Linda McFerrin's Dead Love

Linda McFerrin's Dead Love To Be Published In The Fall

Linda Watanabe McFerrin—poet, travel writer, and novelist (www.lwmcferrin.com)—is a contributor to numerous newspapers, magazines and anthologies. She is the author of two poetry collections, past editor of a popular Northern California guidebook and a winner of the Katherine Anne Porter Prize for Fiction. Her novel, Namako:  Sea Cucumber, was named Best Book for the Teen-Age by the New York Public Library. In addition to authoring an award-winning short story collection, The Hand of Buddha, she has co-edited several anthologies, including the Hot Flashes: Sexy Little stories & Poems series. Her latest novel, Dead Love, which was short-listed as a 2007 William Faulkner-William Wisdom Creative Writing Competition finalist, will be published in September 2010 by Stone Bridge Press.

Linda has judged the San Francisco Literary Awards, the Josephine Miles Award for Literary Excellence and the Kiriyama Prize, served as a visiting mentor for the Loft Mentor Series, has been guest faculty at the Oklahoma Arts Institute, is a past NEA panelist, and has been a juror for the Marin Literary Arts Council. She is the founder of Left Coast Writers® and has led workshops in Greece, France, Italy, Ireland, Central America, and the United States. She has mentored a long list of accomplished writers toward publication.

She will lead a workshop during Words & Music, 2010.

Dead Love is a supernatural thriller that follows a cast of nefarious characters—both human and otherworldly—as they foul and foil one another’s plans and power plays in a conspiracy of global proportions. It begins when Clément, a lovesick ghoul, falls head over heels for beautiful young Erin. Unfortunately, she is marked for death by the Japanese mob (the Yakuza). Using secrets learned from a Haitian witchdoctor, Clément finds a way to rescue and possess her—but not in the manner he's expected. Set in Asia, Europe, and the Americas, the novel jets readers all over the planet on a diabolical joyride that is destined to end darkly.

From what twisted recesses of the imagination does a character like Clément spring? It's a globalized manga comic turned literature. The circus troupe was a stroke of genius. Some scenes will be etched into my memory forever.
—Maureen Wheeler, Founder, Lonely Planet Publications

Linda Watanabe McFerrin  charms us with a winding tale of an evil enchantment. A wondrously wild story, told as if the dead pan voice of Dashiell Hammett had been mixed with the song of an artful siren.
—Susan Griffin, Author, A Chorus of Stones and The Book of Courtesans

This novel about a live dead girl combines an international chase, the suspense of a thriller, a soupcon of sensuality, some  wonderfully lyrical episodes and a set of brand new rules for ghouls.  It is as delectable and dangerous as a plate of Fugu. I read it in a single sitting.
—Tim Cahill, Pass the Butterworms, Hold the Enlightenment, and Jaguars Ripped My Flesh

Zombies, ghouls, vampires; pursuit, betrayal, death—it’s a globalized manga turned literature. Dead Love is Twilight with teeth.

AN EXCERPT FROM DEAD LOVE:

Now Alain was beneath me, his face under mine, his lips pink and tasty. I slipped into the saddle, slid onto that brilliantly designed, perfectly sculpted horn. What a ride we had then, my pony and I. Alain was watching me with a mixture of terror and desire. He could no more stop than a male mantis can shake its amorous mate. I was a pole dancer sliding up and down, a jillaroo bouncing along in the outback, a frigate ship tossed on the Cape of Good Horn. Straddling him, both hands on his chest, I rode him into the sea. I was in some kind of organic nirvana. Mandalas and kaleidoscopes were opening up like flowers deep inside me. Waves of purple and pale chartreuse, plumes of iris and swamp grass scrolled past my upturned eyes. Lust flashed giddy tattoos all over my flesh in a rose-red flush. I couldn’t actually hear it, but I was wailing like a cat in heat, my caterwauling sailing up and out the window, turning heads all along the canal. The big dopamine hit mushroomed up and into my brain. "Oh, oh, oooooh," I crooned as the dike burst and the waters of the Isslemeer came in, flooding Amsterdam.

I think it was good for him, too. He lay still for a moment, his face in a grimace. "God," he said gazing up at me in a kind of adulation. "God, that was good. What exactly are you on?" he wondered aloud and put his hand over his eyes. I sat looking down on him, my body suffused by a delirious glow. A silky endorphin parachute was carrying me back to the bed. I was paralyzed and couldn't move. Not unusual for me, but I had also found peace and a strange form of union. In Alain, I'd touched some lost part of myself. I was transformed forever. That's how I became Alain's slave.

             —Linda Watanabe McFerrin

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