Jeroen ten Berge has done it again!
Murderously Brilliant Covers ...
for my new Sadie novella: Sadie's Guide to Catching Killers
The book will be released in two versions:
twisted and a bit more twisted
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| Twisted |
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| More Twisted |
Saturday, August 23, 2014
Tuesday, August 5, 2014
Sadie's Guide to Catching Killers: Advice from L'il Sadie
What makes Sadie the psycho we know and love?
Find out in my new book
Sadie's Guide to Catching Killers
to be released later this month
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| Possible L'il Sadies in Your Neighborhood |
Once upon a time, Sadie was a little girl ... a very strange little girl. Now, for the first time, her story is revealed in Sadie's Guide to Catching Killers.
Part mystery, part horror, part self-help (for those who'd like to murder someone) this twisted coming-of-age story is told in Sadie's own words.
It will be released as a stand alone (novella) in two versions: R-rated=Rad and X-rated=X-tras, uncut.
For those of you with weak stomachs, this story is not as graphic as Sadie the Sadist. For those of you who adore gore, I apologize for the general lack of it, but in this story Sadie is just getting started.
The story will also be released as part of a boxed set, Six Pack of Sleuths: Comedy Mysteries. With five of my fave funny women authors: Barbara Silkstone, Sibel Hodge, Dani Amore, Helen Smith, and Anne. R. Allen.
Here's a sneak peek, the opening of Sadie's Guide to Catching Killers:
Murder
One
(1991)
My study of murder began in third grade, three days
after Thanksgiving, when my father offed my mother.
You might think committing the perfect murder
requires practice, technique, thought. Daddy’s one skill is dumb luck. He’s a lousy
criminal. Sloppy. Lazy. But, because Mommy took lots of pills (diagnosed
bipolar), the cops called her death suicide.
I found her in the bathtub floating in a pool of
blood.
I don’t think it affected me.
Not really.
I closed the bathroom door, went into the kitchen to
make a turkey sandwich, then I turned on the TV. Not a flat screen. Back in
1991, when I was eight years old, we had a console full of toxic tubes spewing
radiation into our living room.
Sometimes I feel like I’m back there, even though
I’m all grown up and live far, far away. I’m from New York. Not the city, Long
Island. A long strip of land in the Atlantic—takes three hours to drive from
one end to the other, changing from urban to rural until you reach the points,
Montauk and Orient. Then you fall into the ocean.
Too bad I couldn’t drive when I was eight.
Our town is too far from the city to be called a
suburb and not fancy like the Hamptons. This town is blue collar, hard-working
people who provide services to the rich and famous, and a few stray farmers holding
out against developers. Our house looks pretty much like every other on Maple
Street. The lawn is tidy, the front porch neat, windows so polished birds fly
into the glass then drop dead.
I bury them in the backyard with the other bodies.
Most Sundays Mommy and I get up early and go to
church, while Daddy and my little brother stay at home. After church Mommy
makes a giganto lunch, and I help.
Not today.
Today we didn’t eat, because Mommy and Daddy had a
fight. (They yell a lot.) Then Mommy had a headache, and she told me to get her
pills.
Now the house is quiet, like it should be.
My teacher at church says Sunday is a day of rest,
but most Sunday afternoons Mommy gives me chores: cleaning toilets, using a
toothbrush to scrub between tiles, vacuuming dead flies that get caught between
the windows and the screens.
Today I don’t have to do anything, because Mommy’s
in the bathtub.
I climb onto the plush beige couch (our house is
beige; the furniture, the walls, the carpet), rest my head on a beige cushion, and
kick off my sneakers (hot pink Revs with zebra inserts—rad). Usually, I’d untie
the laces, carefully remove my shoes and arrange them side-by-side on the mat by
the front door, the way Mommy taught me, but now I let them tumble from my feet
and land where they will.
I take a bite of sandwich, set it on my stomach.
Mommy would tell me to use a plate, call me a slob
like Daddy.
Donnie, my little brother, comes into the living
room, carrying his kitten and practically strangling it. He grins at me,
displaying the gap in his front teeth. He’s still wearing pajamas, and a smudge of grape jelly stains the bright green brontosaurus on his chest.
“Is Mommy taking a nap?”
“Uh-huh.”
“She’s not in her bed.”
“In the bathroom. Don’t go in there.”
The kitten squirms in Donnie’s arms, revealing its
tiny balls. I guess I should call it a him.
“What you want Santa to bring you, Sadie?”
A
chainsaw, like Daddy’s.
“I don’t know.”
“I want a Cabbage Patch Birthday Kid with brown hair,”
Donnie says.
