Contemporary Authors

• Poe: A Novel 47North (Las Vegas, NV), 2013
• Dead Souls: A Novel Gallery Books (New York, NY), 2016

1. Dead souls : a novel LCCN 2016017760 Type of material Book Personal name Fenn, J. Lincoln, author. Main title Dead souls : a novel / J. Lincoln Fenn. Edition First Gallery Books trade paperback edition. Published/Produced New York : Gallery Books, 2016. Description 341 pages ; 21 cm ISBN 9781501110931 (softcover) CALL NUMBER PS3606.E5574 D43 2016 Copy 1 Request in Jefferson or Adams Building Reading Rooms 2. Poe : a novel LCCN 2013940591 Type of material Book Personal name Fenn, J. Lincoln Main title Poe : a novel / J. Lincoln Fenn. Published/Created Las Vegas, NV : 47North, c2013. Description 324 p. ; 21 cm. ISBN 9781477848166 (pbk.) 1477848169 (pbk.) Shelf Location FLS2014 037088 CALL NUMBER PS3606.E5574 P64 2013 OVERFLOWA5S Request in Jefferson or Adams Building Reading Rooms (FLS1)

• Simon and Schuster - http://www.simonandschuster.com/authors/J-Lincoln-Fenn/503029133

  J. Lincoln Fenn is the award-winning author of the bestseller Poe, which won the 2013 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award for Sci-Fi/Fantasy/Horror. Fenn grew up in New England and graduated summa cum laude from the University of New Hamp­shire, studying with poet laureate Charles Simic, and author John Yount, a mentor to John Irving. Currently Fenn lives with her husband in Seattle, where she’s at work on her next book.

• J Lincoln Fenn - https://www.jlincolnfenn.com/

  Fenn began her horror career in the 7th grade when she entertained her friends at a sleepover by telling them the mysterious clanking noise (created by the baseboard heater) was in fact the ghost of a woman who had once lived in the farmhouse, forced to cannibalize her ten children during a particularly bad winter.

  It was the last slumber party she was allowed to have.

  The author grew up in New England, graduated from the University of New Hampshire with a degree in English, and lives in Seattle with her family.

  In 2013, POE won the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award for Sci-Fi/Fantasy/Horror and became a #1 bestseller in both Fantasy and Horror on Amazon.

• Sci Fi Pulse - http://www.scifipulse.net/j-lincoln-fenn-on-her-career-amazon-publishing-and-her-latest-novel-dead-souls/

  J. LINCOLN FENN ON HER CAREER, AMAZON PUBLISHING, AND HER LATEST NOVEL, DEAD SOULS
  "...I became a writer when I decided that I was going to do it anyway, whether I was ever published or not. Then I felt free to write what I really wanted to write..."

  by Nicholas Yanes January 2, 2017
  J. Lincoln Fenn has been a storyteller since childhood. This love for storytelling inspired her to write POE. This novel was so well received that it won the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award for Sci-Fi/Fantasy/Horror and became a bestseller. Fenn’s latest novel is Dead Souls. Wanting to learn more about work and her career, Fenn allowed me to interview her for ScifiPulse.

  To learn more about Fenn, you can check out her homepage, like her on facebook, and follow her on twitter at @JLincolnFenn.

  Nicholas Yanes: When did you know that you wanted to become a writer? Was there a story that pushed you the most in this direction?

  J. Lincoln Fenn: I was a fanatical reader growing up – I read everything. Horror, fantasy, classic, sci-fi, plus the magazines we’d get, Newsweek, Time, National Geographic. My world was a small New England town, population 5,000, and reading was a portal. I actually wore the fabric out on our couch from sitting on it, reading. I didn’t think about being a writer until I took my first fiction class in college. I loved it, but I just wasn’t convinced it was possible as a career. After college I tried very hard to do other things, because I knew that the odds of ever being published were low, and part of being raised in New England is that you have a very pragmatic outlook on life. But I couldn’t shake that desire.

  So I kept at it, joining a small local writing group, then trying my hand at writing long form, then moving on to a novel. Submitting to agents. Getting rejected. I think I became a writer when I decided that I was going to do it anyway, whether I was ever published or not. Then I felt free to write what I really wanted to write. And ironically, that book, Poe, won the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award for Sci-Fi/Fanatasy/Horror.

  Yanes: You grew up in New England and now live in Seattle. Both of these areas are known for having a rich history of writers and creative professionals. How do you think these environments shaped you as a writer?

  Fenn: It’s definitely nice to be in a city that supports writing and writers – I’ve been in Seattle just about a year, and there’s this respect for genre writers in particular that’s refreshing. Where I grew up in New England, you’d go on field trips to writers’ houses. I remember visiting Emerson’s house, and Louisa May Alcott’s place, and I worked during the summer for a theater company based in Edith Wharton’s estate called The Mount. You’re literally surrounded by the history of early American literature.

  I’ve also lived in Los Angeles, the Bay Area, Hawaii. There’s something about throwing yourself into a new place, or culture, that reveals what’s the same about people, and what’s different. My next novel, The Nightmarchers, centers on a remote tropical island, and I’ll be drawing from my experiences in Hawaii for that.

  Yanes: Your website describes you as an “Amazon bestselling author.” How important do you think Amazon has become to building a career as a writer?

  Fenn: Well I was very fortunate to have one of Amazon’s publishing imprints, 47North, pick up Poe for publication, and their reach launched it into bestseller status. Just as important though was going through the development and editing process. I learned so much from the crew there and Poe is a much better novel as a result of their input.

  Yanes: You leveraged your Amazon published work into a book deal with Simon & Schuster’s Gallery Books. What advice would you give to other authors to help them mirror this accomplishment?

  Fenn: Because of Poe, I was able to land an agent, and she suggested I develop a couple of book proposals based off of two short stories I sent her. She connected with Gallery, and I feel amazingly, tremendously fortunate to have gotten a two-book deal from those proposals. My editor there gave me more freedom than I was anticipating with a traditional publisher, and he also helped me to look deeper and find themes that added another dimension to Dead Souls.

  What I’ve realized along the way of being published is that you need a team that gets you. Everyone’s looking for that one big break, and that’s wonderful, if you get it I will stand and applaud, but a more manageable goal is to focus on your next break. And your next break might be a small magazine publication, or a new, relatively unknown agent that’s hungry for clients, or a contest, or self-publishing. You have to engage with the industry to learn about it, and eventually you’ll find people who understand, and want to support, your work.

