"The Fat Cat" Now Live on Amazon

I think I know why I don't make date notations on a manuscript when I'm working on a fiction project. Be too depressing to see how long it takes me to complete stuff. I think The Fat Cat started around 2010 or so when the idea of a dead dancer found in the dumpster of a strip club came to me. And I wanted to write it from the perspective of a strong female protagonist. I named her Ellie McCrary and made her bartender/manager of a gentleman's club. This first sentence came to me that introduced Ellie:

I hadn’t seen that good-lookin' motherfucker for almost a year when he walked into The Fat Cat with his partner to ask me about the dead dancer found that morning in our dumpster.

So the point of view would be first person from Ellie's eyes. And heart. So I started wondering about Ellie. How did she become a manager of a strip club? One thing led to another. It's a short book, barely 40,000 words. I wanted to do a noir mystery, but if you read it and get to the end, you tell me what it is.

But I like Ellie. I like the world I created for her. I feel empathy for her pain and I admire how she works her way out of it. I think there are a lot of interesting discoveries and characters awaiting a reader of The Fat Cat. Hope you might be one of them.

A huge thank you to Kansas City graphic designer Kirk Buster (pictured here) for coming up with the book cover: a typographic visual approach I never would have dreamed up. But that's why we should use professional designers.

Short Story "Confidence" Published by New Digital Publication "Eleven to Seven"

Thanks to an alphabetical listing, my short story "Confidence" is the first story listed in a new digital publication "Eleven to Seven." I think we're going to see more and more of these sorts of creative outlets open up. I hadn't published "Confidence" myself, so I am glad it has now found a home. The author who gives away his fiction for these sorts of endeavors hopes exposure to the published piece prompts a reader to search for more of his or her work.

I wrote "Confidence" when I was in my twenties. I was exploring the short story environment. I thought the piece of fiction at less than 500 words worked well, but it was never accepted to the literary journals where I submitted it. And so it sat in the file cabinet for, well, decades now.

I think it shows what can be accomplished in the short format. A character is established and something life-changing occurs to him. The challenge is to make it occur for the reader in a convincing and connecting sort of way. Hope you'll check it out.