My latest novel, The Dead Kids Club, is now available as a paperback on Amazon.com. This is actually the first book I finished when I turned my writing efforts to novels a while back, but it's being published after Near Death, my collaboration with Arnold Rudnick and Loyd Auerbach. I had tried to write various novels over the years, before, during, and after the time I was working in Television, but crafting a novel is a much different exercise from writing a half-hour teleplay. When I did reach the point when I knew it was time to finally take another run at it, the idea for this novel came to me--believe it or not--in a dream. Or rather, a nightmare. The idea actually disturbed me, and made me confront emotions I would never want to experience in real life, but the story was there, I could see it unfolding in my mind, so I decided to put it to paper (or computer screen, as is the case these days) and find out what journey the protagonist would lead me on. I detail in the Author's Note at the end of the book what that journey looked like -- but I won't go into details here as it does contain spoilers.
One thing I can tell you is that I included a character that I had been kicking around for a long time. His name is Eddie Horne, and he was actually part of one of those previous false starts I had taken years earlier. Eddie is an interesting guy to me. He's a crime writer, someone who stalks the courtrooms and the periodical rooms of libraries for that big story that will be on par with Truman Capote's In Cold Blood.
"Who goes to libraries anymore?" you may ask. Well, Eddie is a Luddite. He avoids technology as much as he can. He doesn't own a cell phone or a computer and writes on a manual typewriter. He manages to interface with the modern world with the help of a young woman named Geo (who doesn't appear in The Dead Kids Club, but will debut in another book coming out later this year called The Tenth Ride.)
I put this book into a category I call "everyman thrillers," stories about ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances. The characters are not spies or ex-special forces operators, or brilliant detectives. They are regular Joes and Janes who find themselves facing situations any one of us might encounter in our day-to-day lives. If you would like to read other books in this genre, I would point you to the late Rachel Caine's series that starts with Stillhouse Lake.
I hope you enjoy this tale "From the Files of Eddie Horne," and also check out the popular "A Raney/Daye Investigation" series of which Near Death is the first book. Please also visit me on Facebook @WrittenByRichHosek and follow me on Twitter @RichHosek and sign up for my email list at https://wwww.RichHosek.com.
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