark.  We’re not the same.  And there is something odd with the way it was walking, as though its body had forgotten the grace it was empowered with.  That makes me special.  Maybe the other was not graceful or special.  That is why it is the other.  And I am Pixel.  And now I knew what was going to happen next.  It was going to cross the border.  

“Look, Pixel, look.  It’s coming up on the grass.  She’s looking at you.  I think that’s a she.  She wants to be your friend.”

Around Pixel’s World is a border of green.  It is important that the border is not touched by anyone but Pixel or Pixel’s Mother or a few other people I will talk about later.  It should not be touched by the other.  I will often hear stern words from Pixel’s Mother when I react to others crossing the border, so I just sat and waited.  The other came onto the border and stood across from us, too close for my comfort.  I knew what would happen next.  

The other looked around at the beauty that was Pixel’s World and reacted with the right amount of awe and respect.  That was correct.  The other looked up at us and turned its head one way and then the other.  Pixel’s Mother gently, for she is a gentle person, knocked at the glass that separated us.  

“Hey you,” she said.  “Hello, pretty.  Say hello, Pixel.  Say hello to the pretty lady.”  I most definitely would not.  Eventually the other came to grips with its futile passion for interaction and moved on.   “Ohh.  She’s leaving.  She could’ve been your friend.  You’re not even looking at her.  You think you’re hot shit, don’t you?”  I looked up at Pixel’s Mother in a way that she understood I agreed with her description.  I am hot shit.  She laughed that little laugh I like and said “Why don’t we get you some food?”

She stood up and  I took her in.  She had become larger.  I blame Bill for that.  I blame Bill for a lot of things.  

“Come on, you,” she said and began that slow way of walking she now has.  “I can do with something myself.”  As I gracefully leapt from the sill to the carpeted floor I tried not to look to my left, but the thing caught my eye.  I couldn’t help but look at it for a moment, taking up all that room.  A world within my world.  And I had been told it wasn’t for me.  

“Are you looking at the baby’s play pen again?”  She turned back towards me.  I don’t know why she has to ask questions of things that are obvious, but that is what Pixel’s Mother will often do.  “Are you excited for your little sister?  Are you excited for the baby?”  I looked at her with my eyes squinted in a way to display withering disgust.  Pixel’s Mother turned fully around and came towards me.  I looked back at the thing.  It was a cool green color, like the border when it gets too hot.  It was fashioned off from the rest of Pixel’s World with some white cloth with holes in it and inside were these glorious and bright things I had been told I couldn’t touch.  They were toys, but not for me I had been told.  By Bill, but who cared what he thought and said.  But also by Pixel’s Mother.  And now she was coming back to rub my face in it.  

She attempted to bend down, but she had gotten so large that it was somewhat difficult.  Again, I blamed Bill.  

“Do you want to see something?  I got you something, Pixel.”  Got you something was almost always good.  Except when we first had to go away.  To that place where they did horrible things to me.  Things that Pixel’s Mother had to get me many somethings to appease my humiliation and anger.  I wondered what she got me now.  “Come on.  Come on and let’s find it.”  I followed her to that big bag she often left and came home with.  Sometimes there was something in it for me.  

“Here we go,” she said and pulled out what looked like a book.  A book.  I know what a book is because Pixel’s Mother is always writing and reading.  That’s what she does with a lot of her time.  She writes and reads and talks about writing and reading with other people.  Like her friend Amara, with the brown skin and dark hair and loud laugh that fills up the room when she and Pixel’s Mother sit and drink and eat and talk.  They often talk about men.  Like Bill.  One time Amara, with her warm way of talking said “Pixel, you’re the only good man out there,” and Pixel’s Mother said “Amen”.  I walked away from them.  I’m not a man.  They took to laughing.  They laugh a lot.  

And now Pixel’s Mother was holding a book.  It wasn’t one of her books.  It was a little square thing with a cover the color of gold like me.  That was nice at least.  Pixel’s Mother sat at the table where she, and sometimes they, would eat and looked down at me.  

“Are you going to come up?”  She pointed to her lap, but there wasn’t any room there any more.  I leapt onto a chair and then up on the table and walked up to her and the book.  Usually, I’m not allowed on the table, but today she just smiled at me.  “Look at this.  I found this today.  It’s called Cat’s First Baby.”  I looked at what she was pointing at.  It had those marks like what she made in her notebooks and on her computer.  There was someone’s idea of a cat on it.  But the cat was purple.  That didn’t seem right.  I’ve never seen a purple cat.  Even the worst of the others aren’t purple.  But this one was.  And then there was a little person with skin like Amara and a green outfit covering its whole body.  The little person was on all fours, like the cat.  What the hell was this?

“Let me read it to you, Pixel,” she said and attempted to open the book.  I put my paw on the book and pushed down.  I was not interested.  She had to understand.  She looked at my paw and looked at me and put the book down.  “No?” she asked.  I kept my paw on the book, determined to win this battle.  “OK, you.  Another time.  Let’s eat.”

That was a fine moment in a day that was becoming a fine day.  Bill wasn’t around.  I defeated one of the others.  And I wasn’t going to look at the book with a purple cat.  Now, if I could just get her to forget about the food she usually gave me and share some of what she was eating, it would be epic.  I liked these days best.  The days when it was just me and Pixel’s Mother.  

For a long time it was just the two of us.  We were in a different world then, a smaller world, but in many ways it was better.  Because it was just the two of us, mostly.  Sometimes Pixel’s Grandparents would come over.  Sometimes Pixel’s Mother’s Sister  who called her Sammie would come.  She would bring a man called Larry with her and she would bring two smaller people, Lisa and Greg.  I liked them.  They understood and appreciated who I was and what I could do.   I would often leap onto things and off of things and they would clap and then come over to me and stroke my head and body.  They were good.  I liked Amara.  

I liked Theresa but it had been a long time since we had seen her.  She had moved to a place called Seattle.  Pixel’s Mother once said I had something to do with Theresa.  Something about Theresa’s cat.  I didn’t know what she meant.  I had always been with Pixel’s Mother.  Sometimes when things change in the course of the day and I don't see my world anymore, I have visions.  One of the visions that often came to me was me being surrounded by others.  It was hot and things were loud and I didn’t like it and then a large hand came and took me up and away from the others.  

I have heard Pixel’s Mother talk about something called an origin myth.  I would say that was my origin myth.  Being plucked from the others and then being Pixel and being with Pixel’s Mother.  I don’t understand why she never wrote that book.  That would be much more interesting than the books she wrote about when things happened so long ago no one who was ever around then could read what she was writing now.  That seemed like silly books to write.  I know what silly is.  

Those were wonderful days, when it was mostly me and Pixel’s Mother.  Sometimes there were men.  Men.  They were often properly deferential to me so I treated them appropriately.  I ignored them.  They would come and go.  Sometimes they and Pixel’s Mother would come together and I did not like that.  I would go off by myself at those times.  

And then Bill showed up.  He was different.  He ignored me.  That didn’t make sense.  I’m beautiful.  He is, how do I say this tastefully, a moron.  And there was something about him that Pixel’s Mother seemed fascinated about.  He kept being around.  One time, he was sitting on the couch and that was too much to bear.  He refused to comment on what I was doing or even acknowledge my grace and power on display.  I actually went on the couch to show him my anger, to make him understand that he was in Pixel’s World, even the smaller one back then.  

I sat on his head.  I can think of no greater show of power and sovereignty than sitting on another’s head.  So that’s what I did.  

“Oh look,” Pixel’s Mother said.  “You have a Pixel hat.”  And she laughed that laugh I loved but I gave her no smile that day.  This was not funny.  Bill understood, even though he’s a moron.  

“Do you think you can get her off of me?”

“Pixel’s a boy.”

“Do you think you can get him off of me?  Please, Allie?  He’s a little heavier than he looks.”

“Of course.  Come on you big silly.  Are you getting chunky, Pixel?” she asked as she pried me from my proper space.  Before I went down and into her lap I made sure to grab some of Bill’s stupid black hair.  

“Ow.”

“Are you alright?”

“Of course.  Thank you.  He just yanked some of my hair.”

“Are you hurt?”

“I could use some TLC to be honest.”

“Can you?”  They moved and I knew what was going to happen so I enacted what I believed was a very clever strategy.  I stuck my tail in between their approaching faces.  “Pixel, stop being silly,” she said and moved her body in a way that I ended up on the floor.  I know what silly is.  I am not silly.  They came together and I looked at it with disgust.  Him and his black hair.  It reminded me of something and I thought about that other as I went into the bathroom.  I was going to pee in her shower.  I am not silly.  

Black.  That was the color of that other who came closest to Pixel’s World, this new world, this larger world.  It was black with green eyes and moved in a way that I had never seen before.  I don’t think I could even move like that.  I was in my perch looking out at the other and I saw it coming across the border and up to the world.  It disappeared under some bushes for a moment and then the next thing I knew it was in front of me.  We were only separated by the glass.  It had something in its mouth.  A mouse.  

I know what a mouse is.  I have had the distinct pleasure of getting to know some mice who have come into Pixel’s World.  They are great fun to play with until they are no longer fun at all.  Then they have to go away.  One time I put one in Bill’s shoe.  That was great fun.  And now this other shook this mouse at me and dropped it on its side of the glass.  I looked at the mouse and looked up at the other.  It made a face and a noise I’ve never seen since.  I tried to replicate it and now, in retrospect, I know it was an embarrassing showing.  The other made the face and noise again, perhaps to show me the error of my ways, and then jumped out of view, only leaving the mouse there for Bill to clean up.  Him and his black hair.  

