This is not a guide for aspiring vigilantes, but it might inspire you!
Welcome to Poeticule Bay, Maine, a village where justice is scarce, and secrets have deadly consequences. When a gay student is brutally attacked and exiled from his home, the police turn a blind eye. Fueled by rage, Molly Jergins launches a relentless campaign against the school bully and his sinister family.
As Molly’s quest for retaliation spirals into chaos, the lines between hero and villain blur. To hunt monsters, must she become the very thing she despises? In the end, will revenge prove the best success?
This is not a guide for aspiring vigilantes, but it might inspire you!
Welcome to Poeticule Bay, Maine, a village where justice is scarce, and secrets have deadly consequences. When a gay student is brutally attacked and exiled from his home, the police turn a blind eye. Fueled by rage, Molly Jergins launches a relentless campaign against the school bully and his sinister family.
As Molly’s quest for retaliation spirals into chaos, the lines between hero and villain blur. To hunt monsters, must she become the very thing she despises? In the end, will revenge prove the best success?
With the state of the world, something else feels more raw and human than ever: our righteous outrage.VIH touches that nerve in happy ways.
It’s been a long time and a long journey since my last novel.
When I published Endemic, Amazon squelched the launch of the novel. I couldn’t promote it, and Amazon could not be reasoned with. I suspect the title alone got it pushed down in the algorithms. Though sabotaged from the start, eventually Endemic got out there.
Then this happened:
Endemic won multiple awards. That made me feel a bit better.
The Amazon experience left a sour taste in my mouth, though. I love that novel and hated to see it sabotaged. It’s an apocalyptic tale with a fascinating character. It’s also about how people change, and how they don’t. Great stuff, but the launch to readers was strangled in the crib.
Then came the tribulations:
Pain, pain, two hip replacements, pain, and a long recovery.
For six weeks after each surgery, I was prohibited from even crossing my legs or bending over. I had to relearn how to walk and rebuild my broken neural connections. My wife laughed and cried as she struggled to get my compression stockings on me. (If you know, you know the struggle.)
Stuck in bed and working on rehab, I binge watched Justified. I loved that fun distraction, but I was also ingesting the rhythms of interesting dialogue.
That show was set in Kentucky, and VIH is set in Maine. Very different, of course, but I started to hear how my characters might express themselves uniquely. So much of this book draws on my childhood in rural Nova Scotia. There, I felt there was a threat of violence much of the time.
I began to pull from my dad’s litany of odd expressions, too:
“That boy’s got the world by the ass on a downhill drag.” (Good fortune.)
“That smell would drive a dog off a gut wagon.” (Bad odor.)
“You’re young and fulla blue piss…” (A prelude to telling someone to do a chore.)
Characters arose from people I knew. I had material from real life, so I kept pecking away at this big story about a heroine versus a school bully in Poeticule Bay, Maine. (Fans of This Plague of Days will recognize that name.)
My protagonist from VIH, Molly Jergins, began to speak to me.
I resonated with Ovid Fairweather, the protagonist from Endemic. We share some of the same sensitivities. Molly spoke to me in a more visceral way. She was sick to death of bad people getting away with doing bad things. She’s not above good people doing bad things to bad people. We both fantasized about vengeance and the many clever ways we might achieve righteous vengeance. (I think about revenge. A lot. Don’t you? Is it just me? Nah.…)
I wrote and rewrote more as my recovery progressed. I just had eye surgery last week, and I’m happy to say that, as a cyborg, I’m much better than I was. Ironically, with more artificial parts, I feel human again. With the state of the world, something else feels more raw and human than ever: our righteous outrage. VIH touches that nerve in happy ways.
Vengeance Is Hers is not an instruction book for vigilantes, but it will give you vicarious thrills. It will make you giggle at the revenge, big and small, you could visit upon those who have wronged you.
But the feelings go deeper than that.
Beyond the action, Vengeance Is Hers is a story of the bond between a father and a daughter. Dark family secrets and deeply held resentments rise to the surface. The psychological effects of bullying and abuse delve into the mindsets of both the bullied and the abused. The twists, reversals, and betrayals will keep you guessing to the last page.
Vengeance Is Hers is a big book, too!
Molly’s self-destructive addiction to righting wrongs unfolds over a twelve-year span. It’s 448 pages of beach read that will keep you turning pages to discover the fate of characters you’ll grow to love, hate, and laugh about.
This was so much fun to write. With Vengeance Is Hers, I put a movie in your head that I hope you’ll want to read again and again. Enjoy, and thank you for being a reader!