  Yanes: Your most recent novel is Dead Souls. What was the inspiration for this story?

  Fenn: Dead Souls is a novel about the way in which we can sometimes be our own, worst enemies. There’s a Buddhist idea called ‘klesha’, which is basically when you misunderstand something because of your own negative view, and then you make a decision based on that view which leads you to an outcome you didn’t want, which you then can’t extricate yourself from.

  For example, you’re at work, your boss says something to you in a curt way that upsets you. You decide to get back, maybe drop some gossip in the break room. Only you find out that your boss is upset over something personal that has nothing to do with you – and now this little bit of insidious gossip is out in the world, and you can’t take it back. Real damage has been done, and it’s because you leapt to a negative conclusion, then acted on it.

  The main character in Dead Souls, Fiona, sees something she doesn’t understand, and then because of her abusive background, assumes the worst. The only reason the Devil can enter that picture is because she opened the door with her own negative thinking.

  Yanes: There is a rich history of stories that follow people who make deals with the Devil. Did you pay homage to any of these narratives?

  Fenn: My all-time favorite deal with the Devil story is referenced in Dead Souls, “That Hell-Bound Train” by Robert Bloch. I read it in high school, and it’s stuck with me ever since. It really gets you thinking about the nature of happiness. It’s one of the things I love about fantasy. You can explore bigger themes without being preachy.

  Yanes: You set Dead Souls in Oakland. What was the reason for picking this city?

  Fenn: I wanted an urban setting, thought the Bay Area would be perfect, and I’d lived for a while in Marin County, then Oakland. Oakland has a rich history, and I knew the kind of building I wanted Fiona to live in, and there’s a great cemetery there, and the gentrification resonated with other themes in the book. It’s a city with stark economic extremes, which is reflected in Fiona’s own personal history.

  Yanes: When writing Dead Souls, was there a character that took on a life of its own?

  Fenn: Oh they all wanted their own book and were quite convinced they were the true protagonists. I think the strength of the characters in the Dead Souls support group took me by surprise. They were so unique that they worked their way into the plot more deeply – in the outline they were minor characters, just a blip on the screen, then gone.

  Yanes: When people finish reading Dead Souls, what do you hope they take away from the story?

  Fenn: I’d like a person to wonder if they’re thinking their own thoughts, or the thoughts of someone else who has an agenda that’s not in their best interest.

  Yanes: Finally, what are you working on that people should look forward to?

  Fenn: Right now I’m working on The Nightmarchers, which is about a remote, tropical island that’s taboo to visit, a botanist who died there under mysterious circumstances in the 1930’s, a cultish Church, a mythological army of the undead, and a present-day journalist trying to make sense of the threads that connect it all for a story that could salvage her career, and life. Plus it has big centipedes. Really big, ornery centipedes. I was bit by one and am still traumatized.

  Again, you can learn more about Fenn by checking out her homepage, liking her on facebook, and following her on twitter at @JLincolnFenn.

  And remember to follow me on twitter @NicholasYanes, and to follow Scifipulse on twitter @SciFiPulse and on facebook.

• Nightmare Magazine - http://www.nightmare-magazine.com/nonfiction/interview-j-lincoln-fenn/

  NONFICTION
  PURCHASE ISSUE
  Interview: J. Lincoln Fenn
  by LISA MORTON
  PUBLISHED IN FEB. 2017 (ISSUE 53) | 3051 WORDS
  In 2013, a previously unknown writer named J. Lincoln Fenn won Amazon’s Breakthrough Novel contest in the Science Fiction/Fantasy/Horror novel with Poe, a hybrid of horror, mystery, and young adult that involves spiritualism, haunted houses, and the Russian mystic Rasputin. The novel garnered almost universal praise, and marked Fenn as one of the horror genre’s most promising new voices. In 2016, Fenn published her second novel, Dead Souls, with Simon & Schuster’s Gallery Books imprint; as with Poe, Dead Souls mixes genres in a story about a young woman, Fiona Dunn, who makes a deal with “Scratch”. Publishers Weekly gave Dead Souls a starred review and called it “one of the scariest and best to come down the pike in ages.” Fenn, who was raised in New England but now calls Seattle home, is currently at work on her next novel for Gallery, The Nightmarchers.

  You cite literary fiction writer Carolyn See as an inspiration, and have also mentioned trying to write a mainstream literary novel . . . so how did horror become your go-to genre?

  I took a class in L.A. with Carolyn See, and she was just so funny, and kind, and generous that I will forever sing her praises. She offered a lot of useful advice, and I still have a letter from her encouraging me to submit a horror story to literary journals. Her novel Making History is also one of my favorite ghost stories ever.

  I think I gravitated toward the literary side of things because it was more or less what all the writing classes prepped you for. But I’d always loved the stories that played with reality too—I read a ton of fantasy, horror, and science fiction, and went on a magical realism binge for a good couple of years.

  After trying to write a memoir about the worst thing that had ever happened to me up to that point, I realized I was too close to it to make it anything other than a dirge. Then this character started kicking around in my brain who was going through something similar, and I wrote the first paragraph of Poe. But there’s a lot in there about my own experience.

  After years of trying to score a more traditional sale for Poe, you placed it in the 2013 Amazon Breakthrough Novel contest, and it won in the Science Fiction/Fantasy/Horror category. How big a surprise was that?

  That was crazy. The contest went through various stages of cuts, and you knew the day they’d post them, so there was this excitement and dread as that day approached, then amazement when it made it through to the next stage. I was a nervous wreck the whole time. And when I got the call that it had won the category, and they would fly me out to Seattle with my husband for the award ceremony—well that was really like getting the golden ticket to the Willy Wonka chocolate factory.

  Poe is centered in part around a haunted house, the Aspinwall Mansion. Was it influenced by any other literary haunted house?

  It was based on the cottages in the Berkshires that had been constructed during the gilded age—mansions really, but they were summer homes for the rich. A number of them had been left to quietly rot because they were so expensive to maintain. Wyndclyffe Castle in New York state is a great example.

  There’s something haunting about the abandoned buildings on the East Coast, whether it’s a rotting mansion or a shuttered factory. It’s not hard to imagine ghosts.

  You’ve discussed horror as a way to deal with grief (in Poe, the young protagonist is dealing with the loss of his parents). What would you say to someone who might wonder how horror would help anyone through mourning?

