Love, Death and Other Lies
By Jerome Sparks
Genre: Horror, Supernatural, Thriller, Occult
During an ill-fated girls’ night out, still reeling from the loss of her husband, Liv Bestte meets a mysterious, old woman who promises to return her husband to her – for a price. It isn’t until the reanimated corpse of her late husband has begun terrorizing the hills and hollows around Julian, West Virginia, tearing flesh from bone, that Liv learns the price is her soul.
Now Liv is racing against time to find a way to satisfy this debt without sacrificing herself. And she soon learns that the only way she might escape her grisly fate is by offering up her daughter, Tegan, in her place.
But is it already too late for Liv? Is Liv’s fate sealed by family history? When Liv is about to make an ill-fated decision, it is Liv’s younger sister, Abby, who stands in her way, despite the fact that Abby was the first victim of the resurrected thing that was once Conner Bestte.
Now Liv is racing against time to find a way to satisfy this debt without sacrificing herself. And she soon learns that the only way she might escape her grisly fate is by offering up her daughter, Tegan, in her place.
But is it already too late for Liv? Is Liv’s fate sealed by family history? When Liv is about to make an ill-fated decision, it is Liv’s younger sister, Abby, who stands in her way, despite the fact that Abby was the first victim of the resurrected thing that was once Conner Bestte.
About the Author
Jerome Sparks is a native of West Virginia. He majored in the highly unprofitable and nonspecific field of Creative Productions while attending the University of Charleston in Charleston, West Virginia. Hoping to become a college professor, Sparks went on to earn a Master of Arts degree in Humanities, with a concentration in literary theory from the West Virginia Graduate College located in Institute, West Virginia. But, after an unsuccessful attempt to teach English at the college level (for which he offers his most sincere apologies to his former students), Sparks took the easy out and pursued a J.D. from Tulane Law School in New Orleans, Louisiana. Sparks called New Orleans home for several years, haunting the bars and bistros of the French Quarter, before finally following a girl back to West Virginia where he is currently practicing law. (Yes, he married the girl.) Sparks and his family now live happily in the West Virginia hills.
On Twitter: @Jerome_Sparks17
Author’s Blog: http://jeromesparksauthorblog.blogspot.com/
On Amazon: http://amzn.to/2trDJT7
On Goodreads: http://bit.ly/2sTJeIG
Prologue
February 24, 2017
He woke. Suddenly, as if escaping a nightmare. He groaned as he forced his dry, matted eyelids open. Despite his effort, only more darkness pressed in around him. His tongue was thick and swollen in a mouth that felt stuffed with sawdust. The air seemed heavy and smelled of strong chemicals and synthetic materials.
His legs were stiff, and his back ached. Shifting his weight, Conner discovered that his body was confined. Confused, he felt around him and discovered a space only a little larger than his own size, preventing him from moving.
Even after that detection, the panic didn’t immediately set in. His thoughts were drifting in a thick fog, memories hazy, and his immediate circumstances failed to register. He couldn’t remember where he was or how he got here, and the lack of any illumination prevented him from doing a proper survey of his surroundings.
But it was more than that. Conner couldn’t remember exactly what had happened to him before he woke, not the immediate events that placed him there, or those preceding them. He couldn’t recall a single name to cry out, not even his own. All he knew was that he wasn’t where he was supposed to be. He knew it deep in his gut.
This was wrong.
He struggled with the snippets he could recall – faint images and impressions of faces and people and places. But none helped him recall anything more. He waited for his mind to clear, for the miasma to lift.
Conner pressed his hands against his confinement and wondered at the cool, smooth texture of the fabric he was tearing at. When the crushing realization that he was imprisoned registered, a cold chill crept over him. He was entombed and alone.
His mind suddenly racing, Conner fumbled to find some latch, some bolt or lever that would open a door or a window or a hatch to release him from his stifling cell. But there was none. No exit. No escape. And when he opened his mouth to scream for help all that burbled up from his throat was an unintelligible, garbled howl.