“Boys don’t get dolls.”
“Why not?”
“They just don’t, dummy.”
Donnie sticks his thumb between his lips and sucks.
If Mommy were around she’d tell him to take that thing out of his mouth, tell
him she was gonna smear his thumb with mustard and eat it like a hotdog.
“I want a red BMX bike,” I say.
Donnie stops sucking his thumb long enough to say, “That’s
really dumb.”
“Not as dumb as you.”
I grab the remote and amp up the TV’s volume, so I
can hear the evil king, Zarkon, ruler of the planet Doom, vowing to destroy
Voltron’s lion robots.
The kitten escapes Donnie’s stranglehold, hops onto
the couch, and sniffs my turkey sandwich. I run my fingers down its back, think
about snipping off its little balls. Mommy said they have to be removed, so the
cat won’t spray. She said big cats squirt this stinky stuff to mark their
territory. I’d like to mark my territory and make this couch off limits to
Donnie. (He just wiped a glob of snot on the seat cushion.) How long does it
takes to drown a cat? Less time, I bet, than it would take to drown my baby
brother.
“What show is this?” he asks.
“Voltron:
Defender of the Universe.”
“Could we watch Sesame
Street?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Chill.”
“I’m hungry.”
I hand him half of my sandwich, my eyes glued to
Princess Allura.
Donnie bites into the bread, spits out the meat.
“I don’t want dead bird. I want PBJ.”
Even at age five, my brother is sensitive.
“We’re out of jelly.”
“Where’s Daddy?”
“In the basement.”
“What’s he doing?”
“How should I know?”
Daddy spends hours in the basement working on stuff
he calls projects. He doesn’t like to
be disturbed. The basement door is next to the kitchen, and I can see it from
the couch. Closed and locked. One time Muffy followed Daddy downstairs and
never came back. Muffy was our Yorkshire Terrier. Donnie and I are forbidden to
enter the basement, except when Daddy makes us go down there for punishment,
and we have to sit in the chair. In our house, the basement is the only door
that locks.
“I’m gonna wake up Mommy,” Donnie announces.
Before I can stop him, he scrambles down the hall
past the kitchen, past the door leading to the basement, the feet of his footed
pajamas catching on the carpet. He stops at the bathroom door.
“Don’t go in there, Donnie.”
“Why?”
His small hand reaches for the knob.
“Cause I said so.”
Muffin (named after Muffy) meows.
(Note:
for the sake of clarity, henceforward, I’ll refer to them as Kitty Muffin and
Doggie Muffy.)
I click off the TV, watch the picture fade.
“I want Mommy,” Donnie whines.
Plump tears roll down his chubby cheeks. Pretty soon,
he’ll wet his pants.
I hop off the couch, crumbs from my sandwich falling
on the carpet, and get to the bathroom door as Donnie shoves it open.
The woman in the bathtub doesn’t look like Mommy.
She’s sort of floating and her face is bloated, greenish like the mask that big
kid across the street (I think his name is Jason) wore for Halloween. Mommy’s
hair is a tangled mess and her makeup is blotchy. She stinks. Bloody water overspills the tub, leaving a pinkish
puddle on the tile. The bathmat is stained brownish red. I wonder when the
maggots will show up. I wonder if they’re inside Mommy now, writhing, twisting, turning, as they eat their way out.
Donnie wails, his small fists digging into his eyes.
I lead him away from the tub, and we back out of the
bathroom staring at what used to be Mommy, pull the door shut till the catch
clicks.
Then I go to the kitchen, climb onto a stool so I
can reach the wall phone’s receiver, and call 911.
Monday, July 28, 2014
Michel Robertson Jr--5 Question InQusition
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| Dangerous Psychopath |
While we’re hanging out (little does he know that cocktail I just gave him contains a powerful sedative—I don’t use poison, because it
taints the meat), I asked him 5 Questions ... let's see if either of us survive.
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| All 4 Episodes, just $2.99 |
Sadie: First of all, psycho, how did you break in here?
Michael: Hi Sadie! Thanks for leaving the window in your bedroom unlocked, it slid open with no problem. I climbed right in. Sometimes they stick…
Sadie: Stop yelling, and drink your cocktail. I see you have a killer deal going (the only reason you're still living). You’ve just packaged all four episodes of Transit together, so
readers can find them in one place.
Michael: Yes,
it’s very cool that Transit is now available as a stand-alone novel. I hope
readers will enjoy it and have some fun! More fun than the characters,
hopefully! I still feel bad for what I did to some of them.
Sadie: Michael, you're still yelling. Do you have a hearing problem? I'm going to ask you 5 Questions, and your survival depends on how you answer.