Forgiveness versus Vengeance is one of the central themes of my next vigilante justice thriller. From Luigi Mangione’s actions to burning Teslas, this is a timely topic. Many turn away from these highly publicized acts of violence with little more than a shrug. There are good reasons for this. In the battle between the prefrontal cortex and the amygdala, fear wins. Fear is the emotion poorly hidden beneath anger. It’s a neurological response, and schadenfreude is baked into our brain’s wiring.
“Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering.” ~ Yoda
Yoda is quotable. It’s a good line (and you heard the Yoda voice, right?) However, I think he’s got it backward (which fits his typical grammar). Fear is a protective mechanism. Wariness of dangers increases our odds of survival. Frustration and fear lead to anger and resistance. The Jedi weren’t a bunch of pacifists. Hence, all the cool lightsaber duels. Those Jedi knights were down and out for quite a while but rose again to fight the Empire. I agree, don’t succumb to evil, but don’t be a chump, either.
For Mere Mortals, Forgiveness Isn’t So Easy.
Sixty-seven percent of people surveyed say they believe in forgiveness. Sounds good and upright, doesn’t it? Dig deeper. Fifty-six percent admit they don’t practice that virtue. I don’t blame them. Most would agree that forgiveness is healthy for the person doing the forgiving. However, no one instructs us how to forgive and forget. Instead., we get guilt-ridden platitudes that deny our humanity and our reality.
To err is human, to forgive divine, but we’re no angels.
I have an excellent memory, so how am I to forget? Frontal lobotomy? And if I forgive you your trespasses, do either of us learn anything? By refusing to forgive, I deny the offender the opportunity to trespass against me again. Sounds to me like carrying grudges is a safer course.
I asked my psychologist if she believes in forgive and forget. (When I say “My psychologist,” I refer to She Who Must Be Obeyed, AKA my wife.) She holds a doctorate in psychology and is the most sane person I know. That’s why I was so surprised when she did not hesitate to answer, “No.”
She acknowledges that forgiveness is difficult. In many cases, it’s an unreasonable expectation set by out-of-touch purists. The good doctor offered hope, though. She suggested, “Maybe the best you can do is to get to a place and time where you just don’t care anymore.”
“Or,” I countered, “write a massive hit thriller that’s packed with clever revenge fantasies to plague your real-life enemies!”
She’s going to start charging me for these sessions, isn’t she?
The writing workshop in Toronto is coming up in a couple of weeks. I am preparing to pitch literary agents for Vengeance Is Hers. Four agents I would consider partnering with are at the workshop. I have three others in mind, as well. Part of the prep work is to have the partial ready for their review. I have a sample ready.
Hot tip:
If you are pitching to agents or just want to give away a sample of your work for a book fair, a signing, or some other such trial by fire, get a QR code. I do have a presentation package for agents, but I won’t be lugging around a manuscript like some early 19th century peasant. I’m a modern ink-stained wretch. Instead, I’ll just give the QR code to link to the partial. If they want more, I’ve provided an email for further inquiries.
What’s New?
I have added menus to this website. Above, you’ll find links to my bio and what reviewers say about my work. The pitch and partial for Vengeance Is Hers is found under For Literary Agents. Of course, if you aren’t a literary agent but want a sneak peek of a badass story about a young woman on a righteous quest for revenge, enjoy a taste of vengeance!
One of the pleasures of a vacation is to limit your choices. In our daily lives, we have to make decisions constantly. We have to choose what to do and what to do next. How will we fit in all we’re supposed to do? It often feels like we got too much to cram into our waking hours. Gotta exercise, gotta get groceries, be responsible, shovel snow, pay bills, cook, clean, and deal with a plethora of stimuli (much of it upsetting). The world is a firehose blasting away at the teacup that is your brain. On vacation, all you really have to decide is where and when to eat.Then, it’s that rare and precious commodity: free time.
As reported yesterday, my spouse and I spent most of our time in Cuba as sick as sick dogs. The dark hours filled with coughing and night sweats were the worst. The rising sun brought some peace. We crawled out to the pool’s edge, blew our noses into napkins, and lounged. And we read books.
I’m a bibliophile, but vacation days yield more time for getting lost in books. Uninterrupted days filled with the tasty consumption of words are great days, even when you aren’t feeling your best. In today’s example of something good to read, I suggest Bunny by Mona Awad. This author was new to me, but a glance at the first few pages told me I would enjoy her wordplay. It’s reminiscent of Heathers, the 1988 movie starring Winona Ryder and Christian Slater (and 95% on Rotten Tomatoes, I might add).If you’ve ever felt like an outsider standing too close to a snooty clique, you’ll enjoy all the delicious evisceration of the in-crowd.