Thrashing, Conner threw himself against the low ceiling and walls of his personal vault. He clawed desperately at the soft, silky material inches from his nose until his cold fingers touched hard, smooth wood – then he paused. He ran his fingernails over the polished wood. It was much too hard. Clawing wouldn’t see him through it. If nothing else could cut through the fog in his mind that fact had. It was horribly apparent.
Conner searched himself, his hands pausing as they found his belt buckle. Loosening his belt, he slipped it from his waist. Then, gripping the metal buckle tightly in his hands, he proceeded to hack at the wood until it splintered. He continued to chip away, for endless seconds, minutes, hours, the buckle cutting into his fingers and his fleshy palms with each thudagainst the roof of his cramped tomb, until a small break in the wood finally opened and Conner could smell the dank, rich odor of earth and well-watered sod.
He continued on, pressing his muscles to action, summoning an incredible strength he never knew he had.
Conner’s fingers tore into the soil, shoveling mud and muck into his cramped confines until he could finally begin to pull himself into the small chasm he’d dug. Then, with his legs beneath him, he continued to dig and push and work his way up through the loose earth until his right arm jutted up and out of the ground into the open air. He could feel a cold, soft rain striking his skin.
He used his legs to push his upper body up out of the earth, a dark sky above him, the gentle rain splattering against his cheeks, his fingers raw from tunneling through rock and dirt. Then, with one final burst of strength, Conner hauled himself up out of the ground, collapsing in the mud beside the tombstone.
It didn’t sink in. Not at first. Not for a long while. He’d read the name on the tombstone four times before he could finally place it – Conner Bestte. And, when it did register, he let loose another garbled howl.
He knew the name was his, but he couldn’t conceive of why it appeared on a tombstone. What was he doing here? Who had done this to him?
Shambling down the hill, weaving through a forest of gravestones and monuments, Conner made for the gates of the graveyard and the mist-shrouded road beyond. He struggled onward, his joints aching, his mind reeling, his memories still only discordant, drifting remnants of images and ideas, disembodied emotions and vague recollections.
But, as he hobbled along, one image came to him. One image stood out among all the others as he pressed ahead – her image. The image of that young, beautiful woman, the woman he knew he’d once loved, the woman he knew he’d once desired, longed for, yearned for, the one woman he’d risked everything for – was the woman he now wanted to kill more than anything, to rend her limbs from her body and listen to her scream in agony as he ripped the flesh from her bones. He wanted to place her under his heel and stamp out the last gasp of her life.
But, struggle as he might, he couldn’t remember why. Although, in that moment, as he stumbled out onto the street, thewhy didn’t matter.
Only the urge mattered – the urge to do her harm, the urge to see her dead, the urge to rip skin and muscle away from her body with his teeth.
That is all that mattered.
The rest would come to him later, when he’d finished with her.
Interview with author!
Tell us about your genre. How did you come to choose it? Why does it appeal to you?
I don’t know whether I chose the horror genre or not. For me, writing horror stories just seems natural. I’ve been writing for a long time – since I was in grade school. (Mostly just for myself and friends.) And, I can always remember writing horror stories. I’d write other types of stories, too, but horror just felt like a natural fit. So, I can’t say that I sat back and decided which particular genre I wanted to work in. It was simply that the stories that sprang to mind, more often than not, seemed to always be horror stories.
Why? I wish I could give you a pithy explanation with some vaguely academic references. But, I can’t. What I can tell you is that I was a lonely kid who grew up in the 1970s and loved horror movies. That’s what initially hooked me and pulled me into the horror sphere. The movies. I loved them – all the Universal monster movies, the Hammer films, et al.
I’ve told other people the same thing. So, if you’ve read any other interviews I’ve given, you’re likely to see something very similar. But, one of my early memories involves a television show that came on every Saturday at 11:30 p.m. after the nightly news broadcast on a local network affiliate titled “Chiller Theater.”