Q1: When did you first realize
that you weren’t normal? Preschool? Kindergarten? Elementary School? Or have
you not figured that out yet? In other words … when were you first drawn to
horror?
Michael: When
did I realize I wasn’t normal? Wait, is it not normal to smile while the
on-screen bad guy slices up the pretty blond girl and wears her ears on a
necklace? Hmmm… Interesting. In all honesty I’ve had a fascination with horror
and the macabre ever since I was a kid. Even when I couldn’t handle it
(sleepless nights with sweat-soaked sheets, where the nightlight was never
bright enough and mornings could never come fast enough) I still loved horror
films. I don’t know why… It’s just part of me I guess. The same way Nicholas
Sparks likes to make at least one of the happy people die and cause all the
ladies to cry. Isn’t that abnormal too?
Sadie: Q2: Sounds like you're a masochist. My kind of guy.
Transit begins with the end of a dream
vacation and a nightmare ride from the airport. Just wondering how you got the
idea for this story … did you get this idea while you were traveling, did you
work as a van driver, or are you just deranged?
Michael: You
calling me deranged? Pot. Kettle. Black. By the way, whatever’s in the oven
smells great.
Sadie: Thanks, a neighbor stopped by earlier.
Michael: Huh ... To answer your question, yes.
I did actually get the idea for this book while traveling. In fact, the whole
opening scene of Transit is based almost exactly off a trip my wife and I took
to the Dominican Republic last fall. The flight got in very late, and it was
drizzling and cold. The shuttle stops were mostly deserted, and when ours
finally arrived and we climbed in (the only ones in the van), I couldn’t help
but think what a vulnerable position we were in, and that we were basically
trusting our lives with the stranger up front. Then my gears started turning.
Sadie: So you're married. That's too bad. But, come to think of it, that's never stopped me.
Q3: You are one HELL of a fine
writer, and unless a computer chip in English literature has been implanted (at
great cost) into your brain, I suspect you’ve been writing for some time. How
long have you been writing? What else have you written? And what are you
working on now?
Michael: Actually,
I do have the chip. I’m a beta tester, so the price was FREE! There are some
side-effects though. Last night my wife asked me to call the girls in for
dinner and I went outside and accidentally screamed 12 lines from Romeo and Juliet through the
neighborhood. My neighbor’s name is Romeo. It was embarrassing.
Sadie: I'm impressed. Can you also recite lines from MacBeth?
(Michael's nodding, but his eyes look a bit bleary.)
Michael: What? Sorry. I feel kind of weird.
Sadie: You are.
I asked, how long have you been writing?
Michael: I’ve
been writing semi-seriously to seriously for about the last five or six years.
The beginning of that time was working on a novel that will never see the light
of day, and after that I’ve released three novels (Including Transit) and a
handful of short stories and a collection. Most everything is in the horror and
suspense genre. I’m about to start a brand new book, actually. I’m still
piecing it together in my head, but it’s going to be more of a mystery, I
think, which is something I haven’t tried yet, and am looking forward to.
Hey,
is the room starting to spin?
Sadie: Nope.
Q4: Who is this guy Dan
Dawkins who claims to be writing as you
under his name? Are you
schizophrenic? Do you suffer from multiple personality disorder. Why do you
find it necessary to write under different names and confuse your readers?
Michael: Dan
is a bad man who did some very bad things. He confided in me, hoping I would
tell his tale, and I did to the best of my abilities.
I’ve
actually been asked this question very frequently – Readers wanting to know
“Why Dan Dawkins” and “Is Dan a real person?” – So I ended up writing a blog
post of my own about why I used the name Dan Dawkins for some of my work. You
can read it here
Sadie: So you made up a phony identity to gain sympathy from unsuspecting readers? (You really are a psycho.) Have another cocktail.
Q5: I’m pretty sure you
read a lot, because you can write. If you had a chance to torture one of your
favorite authors, who would you choose? And what would be the method of
torture? (Please describe in detail.)
Michael: I’d
bring in Dean Koontz and ask him repeatedly why all his new books can’t be as
good as the Odd Thomas series. I’d tie him to a chair in a pitch-black room and
make him listen to the audiobook of 50 Shades of Gray over and over… only I’d
cut out all the sex scenes.
Sadie: I'm revising what I said before. You are definitely a sadist.
How are you feeling? You look like you're going to pot, which is, of course, legal here in Colorado. Not that I have any, but you're about ready for this pot on my stove.
Michael: I’m starting to feel a little tired, do you mind if I
lay do—
Sadie: Not at all. Are you into power tools ... I think he's out.
