Once again throwing caution and good taste to the wind, I seek on a late-afternoon Saturday an indulgence as here’s another plea to please, please buy my novel, “Brown-Eyed Girl With A Cold Corona,” self-published two years ago by way of Outskirts Press.

The Amazon/Kindle page is here.
My author’s page at Outskirts Press is here.

One review:

Not since the Time Travelers Wife has a story tugged at my heart, f*** with my head, and left me so chilled, haunted and thoroughly impressed. A vivid, romantic and ultimately chilling debut, I sincerely hope this author doesn’t stop here. A new, genre bending talent has been unleashed and I personally can’t wait to see what he comes up with next.

This is the 14th edition of such an invocation to purchase my first (and most likely) one and only novel.

A quick read, a first-person fictional account of a short period experienced 30 years ago. First draft was written in the summer of 1994 and the manuscript lay quietly in a cardboard box until close to the nowadays. The last plea to purchase it was here (click backward from there to view previous cries for shameful, financial indulgence).

Summary:

Spring break mid-1990s in a small California beach town. A middle-aged man suffering a ‘mid-life crisis’ meets a young woman while out barhopping with a friend, and in less time than it takes for a few strokes of a Corona bottle, she creates an emotional whirlpool that will threaten his sanity. Yet will eventually lead to uncovering a murder.

Narrated in nearly-stream-of-consciousness by the man as he spends the next couple of days floating through a movable bubble of strange, but wondrous daydreams beyond his imagination, spiced by illusions of the young woman. Engulfed within those hallucinatory outings still churns the ‘crisis’ he is experiencing — divorce after a longtime marriage collapsed, then financial ruin, followed by guilt over not being there for his children, chaos made the worse by booze.

A mental state also intensified by his desire to creatively write again, dabbling even in poetry, a literary form he hadn’t messed with for near two decades. And also discovering he can cry too easily.
Instead of employment at a level with his age, his life’s work, and education, he’s chief night cook at a popular Italian pizzeria in Pismo Beach, an old, old guy compared to his way-youthful co-workers. However, he develops a knack for the phrase, ‘Yeah right,’ and the music of 4 Non Blondes.
Spring break at a pizza joint is beyond the concept of pandemonium, yet he handles the pressure, though, in a whining-like poise. Despite the restaurant getting slammed, and all the rush, disorder, and craziness that comes from it, the young woman makes two visionary visits, once playing out the scene at the bar — near-insane situations he conceals by playing dumb, which as it turns out, is quite easy.
Along with the cook’s job, he also occasionally prepares legal documents for his friend from the bar, a lawyer who’s reeling through a similar ‘crisis’ of divorce, and child guilt, who can’t seem to stay sober. In a short time, the two had developed an intense camaraderie of oddball misery — listening to their conversations one would think they were illiterate rednecks, cussing everything, and using the most-horrible grammar. Nonetheless, they’re ‘best buds,’ so in the words of the cook/writer’s 15-year-old daughter, with whom from time to time also shares a toke or two off a joint.

Two days following the meeting in the bar, and after a county courthouse visit to file a motion in a nasty divorce case, he encounters the young woman on the sidewalk, finds her to be much older in age, and too, carried a long-forgotten footnote tied to his distant past. A sensual trek through a seemingly hallucinogenic-like wormhole into a nostalgic neighborhood fabricated from a youthful, maybe more-secure time, generates an unraveling criminal scenario.
In like manner, he faces an abhorrent sacrifice in obtaining justice for that story.

A mystery is a mystery until it’s not. Visually written, “Brown-Eyed Girl With A Cold Corona” is a quick-paced exploration of life and love through the years, even beyond murder, with knowledge of the crime elucidated by the murder victim.

As a ploy — front/back cover:

Even pandering from my generation’s spokespeople:

Did I mention the Amazon/Kindle page is here?

Thanks anyway for the indulgence, for a bestseller, or thrift-store reject — yet once again here we are…