Him and his black hair was the reason we were living in this new Pixel’s World.  I liked that it was bigger and there were more places to leap on and sit on and fall out of and have visions in.  I liked that Pixel’s Mother looked happy.  I just didn’t like the changes.  Like Bill.  And now this.  Talk of a baby.  A baby book with a purple cat?  Things change.  I have grown enough to understand this.  I just don’t like it.  

It was later and I liked it even less.  For the baby was here, with us.  From time to time, Pixel’s Mother went away.  I am used to that.  It has always happened and usually Pixel’s Grandparents or Amara would come and stay with me for fun and interesting interludes.  Pixel’s Mother always returned.  And she returned this time.  But now she had a baby.  

“Look, Pixel.  Look.  This is Claire.  This is your sister.”

“Well, she’s not a cat, Allie,” Bill said, because he is a moron and has to say the most obvious things.  I looked at the little thing on her lap.  I missed her.  I wanted to be up there.  What was a Claire?  This is a baby?  It looked wrinkled and misshapen.  Why would anyone want a baby when they had me?  I looked up and tried to make Pixel’s Mother understand the great error she had made.  I was sure there was time to fix it.  

“We know.  Don’t we know, Pixel?” she asked.  “I know you’re going to be a good big brother to her.  I know you will look after her.”  Ugh.  

Lots of people came and went in those days.  And no one cared about me.  I would do many things to remind them of my beauty, grace and power.  I once leapt onto the top of the handrail that led to the upper floor of Pixel’s World and no one even looked over.  None of them could do what I had done, though they could all just lay on the ground and be useless like Claire.  Maybe that’s why they picked her over me.  I was beyond them.  She was just like them.  

“Are you looking at Claire?” she said to me one time after all the people had come and gone and all the waking up and crying and the noise and the tears and the arguments settled down.  It was just the four of us.  And she had to ask me about Claire again?  I looked at Pixel’s Mother and wondered if I had lost her forever.  Lost her to that little sack of crap who was getting a round of applause for just trying to turn over.  Trying, I said.  Not succeeding.  Trying.  Jeez, how useless Claire was.  But I was looking at her.  There was something.  Over the last few days I could feel Claire looking at me.  Watching me.  Following me for as long as her useless little eyes could.  And when she looked at me it reminded me of someone else.  

It reminded me of Pixel’s Mother.  As I watched Claire watch me, I felt Pixel’s Mother lift me up into the air.  I always liked the way she held me up in the air like that.  

“Are you looking at Claire?” she asked.  I guess I was.  

“Do you want to meet her?” she asked.  I guess I might.  

“What are you doing, hon?” Bill asked.  

“Shhh.  Pixel wants to meet Claire.”  

“Really?”

“Shhh.”  Yeah, Bill.  Shhh.  Maybe I would take a shit in one of his shoes later.  I enjoyed doing things like that to him.  He would get so angry and Pixel’s Mother would say I didn’t know what I was doing.   I knew.  I always knew.  

“OK.  Just watch him.”

“We’ve already declawed the poor fellow.”

I was floating through the air and Claire’s eyes and little fat head were following me as I came over her fat little form.  

“Do you want to meet your sister?”

I guess I did. 

It was Claire who showed me about the others.  First, she got me out onto the border in the back of Pixel’s World.  I wasn’t really happy about the idea but if Claire was going to go out there with Pixel’s Mother then I would go as well.  Those were wonderful days.  Bill was working a lot and it was just the three of us.  And I went outside.  Claire and I looked at things and Pixel’s Mother gave us more words to learn.  

“Look at the clouds.   Those are clouds.  White clouds in a blue sky.”

“This is grass.  Green green grass.  Feel.  Feel it.”

“This is a rose.  Smell it.  Isn’t it wonderful?  That’s right.  Pretty.  Pretty like you, Claire.”

“That’s an apple tree.  See.  Tree?”

“That’s an apple.  Too soon to eat.  But one day.  One day soon.  Crunch, crunch, it goes.  Crunch, crunch.”

“OK Claire.  You go down and now Pixel comes up.”

“This is wonderful.  Isn’t this all wonderful?”

And then one day Claire found the other.  Claire had been walking and running for a long time now.  She was just about to go to school, we were told.  I didn’t know what that meant but I didn’t like the implication.  We were sitting in the back yard and Bill was home but he was inside watching something on the tv.  He was often watching something on the tv.  We didn’t even have a tv in the old, smaller Pixel’s World.  Bill.  What a moron.  

Claire was looking everywhere for everything and she was a very funny girl.  Maybe she was silly, but silly in a good way.  She would go behind a big bush in the back yard, that’s what the border was now called, and shake it and talk to Pixel’s Mother.  

“Hello.  I’m Bushy.”

“Hello, Bushy.  How’re you feeling today?” Pixel’s Mother would ask, even though it was Claire and not Bushy.

“I’m feeling a little thirsty.  Maybe Claire could water me today.”

“Maybe.  I have to ask Claire.  Do you know where she is?”

“No.  I’m just a bush.”

“Good point.”

And this one time she found the other it was behind what they called the garage.   There was a little space behind the garage and Claire came from looking back there and grabbed Pixel’s Mother to take her by the hand to what she saw.  I followed.  In the little space behind the garage, the other was laying in the hard dirt.  When we got over there it looked at us and made a sound that reminded me of that black other, from so long ago.  

“What’s wrong with it, mom?”

Pixel’s Mother got down on the ground and just sat there for a time, looking at the other.  Eventually she stood up and looked at us.  

“Do you know what pregnant is?”

“Like have a baby?”

“Like have a baby.  I think she might be pregnant.”  

“Wow.  What do we do?”

“I don’t know.  Let’s get her some shelter to start.”

I sat there and watched the other as they got Bill to come outside and help.  They put some wood over the other’s space and laid out some blankets.  On one of the blankets they had water in one of my bowls.  I knew it wasn’t for me and eventually the other settled on the blanket and took some of the water.  As I watched it and how it reacted to Claire and Pixel’s Mother and Bill I realized it was a lot like me but it was large like Pixel’s Mother once was.  When she had Claire in her body.  Pregnant was having a Claire in your body.  I watched the other.  I watched her.  Eventually that woman, who did horrible things to me, came to Pixel’s World.  

“I can’t believe you’re doing this, Jean,” Pixel’s Mother said.  “Thank you.”  She would thank her after doing horrible things to me as well.  Pixel’s Mother was mistaken about this lady.  

“Well, my calling is to help animals.  I can afford some time, can’t I?  Hello, Pixel,” she said.  I walked away from the lady and into the house.  I wouldn’t look back.  

It was just a short time later that Claire slid open the big glass door that separated my world from the outside.  

“Hey, Pixel.  Want to see a kitten?”

It’s some time after that time now.  Years have passed and I want to believe I’m wiser now than I was then.  And I was pretty smart back then.  But we can all grow.  And I believe I have.  That’s thanks to Pixel’s Mother and Claire.  Neither of them are in the house now.  One is at work and one is at school.  It’s at the same building I’m led to believe.  For some reason Bill is home today.  He’s wandering around in some bathrobe he often wears when he’s home and drinking from a steaming cup.  Pixel’s Mother talked about picking something up for the flu for him and gave him a peck on the cheek this morning.  

Over the years, Bill and I have entered a truce, an uneasy peace, if you will.  He is, afterall, very important to the two people who mean the most to me in this world.  So I stopped crapping in his shoes and he has stopped shooing me from couches and rooms and toilet bowls.  It is good to be at ease with others in the world.  So when he went and sat on the couch and turned on the tv, I sat next to him.  Even if he is a moron.  

Bill watches a lot of tv.  Very often, he speaks to it, though that is not what it is made for.  He yells at it and the images of people doing various things in the box.  Claire likes to tease him about it.  

“Do you think they can hear you, daddy?” she’ll ask.  

He then stops whatever he is saying and looks at his daughter and smiles.  The images keep moving in the box but he doesn’t pay attention and yell at them anymore.  

“I don’t know, honey.  I sure hope so.  Things would go better for all of us if they would.”

“That’s just fantastical thinking, daddy.”

“Yeah,” he says and leans over and kisses the top of her head.  Kisses.  I have learned that.  Claire gives me lots of kisses and I try to return the gift.  “Yeah.  You’re right.  I’m being silly.”

I know silly.  

“Hey, Pixel.  Let’s see what’s going on with the world today.”  The tv flashes and then the images and the sounds turn on.  

There is a man on the screen and he has a lot of the coloring that I do, the white and the gold, though his gold seems more like orange.  Maybe a bad gold or something like that.  He is standing and moving one of his hands and saying things.  

“Our country is being invaded, and many of these people are criminals.  They’re poisoning the blood of our country.  Criminals.  Rapists.  Murderers.  The worst of the worst.  They’re here to destroy us.”

I look over from the couch where Bill and I are sitting and I watch Milo play with the red ball he is so fond of.  Milo was the kitten that Claire chose and came to live with us.  He is older now.  Jane and another woman took his mother and one other kitten who lived away.  They also took a dead one away.  I guess I was like Milo once, but I can’t remember.  I was a Milo before I was a Pixel and before I met Pixel’s Mother and before I made Pixel’s World.  I guess we were all a Milo once.  We just needed someone to take care of us.  

