Book Brief: Suicide Supper Club

Suicide Supper ClubSuicide Supper Club
by Rhett DeVane
Genre: Mainstream contemporary fiction
Word count: 86,300

In the Deep South, the grinding summer heat is enough to make people stupid. Four small town Southern women—each with distinct reasons to consider her life total crap—band together to forge “the easy way out.” But life has a way of turning out opposite of misdirected plans.

Abby has no husband, no children, no living kin, and a painful family secret. Loiscell is a two-time breast cancer survivor facing recurrence with dwindling faith and courage. Sheila is a meek abused wife hiding behind a religious, volunteer-queen veneer. Estranged from her only child, Caroline “Choo-choo” Ivey desperately misses her late husband.

As the relentless summer heat continues, conditions deteriorate for the women. Initially in jest, they propose group suicide: a nice meal, followed by a quick death courtesy of a paid assassin. Choo-choo offers to pay, and Sheila figures a way to enlist her husband to acquire a contact name. Then plans go haywire.

The Suicide Supper Club was a finalist in the 2012 Florida Writers Association RPLA contest. The Suicide Supper Club tackles tough subjects—abuse, cancer, aging—but with humor. In the South, humor is as essential as breathing and often filters life’s harsh realities.

This book is available from Amazon. Continue reading “Book Brief: Suicide Supper Club”

It’s a Piece of Cake to Vote for the Next Flash Fiction Champ!

cakeVoting for your favorite flash fiction entry is easy as pie. Yes, that’s right – we’ve got lots of puns for this week’s challenge! We’re just getting started.

Remember, the winning entries will all be included in the next edition of the IU Flash Fiction Anthology.

Check out this week’s entries here. Make your decision, then use those share buttons at the bottom of the post to spread the word.

Voting polls close Thursday at 5 PM Pacific time.

Which flash fiction entry takes the cake this week?

  • Dick C. Waters (23%, 15 Votes)
  • Tom Kepler (20%, 13 Votes)
  • Joanne Lloyd (17%, 11 Votes)
  • DaveDAuthor (13%, 8 Votes)
  • Melissa Bowersock (8%, 5 Votes)
  • Morgan Winters (5%, 3 Votes)
  • The Purple Helmet (5%, 3 Votes)
  • AL Kaplan (5%, 3 Votes)
  • Mathoska (3%, 2 Votes)
  • Ed Drury (2%, 1 Votes)
  • Venkatesh Iyer (0%, 0 Votes)

Total Voters: 64

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NOTE: Entrants whose submissions exceed the 250 word limit are eliminated from the poll. ONE VOTE PER PERSON, please. Duplicate votes will be deleted. The results displayed above are unofficial until verified by administration.

A few personal editing peeves.

editingI have a touch of OCD, not debilitating, just annoying. One of the milder rules it makes for my life is the necessity to finish one book before I’m ‘allowed’ to start another. I suffer terrible guilt if I leave a book unfinished but it does happen, usually because I’m reading a first draft, not a finished product. I sometimes read reviews on Amazon that say there were some editing/writing/grammar (pick your poison) problems with a book but the story drew the reviewer in anyway…which might be fine for that reader but it won’t work for me.

It amazes me that some authors seem content to appeal to a minority of readers. One more edit or a bit of advice-taking and I might go on to read everything else they’ve written, instead of moving on. I know criticism is rough, so here’s how I learned to take mine on the chin. Continue reading “A few personal editing peeves.”