Y Chromosomes and All That Jazz…..

Please give a warm welcome to long time friend of the Good Girls, JA Konrath, aka Jack Kilborn, who, as a follow-up to hitting more than 500 bookstores in a single tour, is taking a much less exhausting approach this time around: blogging more places than I can count.

I would, for the record, like to challenge the notion that bourbon is a guy thing. But because I love Joe, I won’t give him a hard time about it….

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Last I checked, I have a Y chromosome, which would make me a guy.

Guys do guy things, like drink bourbon, and start wars, a try to fix machines that aren’t working anymore.

Guys don’t normally write about woman. Especially from a woman’s perspective.

My sixth thriller featuring Lt. Jacqueline “Jack” Daniels features not one, but two female point of views.

There’s Jack, chasing a psycho who killed someone close to her at the end of book #5, FUZZY NAVEL.

Then there’s Alex, the killer. Alex also happens to be a woman, and I did something very unconventional with her. I gave her half the book.

Normally villains appear every few chapters, to ratchet up the tension and raise the stakes for the hero. But not in CHERRY BOMB. In this book, Alex is practically a second protagonist, albeit an evil one.

So I got to play both the good girl, and the bad girl. And I got to write sex scenes, and murder scenes, from both of their POVs.

I had a ball doing it. Women are so much cooler than men.

But CHERRY BOMB doesn’t come out until July. The book I’m really here to talk about was written by my pen name, Jack Kilborn.

The book is called AFRAID.

It’s a horror novel, about a terrible evil that attacks a sleepy Midwestern town.

I can say, with a straight face, that the book is so scary a good percentage of people who start reading it won’t be able to finish.

It isn’t overly gory. It’s certainly not gratuitous. But there are some horrible things that happen in the book, and they’re all centered around some of our deepest fears.

If you’re brave enough, I encourage you to give AFRAID a try. You can visit my Jack Kilbourn website to get a free sample. If you can handle that, you can maybe handle the rest of the book.

Maybe.

Which brings me to my question for you fine folks.

What’s the scariest thing you can imagine happening to you?

Pour yourself a Cherry Bomb (1 oz. vodka, 3/4 oz. Grenadine, 1½ oz white creme de cacao, 1 maraschino cherry, shake with ice) and think about what you’re afraid of.

If you manage to scare me with your post, I’ll send you a free copy of AFRAID.

Let the macabre games begin…

–Joe is married, has three children and three dogs, and currently lives in a suburb of Chicago. He occasionally teaches writing and marketing at the College of Dupage. Afraid goes on sale 31 March ‘09. If you’re too scared to read it, buy copies and give them to your friends with stronger constitutions!

16 Responses to “Y Chromosomes and All That Jazz…..”

1. Okay…I read the excerpt and wow. I don’t think there’s any possible way I could come up with something that would scare me more. I must say I’m intrigued though…and these are not typically the types of books I read. I’m just glad it’s morning and not night or I don’t know that I’d be able to sleep!!

   by Carrie on March 13th, 2009 at 7:15 am
   
   

2. Hey JA! Good to hear from you.

   Scary things…world-wide financial collapse and double turn lanes in any state with high retiree population top my list.

   Seriously, though, I think one of the scariest things would be a family member getting sick with a disease that’s incurable.

   What a way to start a Friday…although, it’s kind of appropriate—Friday the 13th and all that.

   Good luck with the new book, J.A.

   by Sara on March 13th, 2009 at 8:09 am
   
   

3. Carrie, now I’m doubly afraid of reading the excerpt….

   Great to have you here, Joe!!!!

   by Tasha Alexander on March 13th, 2009 at 8:14 am
   
   

4. Not a horror reader, but I’ll be sure to tell my niece about your book. She’ll gobble it up.

   The most frightening thing I can think of right now for me: Being trapped outside my burning home while my family is trapped inside.

   by B.E. Sanderson on March 13th, 2009 at 8:59 am
   
   

5. Thanks for having me here, ladies. Especially Tasha, who gave me her spot.

   I too am afraid of losing my family, which is why much of my horror novel explores that particular fear.

   by JA Konrath on March 13th, 2009 at 10:43 am
   
   

6. My imagination goes to the dark side often. As a child I used to watch the old black and white horror movies while babysitting two young boys.