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| DO NOT ACCEPT A RIDE FROM HIM |
If you're still reading this, you're obviously sick, so you'll want to check out more from Michael. Contact him:
Friday, July 11, 2014
Advice from Sadie: 10 Signs Someone is a Lowlife Liar
I'm working on a new book:
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Sadie's Guide to Catching Killers
(A Sadie Novella)
Prequel to Sadie the Sadist
The story will explore how Sadie becomes the girl we know and love. And it will include helpful advice like:
10
Signs Someone is a Low-Life Liar
They say it takes one to know one. Guess that’s why I’ve
become good at detecting when someone is a lying slime bag. Here are a few tips
I’ve picked up over the years. (Too bad I didn’t know this stuff when I was a
kid. Might have saved me a lot of trouble.)
Note:
You may also find this information useful if, like me, you’re working to
improve your dissimulation skills.
1. You
ask a question, and the liar repeats your question using your exact words, giving himself more time to concoct his story. For example, I ask my father: Did you kill my mother? He says: Did I kill your mother? (Thinking,
thinking, thinking.) No, Sadie. I did not kill
your mother. (Zero points for creativity, Dad.)
2. Notice
the use of did not instead of didn’t,
giving the denial extra emphasis. That’s
called non-contracted denial, another clue that my father is a lying scumbag. My rule
of thumb: No Contractions=Contradictions=BS.
3. If
you confront the dirty dog with what you believe may be a lie and he starts panting
heavily or his breathing gets shallow, don’t trust him as far as you can throw
a stick. (Sweating doesn’t prove he’s lying. He may just be nervous or forgot
his antiperspirant.)
4. Liars
frequently use euphemisms, filtering harsh reality through a soft focus lens. I
would never hurt your mother (a
gentler word than kill); I borrowed (embezzled) the money; I think you
may belong in a correctional facility, Daddy Dearest (MAY YOU ROT IN HELL, SCUM BUCKET).
5. Constant
eye contact can be a sign of lying, especially if it’s unblinking. A person
speaking the truth looks away about 60% of the time. Do snakes blink?
Absolutely not. I recall only one instance when an honest person didn’t blink
at me. His eyelids had been removed.
6. A liar repeat words or phrases, not because he doesn’t remember what he said—because he's trying to convince you that he's telling the truth. Or maybe, trying to convince himself. My advice:
err on the side of caution—if someone repeats himself, chances are it’s not due to Alzheimer’s.
7. A liar provides too much information. Instead of getting to the point, he tells the cops all about the hoagie he got from Monty’s Deli—roast beef, cheddar,
onions, tomatoes, lettuce, hold the pickles, heavy on mayo and mustard. This is
an attempt to appear open and honest, when anyone with half a brain can tell he's full of it. (Not just the hoagie.)
8. Feet offer telltale signs of lying. A liar may
shuffle his feet, exposing a desire to escape. Or his feet may point toward the
door, another indication that he would like to make an exit. If you want to
sniff out liars, a shoe fetish can be helpful. Personally, I prefer high
performance sneakers for accelerated lying and fast getaways.
9. When
a person puts his hand over his mouth, yeah he could be yawning, but chances are there’s something he doesn’t
want to tell you. Instinctively covering vulnerable body parts like the neck, stomach, or my personal fave, the penis, is a sure sign of lying (or possibly a need to use the men's room), so if you want to appear truthful expose yourself.
10. My
number one way to determine if a person is lying is to pay attention to gut feelings. You could say I'm hungry for the truth, and liars really rev my appetite. Lie to me, and you could show up on my menu. I find that to be a good deterrent.
Okay, Sadie, you may be saying, I've determined so-and-so is a liar ... how do I secure a confession?
Good question.
I recommend
torture. (For preferred methods, please check out my book, Sadie the Sadist.)
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| Daddy's Favorite Chair |
Sadie Says: Torture is the spice of life! (and death)
Tuesday, July 1, 2014
Win a Kindle Fire!!!
Sadie's Celebrating the 4th
with a
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(condom not required to enter)
Win a Kindle Fire
from the Kindle Book Review
and participating authors
WHEN: July 1-7
GRAND PRIZE: A 7" Kindle Fire HD
Second Prize: $100 Amazon Gift Card
Third Prize: $100 Amazon Gift Card
You just have to LIKE and FOLLOW
easy
find out more
at
The Kindle Book Review
(See the Rafflecopter Entry at the Bottom of This Blog)
Sadie Says: 7 inches of HOT FUN could be yours
(See the Rafflecopter Entry at the Bottom of This Blog)
Sadie Says: 7 inches of HOT FUN could be yours
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