“Many of these people probably have AIDS, and they’re coming into our country.  And we don’t do anything about it, we let everybody in.  It’s like a death wish for our country.”

“Do you believe this moron?” Bill asked.  

I thought of it.  No.  I didn’t believe him.  I stepped off the couch and went towards Milo. 

Maybe it was Milo’s World now.  

Isabella Facia is not yet nineteen-years-old, and her mother is in jail while her father is in the grave. She’s an aspiring artist, someone who believes the future will be brighter than the past. 

She is a young woman who has experienced great trauma. It has fueled her art and toughened her during her years in Union City, New Jersey. 

She is the heart of First Kills.

Isabella lives in the same neighborhood, the same house, where I lived for four years after college, in Union City. From there, across the Hudson River, Manhattan dominates the horizon. 

For Isabella, Manhattan is a calling.

It represents an escape from the pain and loss she has experienced, but also an opportunity. She has the eye, the talent, the skill of an artist. Her art, even at her precocious age, is being recognized. New York offers galleries and patrons. It offers her a chance. 

She is moving forward. Coming into her own. 

And then something horrible happens to her. 

Why New York? Why 1986?

Because the New York I remember from those years was a place where possibility and danger lived side by side. 

The city was manic in its collective approach to life. The city was emerging from the devastation of the 1970s. Extraordinary art and music and the club scene were thriving. Coke was everywhere and crack was ascendant. With the drugs and a sense that there was a limited amount of time before everything fell apart again came horrific violence.  

It wasn’t simply that you shouldn’t ride certain trains or go into parks late at night. It wasn’t one alleyway or street you knew to avoid. There were entire neighborhoods suffering from blight across all five boroughs. 

Just being in New York at that time could be both exhilarating and frightening. 

I know because I was born and bred in Brooklyn, spent summers in a bungalow in Queens, and went to high school in Manhattan from 1985 through 1989. 

I took the trains Isaballa takes in First Kills. 

I stood, in awe, in the clubs Isabella goes to. 

I went into Central Park when I shouldn’t have, as Isabella does. 

Because I was young and interested more than I was scared. 

There is some of me in Isabella. I admire her. 

I wasn’t the artist she is in the novel, but I understand the siren call of the city. New York seemed capable of offering anything. You could discover art, music, people, ideas. You could become someone different than you were. 

It hinted at glory.

Or, it could cut you down in your youth. 

That contradiction is one the reasons First Kills had to take place there. 

And it is one of the reasons Isabella had to be at its center. 

She does change. Just not in a way she thought ever possible.

I was lucky. I lived those years in that city and made it through. I want to bring you back there. I want you to meet Isabella Facia. 

First Kills is forthcoming later this year. I’m currently looking for advance readers interested in getting a first look and getting the word out about the novel. You can learn more about the novel and sign up at john-fitzgerald-writer.com. 

Twenty-five-hundred miles from Philip’s running blood and disintegrating body, Remington Mallory opened his cold, blue eyes. Loss. He was sitting in a windowless and lightless safe in a bunker fifty feet beneath the complex in Idaho where he and his followers planned the destruction of the United States of America. He understood when he opened those eyes that he was not in danger. There were two bodies lifeless at his feet. A woman was screaming and yanking the lever to a door she could not open. 

It was his blood that awakened him to a pang of loss. He attempted to place it, geographically. He had, over his time, birthed and developed dozens of vampires across the globe, and from time to time, one was lost. He held them close based on something taught to him by Prince so long ago.

That was when they were in London. Prince said “You feed on your charges as they sleep. You continue to give them your blood when they are dazed after eating. You keep the blood close and intermingled for as long as you can, before they can guess at what’s happening. 

“As you feed,” Prince explained, “you become stronger. Their blood only adds a dynamism to the body that is unequaled. And all along, you’re bringing your charge closer, making it more difficult for them to disobey. They become something like slaves”. Prince had done it to Mallory. It took a long time to shake.

This new one, this Felsen, was well on the path to what Mallory needed. Felsen had brought the three followers down to Mallory earlier that night. For a lesson. Felsen could be controlled. 

The others, far away, were much harder. He could, though, track them. 

He sat there and he listened to his blood, going where it took him. After a few minutes, he thought it had to be Philip. 

Philip had left his post, had left Chicago. He was lost, in a way. Mallory had to go back to the city in the sixties and start over with a young woman whose family moved up to Chicago from Alabama nearly a decade before, and faced obstacle after obstacle until finally Sharon had enough and accepted Mallory’s offer. Sharon was doing fine, generating great profits while creating horror in the ravaged streets of the city. A fine addition to the team. 

Philip was Mallory’s first creation in America. European creations had been lost to him decades before. Mallory attempted to track Philip who seemed to move continuously until getting somewhere near the Atlantic Ocean. He believed it was in New York City that Philip had met his demise. Tavioli had spoken of reports of barbarity that Mallory believed had to be one of his own. He told Taviloi to leave it be unless it came in direct opposition to his charge.  

Mallory closed his eyes again and hoped his charge had experienced enough in this world to keep him sated if he was denied entrance to the next.  To abandon his post was a sin, regardless, but Mallory forgave Philip. He recalled those first nights in Toronto, the man trying to hide the great and wonderful hate that churned inside.  It was that hate that called Mallory to him on those streets, while the city burned.  

The screaming began to annoy him. He stood up and moved towards the young, wild-eyed woman, blood in his eyes, matter from her companions cooling on his white face. She was clawing at the door and turned, screaming to see him stand. How afraid she seemed. How the sight of the blood of her friends caused her to scramble towards a safety that didn’t exist. 

Blood itself mattered to Mallory. There had to be an entity, a being that experienced everything and weighed all according to opportunity and choice. Mallory believed it was blood itself. It was the dark matter of the universe that ran through his body and the bodies of all the special beings out there.

The girl tried to run beyond his grasp, but he easily caught her and brought her near to him. 

“Shhhh,” he said to her squirming face, a dervish of fear, the tender hands scratching at him. “Shhh. It will be all over soon. Thank you for this.” He fingered a tear off her face. Placed it on his lips. “You are more than you thought.” She released one last scream before it ended. He bit into her neck, ignoring her trivial memories, and instead thought about Philip. 

Philip. He should have gone to see the boy, but there was so much to do in this America. A shame, Mallory thought. Philip was going to miss everything that was to come. The horror, the deaths, the banging of knees on floors, heads on walls, and hearts on chest plates as this special experiment, this land of opportunity, this United States, came to an end. 

Mallory was proud of what was happening. He had, under his command, hundreds of men and women who wanted to be free in a way that the democracy they now bristled against would never let them. Hundreds would turn to thousands. Philip would miss the glory. 

The lifeless form slid from his mouth. This would need to be cleaned. He went to sit on the couch and luxuriate in his meal. 

He always enjoyed thinking about a second Civil War. He was still disappointed in himself that he stayed in England during the first war between the States, sticking around with Prince. 

Poor Prince. 

It was obvious the old man had gone blood mad and body obsessed. Mallory could understand how it happened. Addiction is one very real outcome of their existence. 

Prince. Going mad and cutting up little working girls in Whitechapel while Mallory wished for something else. The New World. All that new technology being introduced. Rifle muskets and Minie balls. Iron warships and early submarines, torpedoes. The rapid clicks and firing of the rotating gatling gun. What would those early inventors of murder instruments think of what was capable today? And all along Prince was in his room, disemboweling poor Anne, or Mary, or whatever their names were. 

And he missed that first War Between the States. Yet, he was fortunate.  

That first Civil War did not tire the Americans out—it only drove them to find more to destroy. Mallory knew at the end of the nineteenth century that it was in that New World he needed to settle. Where else in the great big world?

          There would always be a chance for war in Europe, but those countries were far too old. Africa was being torn apart and put back together in a way that would guarantee disaster, but how would Mallory be able to work in that? All those flags. The Japanese were turning themselves into a war machine that Mallory appreciated, but once again, how could he find purchase in a land like that? He would attract too much attention. No. It was the land across the Western Sea for him. 

Prince had held the city of London in the grip of fear for three years, reveling in the attention. It was only a matter of time before he was captured. He was getting sloppier and sloppier, working the same streets and alleys again and again. Mallory decided he had learned as much as he could from his creator and spent six months in 1891 preparing for his trip to the west. 

One dank night, he tore Prince apart in his laboratory as the old killer sat in the daze of  yet another masterwork of defilement. Mallory took everything he could, and set the place on fire. 

He was disappointed when his ship had to reroute to Canada for weather issues, but appreciated what the city of Toronto was working itself towards. Smoke stacks. New fortunes. New tongues echoing against cobblestone streets and hastily built buildings.  Hatred of those tongues. The ingredients for proper chaos.

         He stuck around through the Great Fire of 1904. That was where he met Philip. The young man was heartbroken and disgusted at the offers of the world to date. Anger in the heart. Mallory looked for it and latched on the individual until they decided to live or die his way. Finding Philip was a blessing. 

He licked the remainders of his victims from his teeth, from his lips. It always ended.

When he and Philip eventually left for America, they lit out for Chicago. It was there that Mallory started to sketch out his plan to create something better out of chaos and destruction, no matter how long it took. Prohibition was a wonderful school. People drank too much. The government only made it worse and bad people stepped in to fill the wanting. It was a lesson that Mallory took to heart.

