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.

12/28/12

From a Man of Lethal Grace: FIERCE BITCHES

Last week in an act of holiday cheer (or perhaps maniacal, Abaddon-like goading), Jedidiah Ayres forwarded me an advanced reader copy of his new book FIERCE BITCHES. The holidays, as we all know, are a taxing time (what with all the travel, social, and family obligations...), but at the very first opportunity (yesterday morning as it turns out) I locked myself away and tore into this lean gem. When I emerged from my room a couple of hours later, my wife asked me what was wrong as apparently I looked a little shaken. I moped into the kitchen and drank a cold glass of water from the tap before I told her I needed to lie down for the rest of the afternoon.

Let me be blunt. FIERCE BITCHES is some of the bravest fiction I've read in the past ten years.

Hey, it's no secret that a lot of crime fiction these days flags out territory well-flattened by droll conventions. The intrepid reporter sleuthing a mystery that, no doubt, could be plumbed via Google...the mentally damaged former soldier challenging the status quo in a small town bent predictably bad...the heist of our toddling century forsaken by a jocular ex-con for the most simpering of loves....bleh. Maybe I'm being overtly critical (a shock, I know) but a lot of it out there seems so starchy and bland it resembles piffle drawn out for no reason other than to meet some distressing brass ring word count. 

Trust me, people. Jed Ayres' newest work is far, far, far from those conventions.

Operatic? Yes. Violent? Yes. Gorgeous and often Biblical-like prose that'll stop your heart with one punch? Yes, yes, yes....

And brave. Damn, did I mention brave already? Yeah, brave with a capital "B"...you know, the big "B" that eats through your face and laughs at your tears.

As I read FIERCE BITCHES, I kept thinking it was as if Ayres had me by the neck and was leading me downward into a terrible, endless wound carved in the world's soul. Sure, I wanted to look away, but you know what? I couldn't. I just couldn't.

And that's Jed Ayres' enviable power as a writer--his ability to spin an unflinching, cinematic hypnosis acts right before your eyes. The man just crosses all the lines most of us do not have the balls to cross. And his compassion for the most depraved, evil characters imaginable? It obliterates your ease and tests your will, so much so you walk around in a daze afterward or (like me) have to lie down.

Here's a writing tip, boys and girls. The nature of viciousness has many precious shades. If you peel them back with a rusty razor blade one at a time like Jed Ayres does maybe, just maybe, you'll be on to something.

Buy FIERCE BITCHES when it hits in February. Don't worry, I'll remind you to do so.

I promise you will never look at Mexico the same way again.
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