It's my first book. It's a body horror rom-com. Isn't that adorable? I think it's pretty good, and I crap on myself all the time. So if I think it's pretty good, so will you. I KNOW it's loads of fun and it'll make you laugh. If I can just use the word "it" a few more times, my day will be complete. Well, now I've made it hard. YES! I did IT.
Here's a short summary:
VIC MOSS, an aspiring Lothario who's set his romantic crosshairs on a clickbait writer named Tanya, agrees to test-drive a prosthetic hand that promises to evolve into something that looks totally real. Of course, the hand develops sentience, eventually extricating violently and growing into Vic's clone. What follows is a desperate game of cat and mouse. New-Vic acts on the impulses inherited from his progenitor, namely: score with Tanya. While Vic, convinced his clone will land him jobless or in jail, divides his time between life mitigation and a homicidal revenge quest. But, can a giant dipshit successfully combat the perhaps better part of himself?
Here's an excerpt from near the beginning:
Vic’s right hand, the puffy one, stayed hidden under the veil of table and cloth.
​
“Um, hello? Was this in Bagdad?” She’d asked this twice, hadn’t she.
​
He used Kenjutsu Power to refocus and re-ground himself in his surroundings. He sat in a booth. He'd half-hugged her as she sat down. She smelled sweet as frosting, mmm, and didn’t appear to notice he kept his right hand tucked into his jacket pocket.
​
“24 clicks out from Baghdad,” he said. “118 degrees Fahrenheit. More than 140 inside my gear. On my knees with an AK-47 pointed directly at my temple. At that range it would blow a hole through me the size of your”—eyes briefly on her cleavage— “head. I had no doubt in my mind that I was going to die—"
The busboy interrupted to refill water and mouth-breathe while gazing at the lovely tattoo on Tanya’s shoulder: a cursive “NAMASTE” under colorful hibiscus flowers.
​
Tanya smiled up at him. “Will you ask our waiter to bring another Chi -Chi?” To Vic: “Do you want another Chi -Chi?”
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“Yeah, I’ll take a Chi -Chi.”
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The busboy nodded and toddled off.
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Tanya knocked on the checkered tablecloth, drawing Vic’s attention back. “So? You were going to die?”
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“Right, uh, okay, I could have just lowered my head and let it happen, but I thought ‘I’m going out a hero, I’m going while there’s still courage in my’”—a sliver of ice trilled up to his shoulder—“‘heart!’”
​
Tanya’s eyes glittered with suspicion, but Vic didn’t notice, heading as he was for the big story climax. “So I did that thing where you look behind someone like ‘hey there’s something terrible behind you!’ and in the second it took to him to figure out I was BS-ing him, I’d slashed his shins open with my Swiss Army knife.”
Her only response was a cocked eyebrow. Still, Vic pulled the chain out of his Dwight Yoakam t-shirt to show her the red dangling knife, right next to his dog tag. “I’m also a kendoka.”
​
“And that is?”
​
“I practice Kendo sword fighting.”
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“What a story.”
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“I still dream about it.”
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She loudly sucked the remnants of her Chi -Chi, then said, “My mom used to sleep with a lot of vets in the nineties, and this one guy had such bad nightmares that one time she woke up and he was choking her. It’s not like that, is it?”
​
“No ma’am, I whimper occasionally. In a very attractive way.”
​
“Ma’am?”
In honor of the book's vibe -- Annie Hall meets Upgrade meets Evil Dead 2 -- I've written several His & Her haikus, and will add them all, eventually.
(pardon the sales verbiage--I've been placing these on social media as well)