After Chicago and before Idaho, he moved around. Las Vegas and California, those sick nights driving the city to never topped samples of depravity. Eventually, he saw better opportunities in the heroin coming from Southeast Asia and, afterwards, the cocaine making its way up from Central and South America, through Mexico, to where he waited for trucks and planes. He spent time in Miami and Texas. Building a network.

Eventually, he set up his own shingle in the American Northwest, coming to discover Richard Butler in Idaho. Butler was an interesting and intelligent man whose hatred of anyone not like him attracted others of the same ilk, like a light on the porch. He had a horrible mind, and Mallory enjoyed studying him. Mallory was now bringing forces together that Butler himself could neither contain nor command. 

It was at one of Butler’s conferences that he met Felsen, his proudest creation, one he knew would be standing outside his door when Mallory opened it, ready to do whatever was needed to further the cause. 

The neo-Nazis, or however they defined themselves, offered what Mallory looked for—a hate so powerful and a conviction so blinding that it could lead to the dissolution of the very country they lived in. They would become his army.  

He stood up, dabbing at blood on his rose silk shirt, hoping it wasn’t ruined. 

He hoped his army would be a proper bouquet of flowers for his love. His love enabled him to tap right into the dark blood of the universe. 

Death.

Sweet death. Mallory sensed the night was full outside.  

He stretched his back and sank to his knees to pray to death. He would forever be the acolyte. Bent to the task.

His love was strong. 

He wanted to show that love in such a way that made those that came before him, Khan, Leopold II, Hitler, Mao, seem like little boys. 

He wanted to show Death that love on the grandest scale. 

Violence was the ultimate, raucous creator, reshaping everything that it came to touch. 

He bowed his head, imagining the tasks. The action of opening the body, the blood beginning to seep out. The slick, viscous, vicious, lifeforce that would need to be spilled again and again. 

The ability to render all else moot. The gun. The knife to the heart. The press of the button. The bomb sitting in the belly of the fighter jet. Violence could render all else useless and cause a turn to the basics. And he very much desired to be there. 

He wanted to show death that the love he carried in him each and every moment was pure. He prayed that in a world where one bomb killed nearly eighty thousand people, where countries actively championed the murder of their citizens, where people hid the heads of their victims in pickle jars in basements, that he could become the greatest bestower of the gift of death. 

To do that he needed the right mix of people and place. He felt that America was not there yet, but getting close. He needed someone closer to central power. He needed someone who might be President. 

He stood with a pure heart, and went to wash and change. The bodies were splayed out behind him as he hummed some song from long ago.  From a childhood almost lost to memory. A song taught to him at one time. From whom? Sometimes, at odd moments, his mother’s eyes, voice, fingertips would come to him. So long ago. Long before he changed.

Remington Mallory was dressed and ready for the night. There was talk of taking out two members of the FBI who were asking too many questions about the compound. Mallory wasn’t sure it was the right time or the right move. Most of his people would lose a war with the government. 

We need to grow before we do anything too radical, he thought as he turned the massive bar and unlocked his door. As the door swung open, he smiled at seeing the passive face of Felsen sitting atop that massive body. He was dressed, as always, in black, blond hair cut close to the scalp and tattoos covered.
Maybe I need a few more Felsens, he thought as he stepped out of his room. 

I got business cards today as I’m attending the Killer Nashville conference next month (if you’re going please reach out so we can connect in person). I know. Business cards? Who uses those anymore?

Yet, I loved going through the work of designing the card. I chose the eyes of a young woman - in this case Isabella Facia - hovering over a city - in this case 1986 New York City. Isabella is nearly nineteen, an artist, and someone whose future seems much brighter than her past.

And then it’s all taken from her as the victim of a brutal attack. While she loses so much, she gains powers she never dreamed. For she has become what many would call a monster. Now Isabella can change the city, but what will she do?

New York City was falling apart in 1986. Crime was rampart. Crack destroyed families and neighborhoods. The gap between the haves and have nots was growing. AIDS wiped out entire communities. There were dozens, maybe hundreds, of blocks most people would never walk down.

What does Isabella do with her power and the hunger that accompanies it? How will she affect New York and those live in it? Can she tell who the true monsters are? And what can she do about her beloved mother in prison?

These are the questions of First Kills. Isabella is the centerpiece of the story. New York is where it happens.

Interested? I hope so. I’ll be sharing more in the upcoming weeks.

“Hey all, Johnny of Hell’s Kitchenette here, where we taste and rate the cuisine of the world that’s found right here in Hell’s Kitchen.  Generally because I can’t afford to go anywhere else.”

“Big news this week.  My pops - John Senior - who you all know as one of the best, and only, guests of the show, choked on the proverbial bone last week and is living in the cosmic kitchen in the sky.  I miss my pops.  He always supported me.  Literally.  I don’t know if mom is going to cut me off, but my dad left me two things.”

“His head.  And a wish.”

“By his head I mean literally his noggin, stuffed for eternity.  I have it right here.  Take a look.  A little creepy, huh?  But the old man still looks pretty good, yeah?  Preserved forever.  Just for me.  And you of course.  Oh.  And his wish?  He wants me to do whatever I want with my life and take him along for the ride.  So we’re going to change the name of the show.  Dunn….dunnn…DUNDUNNN….”

“Hell’s Kitchenette is now Me and My Dad’s Head!”

“My dad never got to travel.  Worked that job for nearly fifty years and then got sick.  So, starting with Wednesday’s show, we’re going to travel to the Seven Wonders of the World to take in the best of culture and cuisine.”

“Me and My Dad’s Head and you.  See you soon.”

John reached over to shut the phone and Lume Cube off and rewatched the video.  It was his third recording of the script.  Just a bit over a minute.  That would work.  He’d add in the opening and closing credits via Canva and get that out on Insta, TikTok, Threads, X.  He wasn’t lying.  For some reason the old man left him his head and his wish.  And five thousand dollars.  

His mother wasn’t happy about separating the head from the body before the cremation, but as Mister Fattolini of the funeral home said, “In the rest of his remains, you have his heart.  Isn’t that what matters?”  His sister refused to speak to him since she moved to Connecticut and was pushing hard for their parents to move up to her.  With his father not blocking the move, John’s mom would probably sell the house and follow the trail of those who want to deny they grew up in Queens.

John wouldn’t see any of that money.  Not that he deserved it, but he could use the help.  The traffic started to call out in the late morning on Manhattan’s west side.  All he had was the five grand, the words printed out in the old man’s chicken scratch with his small, painstakingly worked out signature at the bottom of the yellowing paper, and the head.  The lawyers said something about needing to make it educational to keep the ownership legal.  The podcast was educational.  He loved his father dearly and wanted to honor his last request.   

“Ni hao all my friends!  That’s right, first on our list is the Great Wall of China.  Did you know that the Great Wall at over 13,000 miles is the longest man-made structure in the world?  Why they built it, I don’t know, but it brought me and my dad’s head here, to Shun Lee’s in Chinatown.”

“Did you think we were going to China, China?  No thank you.  Our wish is to connect to more people through our videos and food and that’s what we’re going to do with our first stop.”  

“I let the good people of Shun Lee know we were posting a video to celebrate their food and they brought over a bowl of their world famous wonton soup.  Take a look.  And let’s have a taste.  Mmmm.  This wonton soup doesn’t need seasoning.  It needs a sacrifice, it’s so good.  Seven stars for one of the Seven Wonders.”

“I thought it would be a good idea to give all of you a sense of the fashion of the Chinese so you can see…here…me and my dad’s head in matching asian conical hats.  They’re also called coolie hats, but I don’t think we can say that anymore.  Anyhow, here’s a look at the menu…let’s see what’s next.”

“Excuse me?  Oh, I explained when I came in.  Hang on followers.  I’m cutting a video for my show.  It’ll promote your restaurant.  Maybe you can bring over some spare ribs or something for me?  What’s the show called?  It’s called Me and My Dad’s Head.  Why?  Because that’s the show.  What is that?  That’s my dad’s head.  Yeah.  No.  Not a dummy.  No.  Not a joke.”

“Hey, everyone.  Back to the matter at hand.  China has some 1.4 Billion people living in it and the capital is Beijing.  Their cuisine - and they need a lot of it for all those people - is built around balance.  Think salty versus sweet.  Dim Sum.  Kun Pao.  Hunan.  So much to choose from.  We’ll be back with what we ordered in a moment.”

John shut the phone off and looked over at a group gathering across from him.  A small lady with very dark hair had a tightened look on her face and was getting very animated.  Was it the hat?  He took it off and placed it next to his father’s head on the table.  Why wouldn’t she understand what he was doing for them?  If even three people came to the restaurant because of what he did, the free soup and spare ribs would be paid back multiple times over.  

Maybe he should go talk to them.  He decided to take the hat off his dad’s head as well, out of respect.  The woman made some loud noise and decided to meet him half way.  

“Buonasera, amici.  That means good evening, friends.  You can probably tell by me and my dad’s head’s fedoras, and my speaking italian, that we’re now celebrating the next of the Seven Wonders of the World, the Roman Coliseum.  The Roman Coliseum is of course in Rome, as is the Vatican.  But lions and popes aren’t all that Italy offers.  The Italians also brought the world espresso, eyeglasses and, of course, pizza.  And it’s with pizza in mind that we’ve made the trip from Chinatown to Little Italy.  And Little Italy is getting smaller all the time.  Get here fast, before it’s gone the way of the dodo bird, or my dad’s ability to breath.”

