Random & Entirely Coincidental

I just posted an excerpt--the first three chapters--of my second novel, "Random & Entirely Coincidental," on my other blog. Check it out here. While I don't apologize for the mature subject matter of my work, "Random & Entirely Coincidental" takes it to a whole new level.

I've had an agent for the past five years--and I was working on "Random" when Scribe Agency took me on as a client--so I guess it's been a little over three years since I dotted the final i and crossed the final t. "Random" was an intentional departure from my first novel. While "The Anguish of Angus Bluefeet" approached some mature subject matter, I felt like I had held back on some of the most powerful scenes...particularly those as they relate to a man's penchant for sexual obsession.

I was also reading a lot of Jim Thompson at the time. Pulp writer of such classics as "Savage Night" and "The Killer Inside Me," according to Stephen King, Thompson "went running into the American subconscious with a blowtorch in one hand and a pistol in the other, screaming his goddamn head off."

While Thompson's stories--filled with unredeemable characters--were considered lurid and quite disturbing to his readers at the time (the early fifties), I started thinking of how different they would be if he were writing today...when pretty much anything is fair game. So that's the mindset I had when I was writing "Random & Entirely Coincidental." And while I'm making no comparison between my work and Thompson's, I certainly enjoyed writing "Random" with his stories in mind. My characters are certainly unreliable and verging on unredeemable, but I'd like to think I gave them a little light at the end of the dark road...to help them find their way home.