In the midst of near-about the nastiest of times, I come again with my seemingly never-ending invocation to maybe utilize your debit card for good measure and buy my novel, “Brown-Eyed Girl With A Cold Corona,” self-published a couple of years ago by Outskirts Press.
The Amazon/Kindle page is here.
My author’s page at Outskirts is here.
Original ‘Published‘ post in March 2022 here.
A quick 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.
Of course, to be honest/fair — that’s my daughter’s critique. Also in truth, I haven’t yet sold one single copy, despite these posts beseeching what few readers this blog attracts (beyond spam) to please, please put down a few bucks on my most-likely first-and-only novel/book.
I’ve posted one of these book-buying plea-posts usually every couple of months or so since the ‘Corona‘ publication — last attempt is featured here.
Regardless of the pathetic whine, the book is pretty good (I think so myself) and is worth the few dollars. Yet in that honest/fair/truth ambiance, ‘Corona‘ probably was more therapy for me than anything else.
As I wrote last May:
Although a work of fiction, the storyline scenario is personal. A rough first draft was written in the summer of 1994, a mirror of my life at that time — mundane, regular life shit was ‘tweaked‘ to create/reflect a ‘horror/ghost story‘ ambiance — and after several re-writes, editing jobs was typed-up/hard-copied/storied into a Poor Richard’s Press cardboard box, where it remained for nearly 20 years. Despite some doubts about publishing — in many ways, that original ‘Corona‘ draft was a type of therapy then (30 years ago was a time of way-way-heavy change for me) and maybe should have remained locked up.
However, four years ago the manuscript was transferred from Comic Sans script on paper to disc. The rest is history with publishing in March 2022.
Overview details of the novel’s storyline:
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.
Riff the cover– front and back:
Did I mention the Amazon/Kindle page is here?
As if:
Debit card use, or not, yet once again here we are…
Now back to our normal shitty, infamous programming — Kamala Harris on nowadays getting enough sleep:
“I wake up in the middle of the night usually these days, just to be honest with you. … I work out. I try to eat well, you know. I love my family, and I make sure that I talk to the kids and my husband every day. These days, my family keeps me grounded in every way. … We cannot despair.”
Are we there thus far?