Our Frail Disordered Lives: A #Horror #Novel by Mary M Schmidt

Mary M. Schmidt is a graduate of Notre Dame University in Baltimore. She spent time in Rome during the '60s, getting to know the feral cats. Her previous book, Cat Lady, is about that experience. Cat Lady won the Jaffalogue's Picks award for best long narrative published in 2015.

Mary works for a local hospice doing transitions, that is, assisting terminal patients with their end of life procedure. This is not in the least bit depressing!

Mary makes her home near Annapolis with her cat Graycie.

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About the Book

Larry Kavanaugh is an ordinary kind of guy. He’s got a nagging wife and two kids, both annoyingly gifted. No matter what he does, there is no end to what his family needs. What’s a regular, everyday guy to do? Well, he cuts a few corners, obviously – one very big corner. He sells his soul to the Devil.

Maybe it’s not the actual Devil, but Larry is ready to make a deal with one of the Devil’s minions. He meets some demon whose name he can’t remember. Funny, it was right on the tip of his tongue, a name of something you step on. Roach the Demon has sort of good intentions. He just wants a re-write of Dante’s Inferno with himself as the star.

Roach goes after Larry as a rogue operation. He needs to make a point to his boss, Satan, so he uses the body of a human to follow Larry around and stir up trouble. He offers Larry an airtight guarantee that nothing could possibly go wrong. After all, Larry does not feel like he has much to lose – or does he? Even Roach might be in over his head this time.

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Keep reading for an excerpt:

Grace then started to recite Canto 5 of the Inferno, pausing often for questions and comments. Kathleen went back inside as dusk fell and the street lights went on.

She tried to imagine what it was like, a place where the wind blew at 5,400 miles per hour. Simply beyond her imagination. Yet Dante had come up with it, so many centuries ago.

Jeanine said, “It’s a real place.”

It was hardly the sort of place anyone would care to visit. The fact that it was 63 light years away did not make it any less real.

A real place.

That night, Kathleen managed to sleep without the help of a pill. But she dreamed of Larry, in the den, signing a contract with a man who looked and acted like a normal person. But was not. In the background, Jeanine was saying, “It’s a real place, Mom, just like Dante and Virgil said. It’s a real place.”

It’s real. Even though you can’t see or touch it. Or it’s in another dimension. Or 63 light years away. Or you can’t imagine it. It’s real, Mom.

It’s real.