BIO

KIERAN SHEA’s fiction has appeared in dozens of venues including Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, Thuglit, Dogmatika, Word Riot, Plots with Guns, Beat to a Pulp, Crimefactory, and Needle: A Magazine of Noir ...as well as in some beefy-looking anthologies most of which will make you question the tether of his shiny, red balloon. To his self-deprecating astonishment he's also been nominated for the Story South’s Million Writers Award twice without sending the judges so much as a thank you note. He co-edited the satiric transgressive fiction collection D*CKED: DARK FICTION INSPIRED BY DICK CHENEY and his debut novel KOKO TAKES A HOLIDAY is out now from Titan Books. Kieran divides his time between 38°58′22.6″N- 76°30′4.17″W and 39.2775° N, 74.5750° W.

2/10/12

What?

When you're working up momentum on the fiction halfpipe, there's often a temptation to run drafts by people. Most of the time when I've trotted out the pooch and pony show it's been with fellow hacks suffering their own bouts of self-doubt in the writing trenches. A few days ago I made a mistake. Someone heard I'd published a few things and volunteered to read a story that I've been working on. She said she read all the time and I thought, well--hey, this is outside my target audience, what could it hurt, right? When this person got back to me several days later (shocker) she was all squirrelly with me, and do mean like take five steps back squirrelly. How could I write such horrific stuff? While she found my story well-written and unnerving, she found my central character's morals absolutely appalling. I attempted to explain it was a crime story and that the character was struggling with repercussions from a childhood bereft of decency. She just shook her head and said unhelpful things, like, why doesn't he see a doctor? Why doesn't he have any friends who can help him try to live an honest life? (Me: Blink, blink.)Man, I'm so not doing that again. Onward.