  An early reader of Poe lost her father not too long after she’d finished the book, and she said in an odd way it helped. Horror is a mental exercise in contemplating death, which we don’t do too often in our culture. We like it packaged neatly and placed out of sight. But death and horror is a great wake-up call, a compass for aligning your priorities. I think you make different choices when you keep your own death in mind.

  Why did you decide to make Poe’s protagonist, Dimitri Petrov, Russian-American?

  Well, I knew I wanted to incorporate the late nineteenth century spiritualist movement, so I started digging into its origins with Madame Blavatsky, then picked up a copy of The Occult in Russian and Soviet Culture, which is just utterly fascinating. And it began to make sense plot-wise that he should be connected to that culture.

  The Russian mystic Rasputin also figures prominently in Poe (Dimitri is writing a novel he calls “Rasputin: Secret Tsar of Immortal Zombies”). Why does Rasputin continue to fascinate us (and Dimitri)?

  He’s a fascinating character. I mean here you have a Russian peasant who becomes a mystic faith healer with a reputation for debauchery, and he rises in influence until he eventually has the ear of the Tsarina. He doesn’t fit. He’s not supposed to be there, but he is. So then the question is how did he get there? It spooked people at the time, and it spooks people still.

  Imagine if someone like David Koresh became a trusted advisor to a president and started to dictate policy. People would be speculating about that for decades afterwards. Then Rasputin’s assassination is almost as legendary as his life. He became a kind of bogeyman and scapegoat for the nation.

  There are several mentions of Stephen King in Poe (in one example, Dimitri awakens in a hospital and notes that his skin tone “would make Stephen King fall over and have a heart attack in fright”). Has King been an influence on you?

  Absolutely. I think the breadth of his imagination is something for any writer to aspire to, and his characters are people you might know, or meet at the coffee shop, or drive past in the supermarket parking lot. So you have this fantasy element embedded with a world you know, which heightens the horror.

  Plus he really, really, really knows how to get you to turn the page. Sometimes you don’t even want to turn the page, you have to gather your courage to turn the page, but you always do. And that’s something I think about when I’m drafting an outline, or writing the end of the chapter. Is this something that will compel a reader to keep going? Are the characters real enough, does it feel like our world right now?

  Are you still planning on a sequel to Poe?

  Well, Dimitri petitioned for a break from the severe torment I put him through, but I’m thinking maybe a series of shorts or novellas if I can squeeze in the time. He’s got a good therapist now and has learned new coping mechanisms, and he did enjoy the limelight, so it might be time to consider. Seriously I love him as a character and would like to see what other troubles he can get himself into, but right now I’m focused on finishing The Nightmarchers.

  You’ve mentioned that Poe might have confounded some agents because it combined multiple genres—horror, young (or new) adult, literary fiction, etc. Similarly, Dead Souls manages to combine genres (horror and—dare I say it?—chick lit) that really shouldn’t go together. Is horror fiction sometimes held back by an adherence to genre boundaries?

  It’s true that combing genres or pulling pieces from one into another makes for a challenging experience on the sales side for fiction. I remember talking about this with my editor at 47North—the question eventually boils down to “What shelf does it go on?” I don’t think the genre adherence is necessarily coming from the community itself, it’s more of a market norm.

  The success in film and T.V. of a much wider spectrum of horror demonstrates that there is a market for a bigger, and weirder, tent, and probably a lot of publishers would love to climb on board, but a genre-bender has to break big for them to feel comfortable taking that risk.

  Both Poe and Dead Souls are told in first person and present tense. Is that coincidence, or is it your preferred way of telling a story?

  I like present tense, especially for building suspense, although I know it irks the hell out of some people. We have such a right now, immediate, instant gratification culture at the moment though that it feels very connective.

  The Nightmarchers is going to be third person, but a very close third person. For me, what’s happening inside the character’s head is as important as the things happening outside moving the plot forward. I’d love to write a third person omniscient novel, but that feels very ambitious and would take a more serious commitment to a plot outline.

  You once wrote, “It’s only by looking hard into the darkness that we see, and appreciate, the light.” How do Poe and Dead Souls work to make us appreciate the light?

  Wow, that was really deep of me. I think Poe’s darkness is centered on Dimitri’s grief and depression. He reacts by taking this snarky view of everyone and everything around him, unless they’re dead, in which case he works really hard to reveal their humanity. He has to let go of the dead, including his parents, to move on and live his life.

  Dead Souls is much, much darker. Although there is a glimmer of light at the end, it’s very dim. But the experiences that birthed it and the experience of writing it made me think very, very carefully about choices, and how we’ve entered this age where we feel there are no consequences to our actions, or the consequences are very far away. It’s more of a cautionary fairy tale with a really bad ending. But after I finished it I felt much lighter, like going into a cave and then coming out into the fresh air. And I think more about the small, ordinary happinesses, and how easy it is to take them for granted.

  One of my favorite aspects of Dead Souls is its urban setting (Oakland). Isolated settings often dominate horror literature. Can a city be an isolated setting?

  Holy heck yeah. I’ve never felt more lonely and isolated than I did living in Los Angeles surrounded by people. And unfortunately, horror and violence is becoming more of a public spectacle, something that happens in the midst of many people.

  Fiona Dunn, the lead character in Dead Souls, is one of the best female protagonists I’ve read in a horror novel in ages—she’s a skilled advertising executive, disgusted with women who wear pink, and very knowledgeable about how to manipulate others. Why don’t we see more hip, young, female leads in horror novels?

  I didn’t really set out to write her that way, it’s just who she was. It could be that this kind of character doesn’t necessarily seem like a good fit for horror, or even that this kind of character is a good fit anywhere. We’re just starting to see strong, flawed women with agency in more mainstream books and T.V. shows. Jessica Jones comes to mind. But I will say that there are a lot of strong female protagonists being written in horror by men and women.

  I was surprised to get a lot of leeway from Gallery—they didn’t pressure me to change much and loved Fiona from the start. But there is a part of me that’s trying to push the envelope as long as I can before I get kicked out.

  Your characterization of the Devil (who you call Scratch) is equally superb. How hard was it to make the Devil into a villain who was both instantly recognizable and completely unique?

  I knew I could make him charming, but I also wanted readers to feel this wall of pure, untouchable, inhumane evil shimmering just under the surface. Maintaining that balance, so he didn’t come off as too likeable or too evil was tricky. The fact that you can’t see his face is something I borrowed from the Bible, although there it’s God’s face you can’t see (or you can, but it would kill you).