Chiller played all the classic Universal monster movies: Dracula, Frankenstein, the Wolf Man; to the B-grade 1950s Cold War inspired horror films, like: Them, The Blob, and War of the Worlds. And, Chiller introduced me to the films of horror legend Vincent Price, like: The Last Man On Earth, House of Wax, and The House on Haunted Hill. To me, these were all classics. Yes, the quality of what was offered from one week to the next might’ve fluctuated wildly, but I was just a kid and these movies left their mark on me.
Of course, all good things come to an end. I think Chiller finally went off the air sometime around the late 1970s or early 1980s. I can’t really say when it happened. I just know it disappeared. But luckily videocassette players had come along by that time, and my friends and I were able to replace the void left by Chiller with weekends renting the latest horror film released on BETA or VHS. We ordered pizzas and watched hours of the best horror movies the 1980s could offer up. I remember weekends watching The Evil Dead, Re-Animator, Dawn of the Dead, and A Nightmare on Elm Street, to name just a few. It was great! I loved every minute of it. The 1980s was a great decade for a fan of horror films.
Anyway, as you can see, I spent my early years immersed in the genre. So, when it comes to writing, there really is no choice for me. Writing horror just comes naturally.
What do you find most challenging about the writing process, and how do you deal with it? When and where do you do your writing?
My response to your question about what I find most challenging, kind of goes with your question about when and where I do my writing, because what I personally find most difficult about writing is finding time to write. So, I hope you don’t mind, but I’ll offer a single answer for both.
I make my living as an attorney, which means I have little time for much of anything but work and family. I spend countless hours during the week (and during many weekends) working up cases that demand careful attention to detail and consideration of all the potential counter-arguments opposing counsel could make. And my clients have a right to expect me to focus all my concentration on their cases, because they have quite a bit riding on them.
Of course, my family also demands my attention. My daughter is in middle school. She plays soccer and is a member of the West Virginia Youth Symphony’s strings group this year. She plays the cello. (Yeah. I’m kind of proud of her.) So, I need to make time for her and help get her to and from different practices. And, like any married man knows, I have to make time for my wife, too. I’m not the best when it comes to that, but I try. (If nothing else, my wife puts up with me.)
Still, even with everything I do, I manage to carve out some time to write. I’ve spent many a lunch hour typing up a scene or jotting down ideas. Sometimes, after I’ve finished with my work at the end of the day and before I head home, I’ll take a moment to get a little more on paper. And on weekends, if I come into the office, after I’ve done what I came into the office to do, I’ll work a bit on my stories, too. So, I spend quite a bit of my down time at the office writing.
I also take any chance I get at home to work on my writing, too. At night, I’ll work on stories after everyone else is asleep, or on the weekends early in the morning before everyone else in the house wakes up I might try.
It’s not easy for me to make time to write. So the simple answer is – I do it when I can, where I can.
What have you learned about promoting your books?
Simple. I’ve learned that it’s not easy.
As you might guess, I’m not a well known writer – outside of some old high school and college friends. And my book, “Love, Death and Other Lies,” has been published through a small publishing group. So, trying to get the book out there into the public consciousness isn’t easy.
When I first started self-publishing some of my work through Amazon’s KDP program (I published under a pseudonym – J.S. Beck – in honor of John Steinbeck), I was under the misconception that I could simply write something and put it out there without doing much more. I thought a good story was all you needed. But, of course, there’s a lot out there for people to choose from. And now, with so many new venues opening up to writers, like the KDP program and e-publishing, there’s more competition than probably any time in recent memory. So, it isn’t enough to just write a story that you believe is good, with a great hook and plenty of scares. You have to find a way to make potential readers aware of it. Otherwise, your work is never going to find an audience.
Since I don’t have a great deal of time to do the marketing myself, I’m personally relying upon a company that sets up book-blog tours. The one I went with? Sage’s Blog Tours (http://www.sagesblogtours.com/). Sage, of Sage’s Blog Tours, is great to work with and has helped make the whole process relatively painless. 
