Welcome to my little corner of the internet. In this space, I will do my best to entertain and educate those of you who have intentionally come here to learn a little more about my writing or my life, as well as anyone who stumbles on this space not knowing who I am or anything about my work as a writer.
It’s a beautiful mid-autumn day in New York and winter is knocking on the door. Although the sun is shining brightly on the red and gold and orange leaves that litter my back lawn, a cold spell is coming and there is snow in the forecast. I did say autumn, yes. It’s the type of day that makes me want to walk in the quiet solitude of some deeply wooded place, someplace where the blanket of fallen leaves muffles my footsteps, perhaps one that holds secrets, perhaps one in the North woods of Wisconsin.
For those of you who have read my debut novel, DEAD GIRLS, that is the setting where the ancient Native American legend of the Wendigo lives on. It is the place where Chris Carter and Jimmy Vale, first encounter the Cleaner, the old, ancient man (is he a man?) who inhabits those woods and introduces them to an evil that they thought only existed in movies or campfire tales.
Here is an introduction to The Cleaner from the prolog of DEAD GIRLS, which takes place 165 years before Chapter One:
The man smelled like dead animals, as his house did a few days after his mom had skinned a kill. It was an unnatural odor of rot and decomposition, but Elijah was not repelled, he was drawn into it. The old man’s skin was the ash gray of death, it pulled taut against his bones and gave him the appearance of a recently dug up corpse. His sunken eyes were devoid of color. He opened his arms in a welcoming gesture and Elijah folded into the man’s embrace. The blood that covered him smeared the man everywhere. The old man did not seem to mind and when Elijah lifted his eyes to look at his face he looked to be in prayer with his head turned up to the sky and his eyes closed. They never spoke but the boy felt a kinship, a partnership, as he never had before. He sensed there was to be something special in this joining and for the first time in his life, he knew he was safe.