  As a kid growing up in a small New England town, you went to Catholic school for thirteen years. Is that where the character of Scratch started to gestate?

  Certainly there’s a lot from Catholicism that influences my work. You’re raised to believe that hell and heaven, demons and angels are very real and all around you. In first grade, we used to sometimes sit on half our seat so our guardian angel could sit on the other half. I once thought I saw the shadow of a demon in my basement.

  The pivot point in Dead Souls is a weird combination of both the Catholic sensibility of the devil as the seducer, and also the Buddhist, more mystic view that we often are a key player, if not an instigator, of our own suffering. Fiona misunderstands something, which her own anxiety feeds into, which causes her to take a series of actions that lead her to a certain stool at a certain bar with a certain emotional vulnerability that’s she’s created. And that’s the door Scratch enters through.

  You’ve mentioned that readers are sometimes surprised to find that you’re a woman. Do you enjoy playing against expectations like that?

  I have to admit I was very proud to have been accused of being a misogynist, by a man no less, because of some of the things Dimitri thought in Poe. I don’t try to play against expectations necessarily—I just want to be able to do what I want to do, and write the characters that are talking to me at the time. It is interesting though that we don’t think it’s unusual when a male writer has a fantastic female lead character, but vice versa still seems to surprise people.

  Will we be seeing any J. Lincoln Fenn short fiction in the future?

  I’d love to get short fiction out there, either in an anthology or magazine. I’ve been consumed with getting these books done, but once I put The Nightmarchers to bed I’ll be focusing on writing some shorter pieces.

  Dead Souls is the first book in a two-book deal with Gallery Books (an imprint of Simon and Schuster). Can you tell us anything yet about Book #2?

  Well I’m pretty sure the title will stay The Nightmarchers, and it’s a bit of a departure in that it the horror is more of the creepy, eerie, Lovecraftian kind. It centers on a remote, tropical island that’s taboo to visit, a botanist who died there under mysterious circumstances in the 1930’s, a cultish Church, a mythological army of the undead, and a present-day journalist trying to make sense of it all for a story that could salvage her life. That’s the gist. Details still in process.

  You recently said in a social media post, “When one character says to another, ‘I have to show you something,’ and you, the author, have no idea what it’s going to be.” Your books have intricate plot points and carefully-crafted endings, so I assumed you outlined carefully in advance, but are you more of a “pantser” (writing without an outline)?

  I have an outline, but it’s a guide not a mandate. I try really hard not to force a character into saying or doing something that serves the plot, but doesn’t feel like a natural choice in the moment. And that can be tricky, because when you start off you have an idea of who your characters are, but they evolve as you dig in. So there’s some improv along the way, and then going back in the edits if more connection tissue or editing is needed.

  And if something feels interesting to explore, I’ll try it out without getting too attached. I’m quite ruthless in my editing. I cut a hundred pages from Poe. Some of those scenes I really loved, but in the end, they weren’t needed, so to the cutting-room floor they went.

  How important is the company of other writers to you?

  Incredibly important. I’ve found to my delight and surprise that the biggest cheerleaders of my work have been other writers. And it just helps you through the insanity to know you’re not the only one going through X,Y, and Z. You also get insight into the publishing industry itself, which can often feel like a big, giant, unknowable puzzle. I first connected with writers through a small writing group in Oakland, but online is great too, or joining an association. It’s such a weird, spooky art done mostly alone, so having those connections is a great support.

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  Lisa Morton
  Lisa Morton is a screenwriter, author of nonfiction books, award-winning prose writer, and Halloween expert whose work was described by the American Library Association’s Readers’ Advisory Guide to Horror as “consistently dark, unsettling, and frightening.” Her most recent books include Ghosts: A Haunted History (which The Times Literary Supplement said “excels at presenting us with instances of the persistence of belief, across all times and cultures”), and the short story collection Cemetery Dance Select: Lisa Morton. A lifelong Californian, she lives in North Hollywood, and can be found online at lisamorton.com.

Dead Souls
Publishers Weekly.
263.29 (July 18, 2016): p191.
COPYRIGHT 2016 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
* Dead Souls
J. Lincoln Fenn. Gallery, $16 trade paper (352p) ISBN 978­1­5011­1093­1
In Amazon Breakthrough Award­winner Fenn's scarily dark second thriller (following 2013's Poe), marketing
executive Fiona Dunn walks into the Make Westing bar in Oakland, Calif., on the lowest day of her life, and surfaces
hours later, worse for wear and certain that the man who called himself Scratch is no more the devil than she is. Fiona,
fuzzy with mojitos, assumes that Scratch's offer to trade at­will invisibility for her soul is just a put­on. The bill of sale
pulled from her soggy skirt the next morning says differently. Whether you call it grisly horror or macabre fiction, this
book is one of the scariest and best to come down the pike in ages. The characters are difficult but compelling, and the
writing is seamless. The narrative twists and turns are reminiscent of Dean Koontz or Stephen King at their finest. This
story is horribly, horrifyingly awesome. Agent: Jill Man, Sandra Dijkstra Literary. (Sept.)
Source Citation (MLA 8
th Edition)
"Dead Souls." Publishers Weekly, 18 July 2016, p. 191. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA459287529&it=r&asid=07b97c8bf121b0be382fdc75492a0eb1.
Accessed 1 Apr. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A459287529

"Dead Souls." Publishers Weekly, 18 July 2016, p. 191. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do? p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA459287529&it=r. Accessed 1 Apr. 2017.

• Bloody Disgusting
  http://bloody-disgusting.com/news/3259161/book-review-author-j-lincoln-fenn-breaks-through-with-poe/
  Word count: 334

  [Book Review] Author J. Lincoln Fenn Breaks Through With ‘Poe’By Ryan Daley | Oct 16, 2013 4:48 amSHARE TWEET SHARE SHARE 0 COMMENTS

  Even as Amazon’s focus turns to its bevy of beefed-up e-readers, its fledgling publishing imprints are quietly releasing some of the better genre books around. In the wake of the excellent Wayward Pines series comes J. Lincoln Fenn’s Poe (October 22; 47North), winner of Amazon’s Breakthrough Novel Award …which is sort of liking winning a “Best Child” award from your own mother. But I digress.