“Ahh, scuzi, signore.  I would like a pie of your best pizza.  Would you mind explaining to our audience what makes your pizza the best in New York City?  Just step over a little and…that’s it.”

“Ahh.  Benvenuto.  Our pizza is the best.  Not just in New York City, but in the wor…..wait.  Wait.  What is that on the table?  With the hat on?  Is that the head of how you say….head of dummy?”

“A mannequin?”

“Is that a mannequin?”

“No.  It’s my dad’s head.  This show is called Me and My Dad’s Head and you’re speaking to our audience.  Please talk about your world famous pizza pies.”

“Ma per l’amor di Dio!”

“Is that what you put on the dough?”

“Ma dai!  E sacrilegio!!”  

“Oh…ohhh…hang on…hang on…this is still filming….hey, watch the hats…and my dad’s head.”

The smallish and round waiter was grabbing at John and his dad’s head was tipping back and forth on the red and white checkered tablecloth.  John’s water went over first as he tried to hold the man off, and then all hell broke loose, the table flipping over and his dad’s head flying up in the air and landing near a plate of spaghetti on the table next to him.  A woman screamed and as John hit the floor, he noticed other couples were filming the interaction.   

That night, crumbled fedoras, broken asian conical hats and his dad’s head in hand, John stumbled into his little studio apartment and went to his little pecan work desk in the corner.  He felt like weeping.  It had been such a good idea.  What an original way to experience the cuisine of the world.  And with his dad’s head at his side, it had a sentimental value these over heated members of the food service industry didn’t understand.  

It was with some trepidation that he went on his Instagram account and couldn’t believe what his account was telling him.  His following on Instagram was more than ten thousand people.  He refreshed the page to see if it was an error.  He had grown his audience some ten fold.  He thought about the fight at Bumblesario and typed in “my dad’s head” and that’s when he found himself in the center of a social spotlight, a phenomenon in the making.  

It was post after post of him at the table, filming the first part of the video, he and his dad’s head in those once sharp and now crumpled black fedoras.  Then came the fight and he saw how amusing it was, the way he and the waiter fell over and his dad’s head hit the adjoining table, the woman screaming and falling off her chair.   Some people were commenting in the videos.  They were actually driving people to Me and My Dad’s Head.  

John went back to Instagram and saw the likes and emojis and all the comments.  

“When are you showing your trips?”

“Where’s your version of the fight with the waiters?”

“This is a joke, right?”

“Me and My Dad’s Head.  You da man!  You da crazy man, but you da man!”

“There is something very wrong going on here.  This man needs help.  John, please reach out to me and I can help you.”

John sat there in stunned silence.  He stood up and picked his dad’s head up off the kitchen counter and went to the little beat up brown sofa he sat on during the day and slept on at night.  He placed his dad’s head next to it.  He was being seen.  After all these years, he now understood what it was like to be seen.  

“You da man,” he said out loud.  He looked at his dad’s head and picked it up.  John could feel the tears starting to well in his own eyes and laughed and brought the head up and down.  “You da man, dad.  We da man.  Shit.  We did something.  Do you believe that?  We did something.  This was always your plan, huh?”

“Buenos Noches, mis amigos.  And we have mas amigos than ever before.  We’re well over twenty five thousand followers and we’re growing every day.  It’s an honor for me and my dad’s head.  We appreciate all the ideas and suggestions and we’re going to work hard to get to all of them.  I know many of you are asking where we are today.  This doesn’t look like one of the great restaurants you always spotlight, John.  I know.  We’re in my kitchen, my dad right here….right here…let me explain why that is.”

“Today is a muy dificil day for Me and My Dad’s Head, but we’re going to do our best.  In honor of Chichen Itza in Mexico we were planning to go to our favorite Mexican spot in the hood, Mi Casa Tu Casa.  OG followers know I’ve been there before for their wonderful, and cost effective, takes on some of the great dishes down south.  Maria and her family always meant the world to me.”

“But today they told Me and My Dad’s Head no mas.  No mas!  Can you imagine that?  Saying I brought shame with me.  I would never.  I thought our sombreros were culturally relevant and even on the classy side, but no.  Why?  I just know I’m home.”

“The good thing for all of us is that Mexican food is something I can actually cook on my own.  Ground Beef.  Seasoning.  Grated cheese.  Lettuce.  Tomatoes.  Some hot sauce and tortillas of course.  I like my tacos soft shell, but that’s up to each of you.  Well, I went out to the store after Maria said no mas, and here….here…..”

“Can I tell you the truth?  I’m very sad.  And I think if my dad was here, beyond just his head, he would be sad too.  It’s hard to find places that you like to go to and people you like to be with.  Even in a big place like Manhattan.  Well, it’s hard for me.  Mi Casa Tu Casa and Maria and her family were a warm place and people for me.”

“I get lonely.  I get sad.  I’m sure you do as well.  Right?  That’s why I love it when you send me comments.  It can be a harsh world.  And…and…and I miss my dad.  He was the one who used to take me to the park, take me to the beach, he would read me stories and hold my hand on the ferris wheel….I miss….I miss…I miss being his little kid.”

“Excuse me.  Let me grab a napkin here.  Or should I say disculpe.  Disculpe.  Sigh.  I miss you dad.  At least I have your head.  OK, folks.  That was a ramble, but let’s get to making tacos!”

Three days later he was walking in his neighborhood when someone asked him to take a selfie with them.  

“Hey.  Hey mister.  Hey.  You’re the head guy, aren’t you?”

John looked up and noticed the two young men, and said “head guy.”

“Yeah, man.  Yeah.  It’s you.”

“Shit, man.  Yeah.  Me and My Dad’s Head.  You made tacos the other day.  Tacos with a head.  You’re fucking crazy!”

“Oh.  Me and My Dad’s Head.  Yeah, that’s me.”

John knew things were changing.  A representative for an agency called him about a potential deal with Ortega and their Tacos at Home kits.  Money AND free tacos.  That was pretty good.   

“Shit man, we knew it was you.   Do you have the head with you?”

“No.  My dad’s head is at home.”

“Ha, my dad’s head.  Classic.”

“GOAT.  You the the fucking GOAT of people with heads.  You know that, man?”

“You think we can get a picture with you?”  People in the street were stopping to look at John.  John liked it.  He smiled at the young men.  

“Well.  Tell your friends as well and let’s get that selfie.”

“It would be cool if you had the head.”
“He can’t carry it around everywhere.  Shit, the thing will get stolen.”

As John smiled for the picture, the taller of the two whispered in John’s ear.  

“And don’t worry about Mi Casa Tu Casa.  That place is fucked.”

“Fucked?”

“Don’t fuck with the head!  Thanks for the pic, my man.  Going up now.”

He had to see it.  Walking over to the restaurant, the place was, in a word, fucked.  Someone had smashed the big glass window that looked out onto the corner of ninth and forty fourth street.  There was a giant slab of plywood where the glass should have been and the plywood had something spray painted on it.  

DON’T FUCK WITH THE HEAD.  

John was staring at it when Maria came out and stepped towards him, smiling.  

“Hello, John.  It’s nice to see you.”

“What happened?”

“It’s been terrible,” she said and came right up to him as people rushed by in their rush to go here and there.  “It’s been terrible since…since…”

John was looking at her.  He thought he understood what happened.  Some of the people who followed him.  Some of his followers.  They did this.  He stayed quiet.  

“Since when, Maria?” he finally asked.  

“Since we turned you away.  Oh.  The calls.  The bad reviews.  People acting up in the restaurant.  And now this.”

“What people?” John asked.

“Your people,” Maria blurted out and then put her hands to her mouth as though to capture the words and eat them before they got to his ears.  

“My people,” John said.  He looked around.  How many of his people were here now, he thought.  What were they waiting for?  Maria.  Sweet Maria.  How he once pined for her, and how she hurt him that day.  How disrespectful to him and his dad’s head.  

“Can you get them to stop?  Perhaps you can come in, John?”

“For what?”

“For a free meal of course.  You know we’ve always been good to you.  It was just…it was just….”

“What was it, Maria, that made you turn me away after all this time?”

“It was the head.”

“My dad’s head?”
“We just don’t understand.  Why would you want that around?”

John could feel his own head heating up but he took deep breaths.  Long ago his father advised him that it was never good to discuss something when hot with anger.  It took John through a lot of troubling times.  Mean words in the playground.  On the subway.  On the date.  Always breathe.  Don’t make something bad worse.  But this wouldn’t be bad for him, like it usually was.  This would be bad for Maria and Mi Casa Tu Casa.  

“I don’t think so, Maria.”

The petite and pretty woman dropped her head and looked at ninth avenue.  Or maybe she looked at John’s feet.  He stood proud.  Proud to be in control.  

“Why, John?”

“If you don’t believe in Me and My Dad’s Head you don’t believe in me.  And if you don’t believe in me, I can’t believe in you.  Anyway,” John finished and turned around, “the place looks like shit.”  

He walked away without turning to look at her.  He looked forward to telling the story on his feed tonight.  Maybe he would remind his followers of how Shun Lee and Bumblesario treated him as well.  He walked with his head held high and looked up at the sun in its highest place.  He felt like it was shining for him.  Like he was in the spotlight.  He couldn’t wait to tell his father.  

3.