No spoilers. I despise spoilers.
Bunny tells the story of a young woman studying creative writing, and she’s surrounded by assholes. Anyone who has participated in a writing workshop will relate to her hatred of the worst people who show up at writing workshops. Her school has more than its fair share of fake, nasty, and cloying student writers.
Awad’s writing style is clever and hip. (Is it okay to say hip? Is that not hip? No? Okay, it’s bussin’! It’s gas! It’s buttah! Cool? Okay. Far out, groovy, and fresh!) I digress. Go read Bunny.
The keys to a great vacation are (A) not having to make decisions, and (B) a good book.Make time for reading when you aren’t on vacation, too. It’s good for your mental health.
My biggest fans got special t-shirts for Christmas.
Things haven’t gone to plan…yet.
I haven’t caught a virus since before the pandemic. Make that: I hadn’t caught anything since before the pandemic. Masks work, but something slipped through. I had forgotten how miserable a virus can be. I ruled out C-19 and pneumonia, but this virus was merciless and my ears are still plugged!
As a doctor friend of mine said, there’s some nasty smutz going around. It’s been weeks of it for me now. That ruined a family reunion, Christmas, my birthday, New Year’s, and as I write this, my head feels like a concrete block. I felt better for a few days, so I was okay for a family vacation in Cuba. Then the virus hit me again. My wife, She Who Must Be Obeyed, got sick, too. However, our kids had a great time, and we did get to spend precious time with them. Best of all, we escaped the polar vortex which swallowed our home on the frozen tundra. The Cuban weather was very agreeable, and I got extra time to read a few books amid all the aggressive napping. (More on the readings tomorrow.)
Moving forwardinto 2025
My original plan was to publish Vengeance Is Hers next month. However, a couple of things are going on I can’t really get into. What I can say is those variables and opportunities have encouraged me to reach out to a few agent about my next novel. Instead of going straight to hitting publish on my own, I have some agents to engage with. I have a few particular agents in mind because I have heard great things about them. The usual route is to make mass submissions to many agents hoping for a bite. I’m more picky than that, and I have options. If it doesn’t work out after submitting to this select handful of agents, I’ll go forward with my original plans.
The struggle is to make the right connection. We have all heard horror stories that can taint our views of literary agents. I am only moving in this direction now for those reasons I can’t get into and because I have personal recommendations from fellow authors.(I also know one personally from when I worked in publishing in Toronto.)I won’t chase agents. There’s no dignity in that. However, metaphorically flirting and seducing the right agent with my literary wares and making them a business partner appeals to me. I’m looking for someone special. Game on.
2025 will have some interesting challenges.
I have a very dim view of where things are going on the international political scene. I’m sure I’ll delve into that here, too, from time to time. On a personal level, I’m uncharacteristically optimistic.I’m confident in the book and my abilities as a novelist. I’m sure our health will improve with time and treatment. I’m excited to see what i can accomplish professionally this year.
I hope you feel the same way about 2025. Whatever strong winds may press us back, let’s keep sailing.
NOTE TO TRAVELERS:If you’ve never been to Cuba, don’t go for the food. We fled there for the weather. I’m a big fan of palm trees, sunshine, and walking in sugar sand.Despite our illnesses, I don’t regret going. There were a few moments of suffering when I desperately wanted to be home in my own bed, but an extremely rare vacation in the tropics was necessary, and mostly beautiful.This was our second trip to Cuba. While it is special, this trip also reminded me how deeply I appreciate the advantages of my snowy home. I feel so fortunate to live in Canada.
I just spent a good part of the day at the hospital. It’s not dire. I had to get in to see an ER doc to rule out pneumonia. Both my wife and I are sick with different things, but we are confident all will be well.No pneumonia!
Happy New Year
As I wrap up the final edits on Vengeance Is Hers, I’ll also dig deeper into the design and marketing stuff (among many, many other things). I don’t plan to post here again until January 14, 2025, and I won’t be available until then.
First goal: Get over this virus. I tested negative for C-19, and I’m picking up a couple of prescriptions in the morning for this cough.
Second goal: Spend fun time with the family and help out She Who Must Be Obeyed.
Third: Final edits and locking in the manuscript.
Until then, friends and fiends, be as healthy and as happy as nature and the laws allow.Or don’t get caught.