  In Fenn’s engaging debut, college drop-out Dmitri is a masterful obituary writer for his local rag in New Goshen, but he’s a man without a rudder, still grieving the loss of his parents in a horrendous car accident, and desperately craving a girlfriend. With a stroke of dumb luck involving ass polyps, Dmitri is assigned to cover a local séance at the mysterious Aspinwall mansion on Halloween, where he has a gag-inducing meet-cute with his dream girl, Lisa.

  Suffice it to say, the séance goes horribly wrong: after falling through rotting floorboards into a forgotten well, Dmitri wakes up in a hospital after being clinically dead for two hours. Hailed as a miracle of medical science, Dmitri attempts to reintegrate back into his life and reconnect with his dream girl, but harrowing nightmares/visions––along with the arrival of a spleen-eating serial killer––have him questioning his own sanity.

  The tinder-dry wit of Fenn’s first-person voice carries the story through some grievously uneven moments. While it remains a fun read, Poe is tonally all over the place. The narrative vibe drifts from paranormal mystery to coming-of-age novel to mental health expose, rendering Fenn’s debut completely unclassifiable. But its imaginative vision remains undeniable. Hitting the high notes of multiple genres, her talent is wicked raw and proudly untamed. This is Fenn’s first novel––I can’t wait to see what comes next.

• SF Book Reviews
  https://sfbook.com/poe.htm
  Word count: 659

  Poe by J Lincoln Fenn
  a review by Vanessa, in the genre(s) Horror. Book published by 47North in October 2013
  23-year-old Dimitri Petrov makes a living writing obituaries, but on Halloween he gets a last-minute assignment to cover a séance at the haunted Aspinwall Mansion. There he meets Lisa, a punk-rock drummer who works at the local nursing home, and promptly falls for her. But right as he’s trying to woo her, things get real creepy—the séance becomes real and Dimitri has a near-death experience.
  After waking up in the morgue and finding himself stuck with a female ghost he dubs Poe, things only get creepier. Citizens are gruesomely murdered and pieces of the puzzle slowly click together as Dimitri unravels his own connection to it all, the truth about his parents, and the secrets of a pair of antiquarian books.
  I started reading Poe in the morning before work, and I finished it that evening. As I raced through the book, I had my own theories about Dimitri’s history, his parents, and Lisa’s family—some of which were right, others not so much. Either way, J. Lincoln Fenn combines horror, mystery, humor, supernatural suspense, and romance in a neat little bundle. The plot moves smoothly, with perfect twists and turns, each action leading to another logical action. Characters and plot devices are all introduced and nothing jumped out as strange or out of the ordinary (for example, after Dimitri throws an old stuffed animal across the room and it heavily thunks into the wall, my first thought was, There is something in there. I was right).
  The description is exhilaratingly creepy, the writing feels very gothic horror. I found myself glancing over my shoulder as I read, creaks in the house making me jump. I was completely absorbed.
  The characters were well-crafted. I was impressed with Dimitri, his quick-thinking and intelligence, but also his tendency of putting foot-in-mouth I hated his lying and slight tendency toward misogyny, but I appreciated the realness it gave him. I loved Poe (especially as the readers increasingly get to know her). I really loved Dimitri’s dreams/flashbacks to Aspinwall Mansion, and just his dreams in general—I found that they added a lot to the story. In fact, it felt a lot like Aspinwall Mansion was a character of its very own, the flashbacks some of my favorite parts of the novel.
  I loved many of the more minor characters and how their roles neatly fit into the overarching plot. Something that I had a hard time with was the lack of development between Lisa and Dimitri—I didn’t quite get their relationship. I liked Lisa’s character but I wanted more. I wanted to delve a bit more deeply into her past, her quirks and her issues, and I wanted to know why she liked Dimitri and when she fell as hard for him as he did for her. I also really hated him lying to her and treating her like she was a fragile, damsel-in-distress—part of his character, it would seem, but I was annoyed on her behalf nonetheless. Maybe I will get to see more of their relationship in a sequel (there has to be a sequel, right? Right?).
  I greatly appreciated (and also was a little disgusted by) Fenn’s ability to write about spleen-eating and throat-ripping and intestines everywhere. It was incredibly well-written and it even made me cringe (and Game of Thrones has desensitized me quite a bit). The humor that laced the book more than made up for it’s cringe-worthy moments—I laughed aloud several times, chuckled quietly to myself many more.
  In short, if you like mystery, the supernatural, and quick-paced reads with some humor to take the edge off, Poe is for you.
  Written on Thursday 25th September 2014 by Vanessa Levin-Pompetzki.

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  Word count: 498

  Book Review: ‘Dead Souls’ By J. Lincoln Fenn
  Posted 5 months ago by Stuart Conover 3 3 6
  dead-soulsIn ‘Dead Souls’, J. Lincoln Fenn delivers her second horror novel and it is truly a stand out piece of work. In it, we follow Fiona Dunn who on a chance encounter has sold her soul to the devil. That’s right folks, if a stranger tries a pickup line at a bar claiming that they are the fallen one, you might want to second think to offer up your immortal soul. After buying into a soulless eternity, she falls in with a group of “dead souls” who have all made the same mistake that she has.

  Oh, and it gets worse. On top of the soul, each of these “dead souls” also owes the devil a favor that can be called upon at a time of his choosing. Wonderful.

  Honestly, what makes this book so successful is that Fiona is a truly relatable character. She works in marketing, came from a family that had issues, and has social anxiety because of it. When she finds out her boyfriend is cheating on her it leads her into the situation above and when enough alcohol is involved people will agree to the damnedest things.

  I haven’t seen many stories as of late that gives us someone who has made a deal with the devil, especially someone who started out as an atheist and is such a believable, if not always likable, character.

  With “The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he did not exist” (Thank you ‘The Usual Suspects’ for giving us such a perfectly updated line to the original version) , Lincoln finds some fun ways to explain how the devil has been active throughout modern times in various memorable events.

  The story is not for the weak of heart and the ending definitely will be uncomfortable for some but this is an extremely solid read. If you like tales about the devil and those who barter their souls with him then this is a modern telling, you’ll be sure to love!

  That being said, the last third or so of the book really goes dark and mimics more of the craze of the torture porn variety of horror over the psychological. It doesn’t quite make it that far but there are more than a few moments that seemed to go with enjoying physical pain over how the first two-thirds of the novel had been.