As he followed the kinetic shoulders of Matthew, Jack was taken back to the filming of Ambition, based on a script he sold in 1997, still a Senior at NYU.  Articles from the day placed his name next to Shane Black, Quentin Tarantino and Sofia Coppola.  How exciting it was to be on the set, ignored or not.  Richard Kiley, the film’s director, looking like George Harrison’s younger and cooler brother, icing him out more and more as time went by.  Stanley Townsend, the incredibly gifted asshole move star who he had gotten into a dust up with.  And got a bloodied nose from.  Jason Aaron, who he thought about while writing The Beauty of The World for the role of Henry.  And Deidre.  Deidre McEown.  So calm and possessed among all those dick first men.  How cool she looked.  How direct she was.  How beautiful she…..  

“Here we are,” Matthew said, knocking and turning the handle to the door.

They entered a large room, at least three times the size of Matthew’s office, with a white glow.  Pictures and posters dotted the wall, gold and silver statues dotted the shelves.  

“Jack.  Thank you for stopping by.”  Amanda Power stood up, turning off the tv which had the billionaire Richard Stand being interviewed on one of the news channels.   She came around her desk and grabbed Jack’s hand with both of hers.  He grinned and said hello.  

She brought him over to her powder white couch, ignoring her employee.  An actor herself as a child, Amanda had led ACA the past dozen years.   She had a big smile, direct eyes and a full head of auburn hair.  She had left her glasses at the desk and crossed her strong legs as they got comfortable.  Jack leaned over so he was face to face with her.  Matthew moved over to lean on her desk across from them.  

“Don’t be silly Matthew.  Sit in the chair.  That one.  Good.  It’s a big day, isn’t it Jack?”

“Yes it is.  It’s very exciting.  Thank you.”  He wanted to concentrate on her face, her eyes, her mouth.  He needed to stay calm.  Confidently calm.

“Don’t thank me.  It’s your script.  And it was Matthew’s belief that got that script in the right hands.  But you’re just at the beginning of this now, not the end.  Do you understand?”  She smelled wonderful, and Jack leaned in.  

“I think I do.  I know this’ll be a lot of work.  I’m ready.”

“Well, we’re sure you’re ready for the work.  It’ll be the people and the plays for power that we need to make sure you’re ready for.”  She was wearing a sleeveless blouse and she placed her arm on the back of the sofa so that she was nearly touching Jack’s shoulder.  Jack didn’t move.  This was the first time he was sitting on this couch.  

“I’ve been part of productions before, Amanda.  I think I understand what I need to do.”

“He’ll be great,” Matthew offered from his chair.  

“Don’t be silly Matthew.  Be quiet.  Now listen, Jack,” Amanda said and now reached forward and took his chin in her long fingered hands.  “Whatever you need to do, you need to get this movie made.  That’s the most important thing.”

“I know that.”  She kept her hand on his chin, and moved a finger up his face.  He was working to stay still.  

“No matter what,” she said and leaned a little closer.  “You need to get this movie made.  Do you understand that?”

“I understand.”  She smiled and released her grip on him.  

“So handsome.  How come you never wanted to act?” Amanda asked.

“It’s not that I didn’t want to,” Jack said.  “I just can’t do it.  I’m very bad at it.”

“Yes, I’ve heard that.”  She frowned a bit and brushed off the front of her tight purple skirt.  She looked down and then at him sideways.  “The director is the most important person in all of the movie.  Understand?”

“Yes.”

“But a big star has a say.  It just comes with having them agree to do the picture.”

“You mean Max Garnet?”

“I mean in general,” Amanda said.  “And when the star is the reason the money comes in, that’s another variable you need to work through.”

“Matthew is going to explain that to me over lunch.”

“I’m sure he will.  But listen to me, please.  I’ve been in this business for a long, long time, handsome.  You’re going to eat some shit.”

“OK.”  Was she aware of all the shit he had already eaten?

“Yes, indeed.  And eat more than you think.  And there’ll be times when you won’t  be happy.  But your North Star HAS to be getting this film done.  You need to have this on your resume if you’re going to move on in this…ecosystem….we have here in Hollywood.”  She was rubbing her hands together.  

“I understand,” Jack said, narrowing his eyes and nodding his head.   

“I hope so.  Now, go eat somewhere and talk about what a bitch I am and how cool the two of you are.”  She stood up and walked back to her desk as Jack and Matthew stood up.  “And please remember this conversation.  You can always call me if you need to.”

“Thank you Amanda,” Jack said and looked around at the posters for some of the great movies Amanda was part of.  He loved all the connections.  He didn’t know why they kept him out.  

“Thank you for allowing us to represent you,” Amanda responded.  “We make money by standing next to you.  That’s what agents do.  We get in the flow of money and try to keep the business of show business in order.  Enjoy lunch.”  Matthew was opening the door and beginning to usher him out when Jack stopped.

“I understand what you’ve told me Amanda.  I’ll get this film made.”

“We know you will.  Matthew, when you come back - and don’t be in a rush, enjoy yourself - come back here and make sure you see me before I leave.”

“Yes ma’am.”

He sat in the middle size office of his middle sized agent from the talent agency that was interested in working with him. At least he wasn’t in a cubicle.  On his way to Matthew, he walked past a man with an impossible bent to his back and a break in his voice.  He guessed they were about the same age.  

 His agent - younger than himself - who sat across from him in an open white shirt and breathable blue suit was absolutely beaming. Jack didn’t know if it was from an early morning workout, recent cleanse or what he wanted to tell him. Finally, Matthew Stern leaned forward and started to talk, carefully enunciating each word to cleanse himself of his Long Island accent.

“We have good news for you Jack. Very, very good news.”

“Yeah?” Jack leaned forward in his chair, concentrating on the blue eyes and white teeth.  He was still a little groggy.  When he stepped out into the little space that acted as a dining room, the pile of unpaid bills on the round glass table reminded him of the messages on his phone from collectors.  The framed movie poster over the table was his only true contribution to American culture.  

“Want to guess?” After these past fallow years, Jack did not want to guess.  He almost took up Matthew’s plan to turn him into a “mature model” a few months ago.  

“No,” Jack answered.

“Ahhh. No fun. Go on. Guess.”

“No.”  Agents, he thought.  You were never sure what they were up to.  

“Ohh, you artists. Ok. I’ll tell you. We’ve found a production partner for The Beauty of The World and…” Matthew actually raised his hands as a sign for more fanfare to come as Jack was coming to grips with this news.  This was not what he expected.  

“And?” Jack asked.

“And….you get to direct it. And…..”

Oh my god, Jack thought. This is finally happening. After being a hot commodity for six months about eighteen years ago, he thought his career was dead in the water and he was going to have to go back home. 

“And?”

“We got Max Garnet attached to star in it.” Matthew slammed his fist on the middle sized desk he sat at and then raised his arms in triumph. “How about that? Max fucking Garnet! Maximum Max!”

Jack sat back in his chair to take all of this in. He had been holding on to the script for The Beauty of the World as the life preserver for his career, rejected two opportunities to sell the script outright to help pay bills and it was his dream - and perhaps career’s cement shoes - to direct it. His resume didn’t suggest a feature film director.  Now it was happening, but something wasn’t computing.

“Max Garnet? Wow.”

“Yeah. Wow. That’s underselling it a little Jack. One of THE action movie stars - actually just movie stars - of our time.”

“Of course. I love a lot of what he’s done. But, can I ask two questions?”

“Of course. And then we’re going to lunch.”  Matthew drummed his fingers on his desk.  “The good folks at ACA are paying for both of us.  Working on this one for a while, Jack.  AND I owe you a birthday lunch.  Happy belated birthday.”  

“Thank you.” Jack took a breath and wanted to make sure what he said seemed reasonable.  “I thought Garnet was retired. I haven’t seen him much these past years.” He couldn’t remember anything lately, but a series of movie images were flying through his memory. Some of the biggest films in the last forty years. Franchises that employed thousands over decades. An industry to himself.  Max Garnet.

“He didn’t retire,” Matthew answered.  “Smaller movies lately but he wants to be in your movie, Jack! Isn’t that all that matters?”

“It’s amazing to have someone like that in a film. I….I guess my only other question is - for now - is for what role?”

Matthew was shaking his head, as though the idea of the question itself was ridiculous.  

“What role? Don’t be silly. The lead of course. Max Garnet as Henry.”

“The lead? The lead is between thirty and forty years old.”

“So, you fix it in the rewrites. You have a movie to make, Jack. We trust you’ll figure it out. And you’re getting paid to get your baby on the screen. This is no straight to streaming service deal. The plan is to be IN movie theaters.”

The image of his movie and his name on the poster with Max Garnet came to Jack. He smiled. Matthew slapped his hands together and stood up.

“That’s it. That’s it, handsome. You’re getting it.  You just had to trust me, Jack.  I’m always looking out for you.  Fuck. Maybe put yourself in the movie. Come on. Steak. Whiskey. On me.” Jack stood up, legs a little wobbly and took Matthew’s outstretched hand. “A little shock to the system?” the agent asked.

“I, I guess so. It’s been so long. Thank you. Thank you Matthew.”

“You’re welcome, Jack.  You deserve it.  It’s taken too long.  Amanda asked if we could stop by so she could say hello and congratulations to you.  And then, let’s just get a meal.  We still need you to meet the money man.  A friend of Garnet.  They’re a package deal.”

“Oh. OK. Who’s that?” Matthew turned him around and they headed for the door.

“We can talk about that over drinks. We have a reservation. Giddy up, filmmaker.”

