Die Laughing: A Novel

Amazon.com Kindle: Die Laughing: A Novel
RM Krakoff
$3.99


Die Laughing!, 80,000 words, by R.M. Krakoff, is a black comedy tale revolving around stand-up comedian Alex Zachery and his uncanny knack for being in the wrong place at the worst of times. We follow Alex’s life as he begins his career of one-night stands as an amateur comic in Los Angeles clubs.

As he searches for love and a meaning to his life he constantly places himself in harm’s way, commits a murder or more, and runs from L.A. to the glitz of the 1960’s Las Vegas lounge acts where he winds up blundering his way into the New York mob.

This epic novel follows Alex’s life over sixty years as he changes identities (more than once), escapes police, the Mafia, the FBI before he finally (well, almost finally) winds up in a small town in Mississippi.

Throughout, Alex hones his craft of making people laugh while his life crumbles around him and family, friends and loves are lost forever. While Alex seeks a little fleeting normality in his life, unfathomable circumstances, not always within his control, generate havoc at every turn.

Alex struggles with his gift of comedy as a youth until his later life. He has never known anything else and is untrained for alternative careers. Alex longs for a more socially acceptable career and financial security that would vindicate him in his own eyes and redeem him from his father’s harsh predictions of failure. Despite his many setbacks and recurrent criminal activities he rises from his personal hell and creates an exemplary life of dubious fame and fortune.

How Alex gets his piece of nirvana is a rollicking toad’s ride of bizarre circumstances, twists and turns. Alex’s life is like watching a head-on collision of two passenger trains, where you know there will be devastating disaster but you can’t avert your eyes.

Darkest Hours, by D. K. Gaston

On sale for Amazon kindle at 99 cents.

Description:
To get his mind off his recent divorce, Detroit private investigator Joe Hooks takes what he thinks will be an easy job. He is to pick up a package from billionaire Montgomery Webb, an eccentric businessman. But Joe finds more than he bargains for when he discovers the billionaire tied to a chair, moments away from taking his last breath. Webb’s bizarre final words are, “Little doll lost.”

Joe enlists Kool-Aid, his ex-partner and best friend to aid him in finding out why the package is so important. The two friends are soon thrust into a situation that is quickly spiraling out of control. Pursuing the PI’s are cold-blooded killers, a government agency, and a mysterious Washington attorney known only as Shaw.

Joe becomes aware that the package could literally change the world, but has this discovery come too late?

Taking Out The Trailer Trash, by Janice Ivy

This is a Kindle book, and here's the link to go purchase it: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0054E7EMO
Description of book:
Charlene’s first novel has just been published and she couldn’t be happier. Unfortunately, being a published author isn’t quite as lucrative as she had hoped. She needs a day job that will give her time to finish her second novel before the money from the first one runs out. Managing a small RV park on the Mississippi Gulf Coast seems like the perfect gig. It’s close to the beach, the rent is paid, and the job demands are minimal.

Things seem to be working out just great until the murders start.

Who is killing people at the Happy Times RV Park? Charlene intends to find out, with the help of a senior citizen ex-madam, a fugitive from the 60s, and a good looking cop with a shady past.

Author bio:
I was born in a small town in Mississippi and grew up in the deserts of Arizona. I have since lived in nine different states and more cities than I can remember. My love of reading and an insatiable curiosity about what makes people tick made writing novels a natural choice.
I love a good story-line but characters I can relate to, and will remember, are what really makes me love a book. My characters take over sometimes and dictate where the story will go.

Sample Chapter
Chapter One
Charlene sat at her desk, immersed in the words on the screen. Her fingers were doing their usual dance, sporadically flying and then crawling across the keyboard. A ray of sunshine struck her uncombed auburn curls. She paused, and a look of intense concentration crossed her face. Her eyes narrowed as she stared at the words she had just typed. One hand reached for her coffee cup and the other for the cigarette burning in the ashtray beside it.

The doorbell rang. Boo, the black lab mix sleeping at her feet, jumped up and caused her to spill coffee down the front of her shirt. Loretta, the blue budgie in the cage on her desk, started squawking loudly, trying to be heard over the maniacal barking of the startled dog. Jinx, the small gray cat sleeping on the file cabinet beside the desk, meowed, then hissed, and flew past Charlene’s shoulder. He hit the ground running like the hounds of hell were chasing him.

“Shut up, Boo,” she yelled, as she held the coffee soaked T-shirt away from her skin. “Loretta, cut it out!”

Charlene walked around the barking dog and answered the front door.

“Hi, Miz Charlene. I’m sorry to bother you. How’re you today?”

Charlene was silent for a minute. She pointedly looked at the watch on her wrist, and then said, “I’m okay, Darcy. What can I do for you?”

What Charlene wanted to say was get away from my door, you low life, stupid cow. But as manager of the Happy Times RV Park, she had to hold her tongue.