  While it was an enjoyable book, this shift in directions took me a bit out of it so it wasn’t quite as enjoyable of an ending after the introduction, but still well written and worth the read if you know what to expect going into it.

  atoms_3.5

  ‘Dead Souls’
  By: J. Lincoln Fenn
  Gallary Books
  September 20th, 2016

• RT Book Reviews
  https://www.rtbookreviews.com/book-review/dead-souls
  Word count: 223

  DEAD SOULS
  Author(s): J. Lincoln Fenn
  The real power of Fenn’s story lies in the everyday details — her characters’ flaws are so recognizable and their lives are so comparatively familiar that the evil force with which they deal becomes terribly and convincingly real. This impressive blend of human desperation and otherworldly darkness is gruesomely compelling and horrifyingly believable, with skilled prose that keeps this story intensely engaging. The ambiguities and uncertainties in each scene will keep readers on edge until a startling ending brings this tale, ingeniously and ruthlessly, full circle in impressive fashion.
  Fiona Quinn survives by maintaining control over every aspect of her life — until the night she realizes her boyfriend may be cheating. Indulging in despair, she strikes up a conversation with an alluring stranger in a bar. A man who calls himself Scratch, and who promises to fulfill Fiona’s darkest wish — to become invisible and spy on others — in exchange for her soul. It isn’t until the next morning that Fiona realizes the truth: that the man she met is indeed the devil, and in addition to losing her soul, Fiona, like so many others, is now in his debt and terrified to learn what task he will demand of her. (GALLERY, Sep. 352 pp., $16.00)
  Reviewed by:
  Bridget Keown

• The Page Turner
  http://thepageturnerreviews.com/arc-reviews/dead-souls
  Word count: 557

  Dead Souls by J. Lincoln Fenn (ARC Review)

  SEPTEMBER 18, 2016 IN 4/5, FICTION, REVIEW, THRILLER, ADULT
  When Fiona Dunn is approached in a bar by a man who claims he’s the devil, she figures it’s just some kind of postmodern-slash-ironic pickup line. But a few drinks in, he offers her a wish in exchange for her immortal soul, and in addition, Fiona must perform a special favor for him whenever the time comes. Fiona finds the entire matter so absurd that she agrees. Bad idea. Not only does Fiona soon discover that she really was talking to the devil incarnate, but she’s now been initiated into a bizarre support group of similar “dead souls”—those who have done the same thing as Fiona on a whim, and who must spend their waking hours in absolute terror of that favor eventually being called in...and what exactly is required from each of them in order to give the devil his due. (Goodreads)

  *I received this ARC through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review*

  4/5 stars, much better than expected

  Dead Souls by J. Lincoln Fenn was a much better read than I anticipated. I'm a tough sell on "adult" works of fiction, mostly reading YA with exception to a few books here and there, but this book did not disappoint. It would make an excellent tv show or movie.

  Likes:

  Characters - I liked Fiona, the main character. She's insecure, smart, clever, selfish, and realistic. I also liked her boyfriend, Justin. He was just as problematic and likable as Fiona. Scratch was charismatic, and not as flat as he could have been (thankfully). The other characters were likable and flawed, but they didn't stand out so much due to how they were introduced (through brief explanation in Fiona's narration).

  Plot - The story, with exception to a part around 30% that slowed way down after a long time jump, was fast-paced and exciting. It's not mentioned in very vague summary, but Fiona and her dead soul friends are searching for a way out of completing the devil's favor. This, along with SPOILER, motivate Fiona to put her ass into gear and try to find a way to control her fate again.

  Gore - Be warned, this story was about 50% gore. I don't recommend this to someone with a weak stomach because the imagery evoked is highly traumatizing.

  Dislikes:

  The time jump - It came right after a pivotal moment in the story. It was too jarring; it started the build the speed of the story up from zero again, which felt disorienting while reading. We are introduced to around six new characters then and, to me, it was too much.

  Names - There are a lot of names and character references and it was pretty confusing for me at times.

  The ending - While the ending almost completely makes sense for the characters and situation, I was left a little stunned. It definitely didn't play out how I naively expected it to. (This may not necessary be a bad thing, though.)

  The Devil's in the details, right?

  Dead Souls by J. Lincoln Fenn will be published September 20, 2016.

• Cemetery Dance
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  Word count: 346

  Review: ‘Dead Souls’ by J. Lincoln Fenn

  Author Blu GilliandPosted on August 22, 2016Categories ReviewsTags Dead Souls, Featured, J. Lincoln Fenn, Jonathan Reitan, Reviews
  dead-soulsDead Souls by J. Lincoln Fenn
  Gallery Books (September 20, 2016)
  352 pages; $10.16 paperback; $7.99 e-book
  Reviewed by Jonathan Reitan

  How J. Lincoln Fenn’s first novel Poe escaped my radar I don’t know, for it won a 2013 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award, but after finishing her upcoming second novel, Dead Souls, she’s created a new dedicated fan in this reviewer.

  It’s a wonderful thing when a new writer comes out of seemingly nowhere to offer up such a mesmerizing and truly hypnotic work of fiction. When you’re knocked on your ass with its quality…even better.

  In Dead Souls, we’re introduced to the lead, Fiona Quinn, as she enters a bar to discover the Devil seated next to her, who offers her drinks. One leads to two, two leads to several and several lead to Fiona trading her soul for the ability to become invisible, a trait she hopes will come in handy in finding out if her boyfriend is cheating or not. What she ends up with is not only the new ability but a life now lived in terror as she discovers her trade with the Devil means he’ll eventually be calling in a deadly favor.

  Fiona encounters a group of other soul-trading people, the “Dead Souls,” who are in the same predicament she’s found herself in. One by one, her new friends’ favors start to be called in, resulting in horrific mass shootings, bombings and other chilling crimes. Fiona investigates a possible “double deal” with the Devil in order to potentially rid herself of her own upcoming favor, leading her far deeper into the workings of pure evil only the Devil himself and his worshipers could conjure.

  Dead Souls is brilliantly written. Gritty horror, heart wrenching suspense and impactful prose. Make sure this one is on your 2016 reading list!

• We Write Things
  http://wewritethings.co/2016/09/29/review-dead-souls-j-lincoln-fenn/
  Word count: 750

  WE READ THINGSWE REVIEW THINGS
  Review: Dead Souls, by J. Lincoln Fenn
  SEPTEMBER 29, 2016

  There’s an odd banality to most stories involving deals with the devil. For such a irreverent concept, it’s become rather ho-hum, probably since Dudley Moore met Peter Cook. So, it goes without saying I was skeptical of J. Lincoln Fenn’s Dead Souls. “Oh, look, another modern denizen deals with the devil. Oh boy,” I said, as I opened my review copy. But while Fenn’s concept — selling one’s soul to the devil for a gift/power — may be a well-trod path, her treatment and telling of the tale is anything but.

