We'll start off with some fun facts!
- This book is written in first person. Not anything you've ever seen from me before (I'm a third-person writer), and it kinda skeers me because I've never done it.
- It's told from the house's POV, as though the house is speaking to the reader, so it's done as an observer--the house remembering watching the people living inside and telling you the stories.
- The House is a collection of short stories within one, longer, story.
- There are five shorts:
The Butcher
Fred, Marna, and Kimberly McDade
Lacy Mae Ritter
Mark and Olivia Cullpepper
The Writer - Guess who The Writer is!
- If you guessed Jo Michaels, you'd be correct. Yes, I wrote a book with a story in it about me writing a book for the entity telling us the story.
- Confused yet? It'll all make sense when you read the book. I promise.
- Now for the sucky part! I know, I know! Sorry.
- If you plan to read Intensification (the third story in the Pen Pals and Serial Killers series), you MUST read it first. The House gives too many things away about Intensification. They're tied and twisted together in several ways.
Now for all the things like details!
Title: The House: A Killer Collection of Short Stories (Pen Pals and Serial Killers - Book Four)
Author: Jo Michaels
Genre: Psychological Thriller
Length: 218 printed pages
Buy Links: Amazon Kindle ~ Paperback
Blurb:This house is cursed, and everyone who lives there is in grave danger.
Ever wonder what stories you’d hear if walls could talk?
What if those walls witnessed unimaginable horrors?
Inside these pages is the story of one such house. What it sees, the people it meets, and what happens when a terrified spirit is invited to stay.
Story 1 – The Butcher
Story 2 – Marna, Fred, and Kimberly McDade
Story 3 – Lacy Mae Ritter
Story 4 – Mark and Olivia Cullpepper
Story 5 – The Writer
The House is a collection of short stories that ties in with the Pen Pals and Serial Killers series by Jo Michaels. You’ll find a couple of those characters named, and discover how one grew the teeth he used on the women he captured later.
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Excerpt time!
Story 1 – The Butcher
My yellow paint; pretty, white shutters; and pristine porch were sullied by the first man who dwelt here. I call him The Butcher, but his name was Butch Campion, and he was thirty-seven. His face is one I’ll never forget, and the atrocities he committed are things I still shudder to think about. We met one month after I was born. He walked in, so proud and full of himself, his feet sending vibrations through my floorboards as he tromped through, checking every room like he was planning to bring a whole family in and bring them up. I thought we’d get along famously and was looking forward to warming the feet of small children as they played.
Once the papers were signed, and I was his property, things went well for a month or so. He’d go to work, come home, sit on the threadbare couch, and drink beer. To my chagrin, he didn’t seem to have a wife or children, so there was nothing for me to do during the day except sit here.
It was after that first month that I started to figure he might not be my ideal owner after all. My lawn was never cared for, and the ivy growing nearby was allowed to spring up, threatening to take over the cute porch the builders thought to add. Butch would go out and bring home booze of some kind, cigarettes, and fast food. He never cooked, and he left wrappers and empty boxes all over the place, making me smell like a trash can. Roaches scuttled in, intent on a good meal, and he’d squish the ones he saw, leaving their carcasses to decompose where they met their gruesome end.
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Teasers!
Are you ready?
I hope you enjoyed this post!
Well, that's all for today, folks! Until next time, WRITE ON!
Jo