“I hate to bother you.” Darcy paused, as if waiting for Charlene to say she wasn’t a bother. When Charlene simply stood and stared at her, she continued. “I was wondering if you had a toaster I could borrow. I wanted to make some breakfast for me and Teddy.” She gestured to her boyfriend who was standing behind her and nodding like a deranged puppet.

Charlene hesitated, trying to curb her annoyance before she spoke. To do so, she bit her tongue, hard. ”I do have a toaster. I don’t, however, have a hair dryer or a blender since I loaned them to you. This is not the small appliances department of Walmart -- I suggest you go there. They’re open at 7:30 in the morning. I’m not.”

Charlene was proud of herself that she did not slam the door. She simply closed it and walked away. Before she could walk from the front door to the kitchen sink, which was a very short distance in her rent-free travel trailer, the doorbell rang.

The sound of the bell set the dog and the bird off again, and Charlene was back at the door in two steps. She jerked it open, ready to tell Darcy exactly what she thought of her and her stupid boyfriend.

“What the hell do you …” she started with extreme irritation before she realized it was not her annoying tenants standing on her doorstep. It was a very nice looking police officer standing with his hat in his hands.

He took a step back and looked at her warily. “Excuse me, ma’am. I’m Officer Duran from the Ocean Springs Police Department. Can I have a word with you?”

Charlene, who was tall at almost five feet ten inches, had to look up at Officer Duran.

Instead of asking him in, where she couldn’t hear anything with the dog barking and the bird squawking, she stepped out on the porch, closing the door behind her.

“What can I do for you, officer?” She asked in a much more cordial tone of voice than she had greeted him with.

“We got a call this morning from one of the residents here. She thinks her neighbor may have come to harm. We knocked on the door, but there was no answer. I was wondering if you might have a key.”

“Well, that depends on which unit you’re talking about. Only about ten of the RVs here belong to the trailer park. The rest belong to the people, and they just rent a space here.”
Duran referred to his notes. “Unit 23. The neighbor, Mrs. Moore, in 22, called it in.”

Charlene immediately felt her head begin to ache. The little spot right in the middle of her forehead started throbbing in a slow and steady rhythm.

“Mrs. Moore …” she paused, uncertain how to be tactful but honest. Sometimes being tactful and honest was almost impossible, especially in this new job of hers. “Mrs. Moore has a very vivid imagination, and the gentleman in Number 23 has a serious drinking problem. If he’s not answering his door, it’s more likely because he’s passed out drunk than that he’s come to any harm.”

“Well, be that as it may, we have to check it out. Do you have a key?”

“Sure. Hold on and I’ll get it. Let me warn you, though, Harold is a mean drunk, and there’s no telling how he’ll react to you coming into his place.”

“It would be best if you came and let us in.”

“All righty, then.” Charlene stepped inside and slipped some shoes on and grabbed the key to Number 23 from a pegboard behind the file cabinet. “This day just keeps getting better and better,” she mumbled to herself as she went out the door. Although she had to admit, she was drawn to Officer Duran’s earnestness and obviously kind nature... and his ass wasn’t bad, either, she noticed as she followed him down the trailer steps.

Darcy and Teddy had been hanging around within hearing distance, and they followed along behind Charlene and the police officer. Charlene noticed that they were following and wasn’t surprised. They seemed to be everywhere, all the time.

When the foursome arrived at the RV, Charlene greeted Mrs. Moore, who was standing by her little white picket fence. Lined up in front of it like sentries were two garden gnomes, a sombrero-decked serape-wrapped figure, and three bright pink flamingos. “Good morning, Ms. Moore. Is there some reason you think Harold might have come to harm?”

Mrs. Moore turned to Charlene. She was twisting a white cotton handkerchief in her tiny hands. She was barely five feet tall, and her white hair was twisted into a bun on the back of her head with little wisps flying about in the breeze.

“Well, I heard a horrible ruckus last night at about 10 o’clock. I was afraid to go out of my trailer. You know how Harold can get when he’s been drinking. When I came out this morning, I noticed the blinds are open. Harold never opens his blinds until around 5 in the evening.”

“So, I’m invading the privacy of my most difficult tenant because he forgot to close his blinds?” Charlene asked.

Officer Duran added, “When you called the department, ma’am, you said you heard a gunshot last night.”

“Yes. I’m almost certain there was a gunshot. I told myself it was just a backfire or something. But then when I got up this morning and saw the blinds open, well … I just got really worried.”

Charlene sighed heavily as she stepped up to the door of Harold’s RV. She knocked several times and then called out, “Harold, you in there? The police are here, and they need to see that you’re okay.”

When there was no response, Charlene looked questioningly at the officer who nodded back. She used the key to open the door.

She gasped, then turned to run, bumping straight into the great bulk of Officer Duran who had come up behind her.

She heard a loud high-pitched scream and saw Darcy and Teddy had also come to look in the door of Number 23. Teddy’s hand was clasped firmly over his mouth to keep any further screams in, and Darcy was staring wide-eyed at the scene inside the RV with a look of morbid fascination.