  Dead Souls follows Fiona Dunn, a marketing director with trust issues born from a rough childhood. Convinced her boyfriend is cheating on her, Fiona finds herself drinking in a bar, with the literal devil at her shoulder, wheeling and dealing. Naturally, she assumes the man isn’t really the devil, and she wishes for the ability to turn invisible and switch between being corporeal and noncorporeal, at will. While she is able to exploit this power to her benefit in the pages that follow, she is cursed with the standard buyer’s remorse.

  Her wish is not even the most frivolous or trite. Fiona soon encounters other “dead souls,” and learns that she was not the only skeptic to have struck a deal. Perhaps the most heart breaking is a lesbian who dares the devil to prove himself by making her straight. She is now damned to hell and cursed with a wish she never truly wanted. That’s powerful stuff.

  The best part of Fiona is how natural and relatable she feels. Fenn’s characterization of her is delightfully muted and despite all that has happened and is happening in her life, she feels so normal. She’s downtrodden, but never given to self pity or moping. Just as she starts to totter too far into either, she reigns herself back in. She’s clever and smart, but in a recognizable way. Fenn doesn’t go out of her way to make her the smartest woman in the room; at the end of the day, she is agonizingly human.

  Fenn’s devil appears in the form of a mod/hipster, with the unfortunate moniker of “Scratch” — unfortunate because I could only envision him as Mr. Scratch, which is an association I’m not sure if the author intended or not — and a taste for more refined things. Unlike many devils that have appeared in so many stories, Fenn’s is not so easily outsmarted. He’s exactly what you’d expect the devil to be: callous, cunning and undeniably cruel. He’s also savvy to modern times and modern pitfalls, making him every bit the adversary you would hope to find in the embodiment of pure evil and malice.

  This is especially important as Fiona embarks upon ye standard attempt to “outsmart” the devil. Most soul-selling stories eventually teeter down one of two paths: an act of redemption that saves their soul, or the character well and truly outsmarts the devil. Ms. Fenn is blessedly above this, and her prose takes us down paths unexpected.

  Most unexpected, though, is Fenn’s command over horrific descriptions. For nearly half the book, I was unsure the book deserved the “horror” category, but when the devil’s plans begin to unfurl, Fenn gleefully displays some of the most gruesome settings and acts I’ve read in awhile. Such is her talent, though, that it never ventures over into grossness for grossness sake. That is, she knows how much is necessary to convey the gravity of the situation, without diving down into the vomit bucket that so many horror authors rely on. In fact, she may have coined a new style which I’m going to call “tasteful macabre.”

  Dead Souls is a rare gem which manages to take a well-established trope, the selling of one’s soul, and freshens it up with a modern, smart feel. Fiona’s story is, from start to finish, page-turning and heartbreaking. With this book, J. Lincoln Fenn has created in me a permanent fan, which is oddly ironic, given the subject matter.

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  About Jennifer Bosier

  Writer, gamer, avid reader. Daedric artifact collector. Elitist Colorado native. Rolls lawful neutral.

• Monster Librarian
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  Word count: 658

  Book Review: Dead Souls by J. Lincoln Fenn
  Posted on August 29, 2016 by Kirsten Posted in Uncategorized

  Dead Souls by J. Lincoln Fenn

  Gallery Books, 2016

  ISBN-13: 978-1501110931

  Available: Pre-order, paperback and Kindle edition

  Fiona Quinn is having a bad day. She’s soaking wet, freezing cold, barefoot, locked out of her apartment without her wallet, and she just saw her boyfriend, Justin, take off in a taxi with another woman. It’s hard to believe that anyone would give her a drink, but her background in marketing makes her very convincing, and she’s busy downing mojitos when a man walks up to her, offers to buy her a sandwich and a drink, and asks her what it would take to convince her to sell her soul. Being an atheist, she says she’d trade it for the power of invisibility… but apparently lack of belief doesn’t invalidate the deal, and suddenly she owes the Devil, now called Scratch, a favor of his choosing– one that’s likely to be horrifying, graphic, and newsworthy.

  As a damned soul, Fiona can identify others, and she meets Alejandro, who traded his soul to become a famous photographer. He introduces her to a support group for those who have traded their souls and are now waiting for their favor to be called in, and lends her a book compiled over time by other damned souls seeking a way out. Having traded her soul for invisibility so she can spy on her boyfriend, she then learns that, rather than cheating, he actually was planning to propose before he developed pancreatic cancer, and is leaving his estate to her. Feeling guilty, and wanting to restore him to health, she tries to figure out a way to change her deal with the devil to save Justin. Alejandro warns her that the devil is always a few steps ahead of what any of his dead souls may be planning, but Fiona is sure she can successfully double deal with the devil, escape her fate, and change Justin’s.

  Much like the devil, J. Lincoln Fenn managed to keep a few steps ahead of me all through the book, with a twisty plot that somehow managed to tie together the beginning of the story with the end in a manner that is both ironic and truly gruesome. The favors Scratch calls in are turned against Fiona and her fellow dead souls, as he forces them to use the gift they bargained for in warped, grotesque, and graphically portrayed ways, both against humanity in general and each other. Social media, photography, and marketing strategies all take prominent roles in the way the story plays out: Alejandro uses his images to capture souls, and Fiona uses her marketing talents to manipulate others, using her marketing trinity of novelty, misery, and desire.

  Fenn’s writing is a trap: it starts out slowly, and the first quarter of the book creates unease, but there is no indication of the stomach-churning events to come. While I don’t think Fenn is aiming to be extreme, this is not a book for the squeamish. Some of the favors called in create images and visceral reactions that I won’t be able to let go of easily. Dead Souls is a well-crafted tale that, in addition to provoking unforgettable reactions in the reader, also provides food for thought, and it will disturb your thoughts next time you turn on the news. I won’t be surprised if it makes the shortlist for the Stoker this year. Highly recommended for public library collections. Reader’s advisory note: try recommending Dead Souls to readers who enjoyed Fenn’s debut novel, Poe, or Lauren Beukes’ Broken Monsters.

