Linda Watanabe McFerrin
Author of the new Novel
Dead Love
Poet, travel writer and novelist Linda Watanabe McFerrin (www.lwmcferrin.com), has been traveling since she was two and writing about it since she was six. A contributor to numerous journals, newspapers, magazines, anthologies and online publications, she is the author of two poetry collections, the award-winning novel Namako: Sea Cucumber and short story collection The Hand of Buddha, and the editor of the popular West Coast travel guidebook Best Places Northern California,4th edititon, and four literary anthologies. A past winner of Nimrod International’s Katherine Anne Porter Prize for Fiction, she teaches and leads workshops in fiction and creative non-fiction.
Love and sex among unusual beings are integral themes of her new novel Dead Love...and... she is NOT afraid of the dark. It's a good thing! Zombies, ghouls, vampires; pursuit, betrayal, death... Dead Love is Twilight with teeth.
Erin's (the heroine) adventure into the world of the "nearly dead" is gripping, compelling, and visually oriented. McFerrin spares no detail, including the repulsive, the beautiful, and the humor in the grotesque. She describes, for example, a night out with Clément (a lovesick ghoul), barhopping with a gang of ghoulish comrades: "His friends fell into an uproarious chorus of laughter, and one of them laughed so hard that two of his teeth fell right out of his mouth tinkling like a couple of dropped cuff links onto the top of the bar. This sent them all into further hysterics." There are a few places where Dead Love falters, mostly due to issues with perspective.... enjoyable and comprehensive...Delightfully disgusting, Dead Love is the new horror genre at its best. Fans of Twilight, World War Z, and Neil Gaiman will devour this fine novel whole.
— Claire Rudy Foster, Foreword Reviews, September
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.Dead Love was short-listed as a finalist in the 2007 Faulkner Wisdom Literary Competition for novels in progress. It’s due out in Fall of 2010 from Stone Bridge Press.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
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.
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