Today, my latest book  The Acquaintance went on sale. For one week, it will be sold for the low, low price of 99 pennies! Of course, here in the digital age, you don’t have to scrounge around for 99 pennies. You can just use your Amazon account and download it to your reader, and your credit card will figure out how to give Amazon 99 pennies. Pretty nifty, huh?

It’s a relatively short read but it’s slightly over 50,000 words, which is considered to be the minimum novel length. But come on, not bad for 99 pennies!

To get an idea of the story and writing style, I offer this excerpt.  Hope you enjoy it!

(Click the picture below to go to the Amazon buy link!)

______________________________________________________________________________________  

It happened again. Footprints formed before his stunned eyes overabout 150 yards across the field, one ahead of the other. This time they weren’t passing along the side of the house. This time they made their way toward the window. Coming at him.  One after another, pressing their way into reality with silent “pops!”

Jonah flew into a rage. He ran quickly to his coat, hat and gun. He gathered these items in his arms in one scoop. His gloves he handled with more care. Seconds  later he was out the door, haphazardly  dressed, his gun on a strap and hanging loosely over his shoulder. His gloves covered  his hands from his wrists to the tips of his middle fingers. 

Walking around to the rear of the house, Jonah made his way across the field, walking in the direction from which the footprints had come. He could see them up ahead. There were tracks leading to his picture window, that was for certain. They seemed to have originated from somewhere in the middle of the field. No longer were they forming in real time. Jonah marched forward, following the tracks into the open field,  tromping through the snow in his street shoes. He didn’t want to waste time putting on his boots and he was regretting that decision; his feet were freezing. Though he could see no one, he knew someone had to be there (Something?). Despite what his eyes told him, footprints didn’t create themselves.

By trekking across the middle of the field, he was abandoning all the precautions he had taken when he ventured out yesterday, precautions he had also neglected on his return  trip back to the house. Bad habits, laziness, outright foolishness had come to describe his work. Jonah realized all this but he forgave himself. By and large, his gangster days were finished. He was retired, but he needed to make just one more kill. And at the moment, his rage made him feel invincible, even to bullets that just might happen to come his way from inside the surrounding  woods. Yesterday’s Jonah was blinded by a similar rage. Today’s Jonah was a different man. Yes, he was terribly sick (he was short of breath throughout his walk) and over-anxious to catch whoever was stalking him, but he would think clearly this time. He would keep his wits. It wouldn’t be long now, since the trail of footprints were coming to an end. Jonah saw a pair of hightop gym shoes at the end of the trail. Sitting there as if they had always been in that exact spot, perhaps like one of the trees ringing the field.

They were as white as the snow that surrounded them, which might have been why he hadn’t seen them from the window. Still, none of this made any sense. Shoes couldn’t walk without a body, but the tracks stopped where the shoes stood. Jonah could only conclude that whoever had been wearing them ditched them before running off into the woods. However, there were no tracks leading into the trees indicating such a thing happened. All physical evidence pointed to the actual existence of a walking pair of shoes that more properly belonged on a basketball  court, not on the snowy grounds of his hideaway.

They are trying to fuck with me! Whoever is trying to kill me is trying to drive me crazy before they go on for the kill. 

Jonah approached the shoes slowly. Could there be a bomb attached to them somehow? Hadn’t a terrorist tried to blow up a plane by starting his shoes on fire, forcing travelers to remove their shoes at security checkpoints in airports ever since? He crouched down. He choked down a cough, fearing that its sound could set off the potential explosives. Carefully, he extended his hand . He would just press down on the rubber front tip of the shoe, just to make sure they were real. To make sure that…

Something happened.

Jonah recoiled and fell on his rear. His face was soaked with sweat. He was dizzy…and afraid. For the first time in many, many years, he admitted to himself that he was scared. 

The shoe hadn’t blown up. If it had, this situation would have made more sense, would have at least conformed to the laws of the universe. Instead, the shoe backed away, moving as if it were pulled by some invisible force. All Jonah could do is look on in amazement, his eyes fixed not only on the left shoe  now several inches out of line with its right counterpart, but also on the track line that the shoe had left in the snow after it slid across its surface. 

Jonah sat there in the snow, dumbfounded. If he were to get up, stand on his own two shoes, what then?  Would he move in on this pair of high tops? Was it these shoes that were his enemy, his target for termination? Seriously? How pathetic!

 

Perhaps he would simply back away, or even run away (he never ran.) This was the situation he found himself in…really? Debating on whether or not to retreat from a pair of fucking shoes? Oh, how he would rather have someone pointing a gun to his head. That would have made sense. He wouldn’t have to fear an approaching bullet, because a bullet would do exactly what it was supposed to do. No mystery, no surprise. But these shoes, they were doing the impossible!

The impossible suddenly became even stranger. The shoe closest to him, started to tap. Up/down, up/down the tip went, pushing itself in and out of the snow. It was the tap of a waiting person, like a pen against the desk at an office meeting, waiting for the boss’s decision.  An empty pair of shoes, waiting for Jonah to get up off his ass, waiting for him to make his move.

Mesmerized, he watched the tapping of the shoe, transfixed. It was nearly hypnotic, like when a person stares at a watch on a chain swinging back and forth, back and forth.  

Maybe that’s it, he thought. I’m hypnotized. All this is happening in my mind!

As if in response, the tapping shoe dug deeply into the snow. Coming back up, it kicked snow into Jonah’s face. He felt the stinging cold and wiped the wetness out of his eyes. Real sensations. Real snow on his face. That kind of assault would wake anyone out of a trance. If indeed he had been in a trance, he was awake now and still the shoes were there, causing mischief. 

Sometime when he had been wiping his face, both shoes turned the opposite direction. They walked away from him toward the line of trees, leaving tracks in their wake. Jonah got back on to his feet. He approached the tracks and crouched over, examining one of the footprints closely. These were the same tracks he saw yesterday. He straightened up and watched as the creepy pair of shoes walked out of sight into the forest.