   I’m fairly confident there are more books and movies about that one subject than I could possibly name.

   I sometimes wonder why we love to be scared. And it’s not just the adrenaline junkies, either. Us “normal” folk like it, too.

   There are different degrees of frightening, but I think we can all agree it’s usually in the dark that our true fears can be exploited. What you can’t see CAN hurt you.

   As much as I’d love to share the scariest thing that could happen to me, I read too many books where “odd” people read these posts and fixate, then make it all too real for the person who wrote it.

   Perhaps that is the scariest thing that could happen to me…

   by Mary Duncan on March 13th, 2009 at 11:52 am
   
   

7. My wife, who is a kindergarten teacher, used to work at a school in a rural area. She had a key to the building, so she could get in at all hours. And I mean, all hours. There were times we were up there at 11 and 12 at night! Well, the doors were those one-way doors with the pushbar on the inside — you’d need the key to go in, but anybody could go out. Well, one night we were leaving and I went ahead of her to take some stuff to the car. While I was waiting for her, watching through those thick glass windows with the wire mesh, it occured to me that if my wife were in trouble, inside the building, I was helpless to get to her. I had this vivid picture in my head of looking through the window and seeing someone on their way into my wife’s classroom with a long knife. He looked up at me and smiled. Oh, did I mention that this rural area had a LOT of gang activity?

   by Lucas on March 13th, 2009 at 12:23 pm
   
   

8. I’m afraid of dropping dead one day in my apartment, and nobody will find me until weeks later when my five cats have already gnawed the flesh of my bones…

   by Jass on March 13th, 2009 at 12:24 pm
   
   

9. I once wrote a short story about a father who sets a cup of scalding coffee on the roof of his car and it falls through the sunroof and lands on his baby daughter. Then he can’t get into the car. That’s one of the scariest things I can imagine.

   by Brian Crawford on March 13th, 2009 at 12:47 pm
   
   

10. I saw a television show one time, where a man was attacked, subdued, and bound and gagged. He then had to watch his entire family be violated while he sat there, helpless to stop it. Just the thought of that scares me, because I don’t know who I’d want to torture until an excrutiatingly painful and drawn out death after that…the doer, or myself.

    By the way, ladies, just read through some of the archives. LOVE the site. I’ll definitely be returning.

    by Jake Nantz on March 13th, 2009 at 1:54 pm
    
    

11. Oh, I guess it would only be fair to point out that I’m not as scared by that thought as it may have sounded, though, because
    A)we have an alarm with a separate battery backup, and if they get past that
    B)we have dogs, and if they get past that
    C)we have two pistols, a shotgun, and a hunting knife in our bedroom, and
    D)my wife is a better shot with the 12 guage than I am.
    

    by Jake Nantz on March 13th, 2009 at 2:05 pm
    
    

12. The scariest thing I can think of is Ann Coulter ruling the world.

    by Barbra Annino on March 13th, 2009 at 4:39 pm
    
    

13. Some great hears here, and the family in the burning house is actually a key scene in Afraid.

    I gotta give the free book to Lucas, though. Nicely visual scene.

    Email me, I’ll send you a book.

    And thanks again, everyone, for having me.

    

    by JA Konrath on March 14th, 2009 at 8:14 am
    
    

14. Wait! You haven’t heard my scariest thing yet.

    Zombies. Zombies are scary, dude.

    by Sean Chercover on March 14th, 2009 at 1:56 pm
    
    

15. Zombies are scary, Sean. I pass out after I drink around six of them.

    by JA Konrath on March 14th, 2009 at 3:13 pm
    
    

16. Thanks, Joe! I’ll be contacting you shortly.

    by Lucas on March 15th, 2009 at 1:50 pm
    
    

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