Filmmaker. His dream. And what were a couple of rewrites if it got his dream on screen?

Everybody, but the most wretched has something that makes them different, valuable, special.  

Jack Donnelly woke with a yell and a spasm, again.  It was almost the same every night, even if there was a woman next to him in bed.  Tonight, two weeks after his 40th birthday and more than five years since he and Deidre broke up, there was no one.  No one to take the slap to the face and body as his arms and legs jerked outward, no one to bolt awake to the scream, no one to stare into his sweaty face and lost eyes. 

Tonight, it was just Jack.  When he finally realized where he was he took stock of the landscape of his bedroom.  An old AC unit under his window wheezed just enough so he knew it was on.  The sheet and two pillows were on the floor.  On the bed, it was just him and one pillow that had been folded and battered so much it was a beaten down receptacle of rest.  And Jack.  And the sweat.  

He slid off his bed and, fixing his boxers with a tug and a pull, made his way to the bathroom.  It was the dream again.  The dream that most bothered him.  He was in an apartment that looked a lot like the one he lived in Silverlake.  The walls seemed to move in on him as he went from room to room, searching for an exit.  When he looked outside his windows the world was a blur.  He could see it was the same homes, condos, trees, bushes, cars and pools as he was awake, but it was as though someone tried to wipe it away, like a hand to a lesson plan on a blackboard, leaving everything smudged, unreadable.  

The little hallway to the door stretched out in a way that didn’t make physical sense.   The walls weren’t so much moving in on him as they were breathing, elongating, slowing his trek to the exit.  When he finally arrived the door was warm and the knob was hot to the touch.  He could hear the muffled murmurs and stifled yells from the outside.  He knew he had to go out, but was afraid.  Finally, mustering his courage, he grabbed the knob with his right hand, the pain from the heat extending up his arm, turned and pulled.  

And what he saw on the other side caused him to scream and spasm in bed, fully awake at whatever time it was.  On most nights, he walked to the bathroom to relieve himself, wipe down the toilet, wash off the sweat and inspect his ever aging face and body.  What he saw deflated him.  

He was born tall and handsome, with thick dark hair that started at a widow’s peak and ended at his shoulders and blue eyes set inside a face of fine planes, including a long and straight nose that he’d been told a number of times “was the nose of a movie star.”  He wasn’t a movie star.  He was a screenwriter, of one completed film, one lost project and a number of clean ups and collaborations.  He was a director of two shorts, a number of commercials and one episode of a gangster show based, partially, on the produced script that brought him out to Hollywood nearly twenty years ago.  

And he was getting desperate.  He carried his age heavily in the land of eternal youth and sunshine.  The grays at the temple.  The wrinkles at the mouth and corner of his eyes when he laughed.  The slight protrusion of his stomach.  He was drowning in the sea of expectations and envy and his buoy was The Beauty of The World, his script he had been holding on to for years.  Holding on because he would only sell it IF HE was the ONE to DIRECT it.   

His agent asked him to come to his office later that morning.  He had something to tell him about The Beauty of The World.  Jack Donnelly could really use some good news.  It was clear that luck had been against him for a while now.  Maybe more than luck, maybe the world.  Them.  He looked into the mirror and spoke.

“Everybody has something that makes them special, what makes them unique. Me?  Mine?  I’ll do anything - and I mean anything - to stay, to continue, to endure, to stay alive.  

Anything.”

So why give free copies of my novel, Rewrites, away? 

In short, it continues my journey from reader to reader/writer to reader/writer/author.  

Let’s talk about the book itself first.  It started as a dream.  

A bit over a year ago I told myself I wasn’t going back to work.  I was going to write.  I was writing another, untitled book that means a lot to me but needs a lot more work.  A published author friend of mine was going through a manuscript of Night Psalms, the kernel of which became essential to another novel, First Kills.  During that time I had this dream in which I was in the midst of a great storm at a home I didn’t recognize.  In the dream, I didn’t know who I was, wandering around this strange place.  I was dreaming that I didn’t know who I was.  

If you’ve read my articles and decide to read my fiction, it is clear what that dream meant.  About a year ago I was playing at being a writer.  I was talking about it.  I was writing scenes and dialogue and coming up with characters and places.  But I still didn’t understand who I was.  I wasn’t ready to step forward as a writer.  Thinking about that dream made me face that.  Was I serious about being a writer or was it my excuse not to go back to my old career?  And if I was serious, how would I write about that idea, that search for identity?  

Rewrites is the first time I believe I got it right.  

Rewrites is a psychological portrait of a desperate man.  Jack Donnelly is an aging filmmaker who’s barely hanging to the lower rungs in Hollywood.  But he has a dream.  And a script.  And one day that script is bought and green lit by a new studio, including Jack’s ability to direct his first feature film.  

This is it.  His dream project will only fulfill all of his dreams, yes?  No.  Jack’s dream project gets rewritten in ways he never would have guessed and for which he is completely unprepared.  He begins to lose himself in the stress of the film and in paranoia.  And there is always the gun at his bedside.  

What happens?  If you’re interested just reach out by June 30th and I’ll get you a free copy.  

So, with Rewrites, I was able to work through what matters to me.  All in a world that I find fascinating.  Doing research on how films are made was a great joy while I wrote the novel.  Films are, for the most part, collaborative creativity in a very public and risky way, due to the financial structure of Hollywood studios.  

A couple of weeks ago, after numerous revisions, work with a Development Editor, a lot of feedback from Beta Readers and months of querying, I decided to give an ebook of Rewrites away.    

But why would I just give the novel away?  I’ve worked on it for over a year.  It represents much of what matters to me as a writer.  How do we define ourselves?  How does that mean we act?  What happens when other forces outside of our control can change us?  And do?  And it’s a pretty good take on Hollywood and politics, personal and otherwise.  

I’m giving it away because it’s more important for me as a writer to get this story into the hands of readers; to become an author, than it is to make money.  

It’s a stand alone story.  Readers don’t know me.  While a psychological thriller, it leans more into the psychological portrait than on the thrills.  I’m proud of it, though, and I think giving it away gives it a better chance to build a relationship with readers for the future.  It’s a no risk introduction to me and my writing.  

For there is a future plan.  I am in the midst of writing a horror thriller trilogy about vampire vigilantes that starts in 1980s NYC and goes beyond our day.  The debut novel, First Kills is many steps into publishing.  The second, The Dispossessed, is already in the hands of Beta Readers and a Development Editor.  The third, Dark Heroes, is moving along at a pace that has been wonderful to experience.

Rewrites is a stand alone.  First Kills and the Dark Heroes trilogy should find more readers.  But Rewrites deserves its readers.  It deserves a chance.  

The stories have much in common, but that is for another article, about First Kills.  I will just say this.  Much of what I love about Rewrites is what I love about The Dark Heroes trilogy.  It is what I believe readers will love about the stories, the characters and my writing.  

Back to the key thing:

I won’t put Rewrites in a drawer.  

And I don’t want to wait for approval to get it out there.  Technology allowed me to format Rewrites so it sits next to a reader’s favorites in their iBooks or Kindle library.  And I want Rewrites in those libraries.  That’s an honor.  I want to give it the best chance to be read and discussed.  I want feedback on what works and what doesn’t work.  

So for me, giving Rewrites out is the perfect next step to adding the next title to my own series: Reader Writer Author.  Rewrites may never be my biggest book.  It may not be the book I am remembered for.  That said, it matters very much to me.  And stories are to be shared.  

These are exciting days for me and I wait eagerly for feedback from my readers.  I am thrilled to share my work.  

Please follow me for more.      

What I want to discuss now is how I’m taking control of my connection with readers.  

My novels Rewrites and First Kills are complete.  I’ve worked with Beta Readers and Development Editors and refined the stories time and time again.  And now I want to move from writer to author.  And for most of my life I thought an author was someone who had been chosen.  Now I think an author is someone who writes, publishes and finds readers.  

What do I mean?

As a young student of literature I loved to read and hear stories about authors working with publishers.  Jason Epstein and Philip Roth.  Toni Morrison and Angela Davis (before Morrison became a Nobel prize winning publisher herself, she was an editor).  Bennett Cerf and William Faulkner.  And of course Maxwell Perkins.  Helping bring the best out of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and Thomas Wolfe. 

I thought that would be me.  Head to head, letter to letter, hammering away at my masterpiece.  

So, in my head, it went:

 Writer to Agent to Publisher to Bookshelf to Reader,  

And, 

If I followed that path - presto - I would be an author.  

And, as almost every writer will tell you, it’s much more difficult than that.  

I knew the industry was changing.  All industries change and media is one of the fastest to do so.  Consolidation - as I observed in other mediums such as TV and Radio - and the push for higher profits put a strain on what is known as the “Big Five” in Publishing.  So agents became invaluable in discovering talent.  I knew that.  I understood that.  

I’ve spent over a year reading, attending classes, attending conference panels, listening to podcasts and more to understand this world I want to be part of.  

This is what I’ve learned.  

There are five Publishers who control 80% of traditional publishing.  That’s not a lot of ways in, huh?  Just a few gatekeepers.  And years ago they felt that they couldn’t speak directly to most authors.  They didn’t have the resources.  $14B in revenue and they needed to find ways to cut costs.  So, literary agents stepped in.  