  Contains: Graphic violence and gore, suicide, implied cannibalism, suicide, torture, mutilation, and descriptions and imagery depicting mass killings.

• This Is Horror
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  Word count: 890

  Book Review: Dead Souls by J. Lincoln Fenn
  September 21, 2016
  “Dead Souls is one of the best, most horrifying novels to come along in ages and likely to find its way onto multiple bestseller and best of year lists.”
  2016 has been one of the best and most exciting years for horror fiction in a long time, with new, outstanding dark lit being produced by veterans and newcomers in almost equal measure. We’ve had mind-blowing stories from the likes of Stephen Graham Jones, Nicole Cushing, and Paul Tremblay, just to name a few, and we’ve seen outstanding work from promising newer voices such as Michael Wehunt, Philip Fracassi, and Daniel Braum. And there’s even more in store for us with promising books coming down the pike from Stephanie M. Wytovich, Bracken Macleod, and several others. One of those is Dead Souls, the second novel from author J. Lincoln Fenn, author of the breakout 2013 masterwork, Poe.
  In Dead Souls, Fiona Dunn, thinking it’s all just a drunken game, makes a deal with a man who calls himself Scratch and says he’s the devil. But it’s no joke and she soon finds herself not only indebted to Lucifer, but also drafted into a strange support group of like individuals known as “dead souls”, all people who have sold their souls and agreed to do a horrific favor at some unknown point in the future. When it comes down to it, “deal with the devil” type stories seem to have been done to death and you may be thinking this is just another of the same. But when you’re J. Lincoln Fenn, there’s no such thing as “just another” anything, and in her newest novel she’s written a remarkable and unique tale, darkly beautiful and brilliant in its execution.
  Dead Souls is a multi-layered story that works on many levels, not least of which is pacing. Fenn moves her story along at breathtaking speeds, pulling her reader in from the very first word and holding their attention to the final, wholly surprising ending. But the things that really take this tale and ratchet it up several notches from the usual fare are remarkable storytelling prowess and outstanding, virtually incomparable character development. Nothing J. Lincoln Fenn does in this book is expected and Fiona Dunn is no exception. She’s a compelling, deeply flawed, often selfish character with a dark and troubled past and a jaded outlook on virtually everything, and through her eyes, Fenn takes a blisteringly honest, often horrifying look at humanity and all the terrible deeds that people are capable of. In this case, those acts are the favors of other dead souls being called in, but she uses concrete examples from history to add realism to the story and increase the overall terror that permeates the book.
  It doesn’t stop with Fiona. This twisty, suspenseful tale is jam packed with extraordinarily real characters, each one with an important role to play in the story and none more necessary than the devil himself. For a character that makes very few appearances, Scratch is one of the most important—second only to Fiona—because of those ever impending favors and the constant fear that he will call them in at any moment, causing edge-of-your-seat excitement as Fiona races against time trying to find a way out of her predicament and maybe even make her situation a little better than it was before. But the devil always gets his due and, as he starts demanding favors from the dead souls, the story becomes even more horrifying as the deeds he requires become increasingly more heinous and inhumane, forcing people to do things that are impossible to live with in the aftermath of their completion.
  For a debut novel, Poe was a remarkable book, receiving the Amazon Breakthrough Novel award for SF/F/Horror fiction and going on to become a bestseller, garnering resounding accolades from readers and critics alike and causing horror fans to sit up and take notice. Dead Souls serves as proof positive that J. Lincoln Fenn’s first novel was no fluke. Her story is lightning fast, her characters rich and complex, and her prose sharp and precise as a finely honed butcher knife. She has a flare for mood and a masterful knowledge and obvious love of the English language that is on full display here, and she puts it to good use as she brings us a fascinating, horrifying, and ultimately delightful tale that should be way up at the top of every horror fan’s to be read list.
  Dead Souls is one of the best, most horrifying novels to come along in ages and likely to find its way onto multiple bestseller and best of year lists. If you haven’t read J. Lincoln Fenn’s exceptional brand of horror fiction, this is most definitely the place you should start.
  SHANE DOUGLAS KEENE
  Publisher: Gallery Books
  eBook: (352pp)
  Release Date: 20 September, 2016
  If you enjoyed our review and want to read Dead Souls by J. Lincoln Fenn, please consider clicking through to our Amazon Affiliate link. If you do you’ll help keep the This Is Horror ship afloat with some very welcome remuneration.

• Kirkus
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  Word count: 432

  DEAD SOULS by J. Lincoln Fenn
  DEAD SOULS
  by J. Lincoln Fenn
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  KIRKUS REVIEW

  An uninhibited thriller with a dash of social commentary where the devil is in the details.

  Fiona Dunn is a pisser of a character—a go-for-the-throat marketer whose suspicions about her live-in, Justin, get her into a spot of trouble. She trails Justin and sees him enter a taxi with another woman while supposedly traveling out of town on business. The answer of course is to go to a bar to drink away her sorrows, where she is plied with drinks by a dark, charming stranger. Scratch, the pickup, is also an intriguingly crafted character—a dark force with a wry sense of humor, he's a rather likable guy until he tells Fiona exactly who he is. He is, it turns out, the devil, Satan, real name unpronounceable, and he strikes a deal for Fiona’s soul that gives her the power of invisibility at will, so she can spy on her wayward partner. This has to be the archetype of a bar tryst gone bad. Scratch controls a cadre of dead souls in Oakland who meet in a converted church to discuss their woes and plot their escape, under the direction of Alejandro, a photographer who charms Fiona after seeing her dark pallor—the sign of the damned. Scratch has sealed the deal with all these wayward souls by giving them a business card stating their date of soul-selling and a blank space titled “Favor.” When the time comes, the blank fills mysteriously with a deed and instructions, and the novel turns gruesome in the acts. The implication is that the mass murders, the unconscionable acts of terror of our contemporary times (and all time) are the result of selfish deals with the devil—these acts are Favors, the payment due the devil. Fiona commits her obligated soul to turning the tables on Scratch and righting many wrongs. The countdown to Fiona’s Favor is a thriller of a chase with a wicked but not-so-elevating ending.

  A wild, well-written novel that fuels suspicions about what might be going on in our oh-so-unbalanced world.

  Pub Date: Sept. 20th, 2016
  ISBN: 978-1-5011-1093-1
  Page count: 352pp
  Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
  Review Posted Online: June 30th, 2016
  Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15th, 2016

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