As far as promoting my work goes, I know I still have a lot to learn. But, hopefully I’m on the right track.
What are you most proud of as a writer?
I really can’t say. The question kind of assumes I’ve done something at this point as a writer that I should be proud of, but I don’t really know that I’m far enough along (or that I’ll ever get far enough along) that I can really say I’m proud of something in particular.
There’s a lot I want to do, a lot I would like to do. I’d like to write a story so compelling that a mass of readers is compelled to pick the book up and finish it off in a single night. I’d love to create a character that becomes iconic inside the horror genre in and of itself. I’d like for people to have their hair stand on end, and their skin to prick up with goosebumps, when they see my name on a book cover.
So, I can’t answer the question of what I’m proud of at this point in the game, because I don’t really feel as if I’ve accomplished anything significant, yet. Or, at least, nothing that I can stand back and say – Damn that was good, wasn’t it? So, I’ll keep writing and I will try to write the best stories I possibly can. And, maybe at some point I’ll be able to look back with pride. But, at the moment? I don’t think I’m where I can say there’s something I’m particularly proud of as a writer.
If you could have dinner with any writer, living or dead, who would it be and what would you talk about?
Wow. That’s a tough question. There are certainly a number of writers I’d love to have dinner with, just to try get some idea of how they manage(d) the whole writing process. One of the first writers I fixated on was John Steinbeck. And I was avid reader of his work for the longest time. He was the focus of my Master’s thesis. I loved Of Mice and Men, East of Eden and Cannery Row. I still believe they’re representative of some of the best American literature out there. I’d love to know exactly how Steinbeck put those stories together. I know many of his characters are based upon people he knew, like his pal Ed Ricketts being the inspiration for the character Doc in Cannery Row, but I’d love to hear him talk about those people, all about their foibles and little peccadillos, and how he went about crafting a story around them. I’d like to know, in his mind, did his friends’ characters give birth to the stories, or did the stories simply accommodate their characters?
And Stephen King, I’d love to know what it is that keeps him cranking out yarn after yarn after yarn. The man is a fount of plots and characters and wonderfully sick horrors. I’d love to sit down with him for just an hour or two, over some beer and steaks, and listen to him explain how he nurses and gives life to those ideas of his. How does he choose which he’ll actually work on and which he’ll abandon? Or, does he ever abandon an idea?
The Stephen King book that really kicked me in the ass was The Green Mile. That story was spell-binding. There were so many characters he created in that book, with so many interesting and interweaving plot lines, and every one of them clicked with an electric current – like they were alive. I wasn’t just wondering what was going to happen to the main character, I had to know what was going to happen to every last character he introduced. He has some great books, with some great characters, but for me that book stood out above all the others. How did he manage that? How does he instill that kind of life into so many characters? (I am reading King’s non-fiction work, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft. So, I may get some answers from that book. But, I’d still like to hear him tell the story of how he does it personally.)
Oh, and there are other writers I’d love to sit down with. I’d love to meet and discuss writing with J.K. Rowling, Anne Rice, Clive Barker, Neil Gaiman, Chuck Palahniuk, Allen Ginsberg, Edward Albee, Truman Capote, Edgar Allen Poe, Bram Stoker, and Mary Shelley. Just to name a few. But, the truth is, I don’t know that I’d ever be confident enough to sit down with any of them and actually talk about writing or how they go about it. I’d likely be too intimidated. These people are giants. And me? I’m only just starting to get things going. I could just as easily disappear tomorrow, with only a few books to my name that haven’t seen a circulation like the books of these authors. I wouldn’t have the nerve to sit down to dinner with any of them. And, even if I did, I’d be sitting across the table dumbfounded and mute.
So, with all my hang-ups, who would I honestly be able to have dinner with? Most likely - Alan Smithee.