The agents are overwhelmed by the amount of material sent to them.  There were approximately 135 thousand books published in the US in 2010.  In 2025?  3.5 MILLION.  Even if you discount AI produced books, it seems to be too massive a jump in workload for any group.  

There are so many writers, so many books looking for a home, and so little time for those in charge.  

So, things get lost.  

And who am I?  I’m a nobody in the industry.  I sold media advertising.  I have 5,000 LinkedIn followers.  I’m working to get my social accounts to 1,000.  I’m not a nationally known politician, movie star, championship athlete or influencer with tens of millions of followers.  I don’t have a story that journalists want to tell.  

I just want to tell stories.  

I’m not getting an agent or editor or publisher to stop and concentrate on me, on the opportunity that my stories might provide them.  It’s an investment they don’t have time to make.  

And I thought I needed approval to be an author.  From an agent, a publisher, a bookstore.  

What I need is the approval of readers.  And there are other ways to get there.  

That’s the other thing I learned.  

The Content Creator Economy has come to writing.  I watched it in video and audio.  I worked with influencers and Youtube creators and podcasters who built empires on themselves, their stories and their ability to connect with their communities. 

They didn’t wait for approval.  

And I just don’t want to wait for approval to be an author.   

I want to take a moment to thank all of the authors who shared their story with me.  Why they self publish.  Why they work through traditional routes.  Why they’re still working to get traditionally published.  It was a wonderful education.  Thank you.   

It’s not an easy time.  That jump in the number of books published?  That coincides with reading rates dropping about 10% in the United States.  

Less demand.  More supply.  Not great for the suppliers.

There are about half the number of book stores there were at the beginning of the 21st century.

And there are about 25X the amount of books in Amazon (just one example) for the reader to choose from since 2000.

So why do it?

Because I love the stories I am telling.  Just like all those other hard working, hard writing and hustling authors. 

And they deserve to be shared.

So I’m giving away copies of my first novel, a psychological thriller called Rewrites about a filmmaker losing touch with reality after his dream project gets greenlit.  And I’m taking the steps to self publish my Horror Trilogy - starting with First Kills - about vigilante vampires that begins in 1980s New York City.  

Will it all work out?  I don’t know.  If I get a call from an agent will I take the call?  Yes.  Will I go that route?  I don’t know.  

All I know is I am more  excited for my career than in over a decade.    

Because I will be an author.  Even if I do most of it myself.  

Follow more for my journey.  

If you are of a certain age and upbringing - and you fall in line - you are expected to have your life in a good place by the time you are in your early thirties.  That was me.  I did what I believed I was supposed to do.  Married.  Two healthy children.  Relatively high paying career where I was in management.  Nice house.  Money for vacations.  Kids’ education should be fine.  Health was fine.  

I regret none of this.  

But I wasn’t happy.  

I could be paranoid.  Angry over insignificant matters.  Constantly casting myself as some victim of some perceived slight.  And without realizing it, I was losing many of the things I used to define myself.  I got divorced.  Struggled with my relationship with my kids.  Went unhappily from job to job.  

And then I found something in me that was buried.  Something lost has been rediscovered.  And writing is driving that discovery.  Or I am finding my true identity through the act of writing.  

Which one?  I don’t know.  Yet.  

As I think through this, I hope I am getting to a better place in my life.  

A better place in my life includes much more reading than I had done for years.  I now realize the stories that grab me, affect me, stay with me are about transformation, reinvention, performance.  They are about the Other.  And the Other is Us.  

This may change.  I have changed.  This is how I now understand my world and my reading.  And it is shaping me as a writer.  

Let me show you.  

Please understand that these choices are mine.  They are completely subjective.  They stretch across a hundred years and multiple genres.  They are distinctly American, even if their characters don’t want that.  In no way am I suggesting that this a definitive read of any novel.  But I think this reading matters.

You may want to suggest that identity and change is in every great novel.  They are called character arcs.  I don’t think so.  Ahab is Ahab all through Moby Dick.  The Compsons are a disaster of a family in The Sound and the Fury.  Their inability to change is what drives their downfall.  Ignatius J Reilly’s belief that he is correct in how he lives his ridiculous life can be found in the first and last page of A Confederacy of Dunces.  And those are three of my favorite novels.  

So what are the novels I have gathered to review through this lens?  Let us start with the oldest - and, for me, the best - novel and that is The Great Gatsby.  Fitzgerald’s novel revolves around a man so disgusted by his provincial life that he reinvents a new one whole cloth, all for the sake of a woman so lost in her material life that it doesn’t matter a whit to her.  The tragedy is not the shooting.  The tragedy is that he thought he needed to become Gatsby to be worthy of Daisy’s love.  The tragedy was the change of identity.  

In another example, you can look at Don DeLillo’s Libra as a man who lives a life of complete disillusionment.   In this (fictional) study of Lee Harvey Oswald, Lee is a small man who believes that he is made for big things.  For historical matters.  So, it becomes quite easy for outside forces to use him to their means.  And it becomes quite easy for the media, for the reader, for you and me, to reduce him to a single moment.  The time in the book depository.  He becomes transformed in his life and then transformed again and again to fulfill someone’s point.  Like in an essay.  Like this one.  

Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mr. Ripley introduces us to Tom Ripley, a man so desperate for any type of life that is not his that he kills to protect who he truly is and kills again to become someone new.  Over the course of Ripley pentalogy we watch a failed actor become a con man, a forger, an impersonator and a serial killer.  He is as comfortable planning Mafia boss assassinations as talking wine and art in his country house in France.  Just don’t ask him about where he came from.  He leaves that behind, like James Gatz and Lee Harvey.  

I said that these novels are distinctly American, even if the characters don’t feel that way.  America is in many ways a new nation compared to the old and great civilizations of Asia, Africa, South America, Europe.  We were a people that were escaping where they came from and aggressively cutting ties with their past.  The country came to prominence based on one of history’s great societal shifts, the idea that power is derived from the people and not from God appointed royal figures.  Lastly, this all happened when media - print - was more available than ever before.

Reinvention.  Self creation.  Escaping from the past.  Becoming someone else.  And letting stories become who we are.  It feels very American to me.  I am drawn to it.    

Now, let us move to horror.  Horror is the genre of my novel First Kills.  Horror will often be more direct in how changes are forced upon a character.  The horror is, at times, how they react.  In Stephen King’s The Shining, Jack Torrance is already a monster.  It sits inside him.  It has been released through drink.  And will be again at The Overlook Hotel.  The Overlook Hotel is much worse than Jack.  But it knows what it has in the struggling writer and in the midst of a winter storm, it allows Jack to release his worst tendencies.  It allows him to become the monster that was his true identity.  

And finally, we look at Interview with the Vampire.  Louis de Pointe du Lac lives in despair when he comes upon his “creator”, the vampire Lestat.  Through the novel, Louis struggles with his new identity, both attracted to the great power that Lestat has bestowed on him and repelled by Lestat’s complete lack of empathy or interest in humanity.  Lestat converts a young girl to a vampire just to keep Louis at his side.  Humans are playthings.  At the end of the book Louis, now over two hundred years old, only seems weary of being trapped in his immortal body.  The horror is the inability to change after the great change.  

The great change.  That is what I thought about when I wrote First Kills and as I work on the Dark Heroes trilogy.  Who are you now?  What becomes of you when you undergo a great change?  What will be your new identity?  Those questions are all around us.  Let’s think about them as we read.  And think about who we are.  

It is the subject of my study and my work.  I am thrilled by it.      

Let me know what you think of my writing and my reading.  I look forward to it.     

My first novel, Rewrites, carries the subtitle Be Careful What You Wish For.

Jack Donnelly is an aging filmmaker who feels himself slipping behind in Hollywood when his dream project is suddenly green lit by a new studio. It’s his script. His film. And for the first time in years, he believes he may finally become the artist he always wanted to be.

Then the rewrites begin.

The studio wants changes.
His movie star wants changes.
Political interests seem connected to the changes.

Slowly, Jack stops recognizing his own work.

And as the pressure builds, he begins questioning not only the film but himself, his reality and the people around him. Eventually, he starts carrying a gun.

I think a lot of us understand that feeling now in one way or another. The pressure to bend. To reshape yourself. To become more acceptable. More marketable. More useful. More obedient.

So what would you do if you were Jack?

What would you give up for your dream?

If you’re interested in receiving an Advanced Reader Copy of Rewrites, head to john-fitzgerald-writer.com and sign up before the end of June.

Thank you.

When I sat with the novel again, with everything that I experienced over the years, things changed.

Because I changed.

I realized the character of a vampire - now Isabella Facia - could STILL capture what I was NOW interested in exploring. First Kills is about what happens when everything is taken from you. It asks what is your responsibility for the power you have. What decisions will you make? Isabella has far more agency than Rachel ever did. And Adam is now a more empathetic person who has made hard decisions about the life he will lead.

I made those changes and it’s now a novel I’m proud to share.

I couldn’t write First Kills when I was in my twenties.

I wouldn’t write Night Psalms today.

We change and our stories change.

Look forward to sharing more.

I feel compelled to share

When I was younger I wrote constantly and loved every minute of it. Then the other parts of my life pushed writing. My family who I love. A career I appreciate.

But the desire to tell stories that grip readers never disappeared. All these years later I’m returning to writing fiction and songs. Here I’ll share that journey and the stories that have emerged from that. It will begin with First Kills, the first novel in the Dark Heroes Horror-Thriller series.

If any of this seems interesting I hope you’ll follow along.

Thank you.