Please welcome my fellow author at Rogue Phoenix Press Nancy Dafoe. Nancy wants to present to you her literay thriller
You Enter a Room and is giving away a digital copy of this book to one randomly drawn commenter.
The novel is available at Rogue Phoenix Press and with online booksellers.
Blurb
Heroine Advena (Vena) Goodwin does not set out to become a detective. She is
more interested in untangling a literary mystery, writing her dissertation, and
falling in love, but the young man who fascinates her has killed himself or, as
she suspects, been murdered.
A smart, resilient young woman, Vena attempts to trap the clever murderer
Professor Gould by using his over-sized ego against him. With no one believing
her suspicions at first, she is on her own in dangerous territory masked by a
scholarly campus setting.
This upmarket murder mystery takes place in the settings of Rochester in
upstate New York and Rome, Italy. The crimes, murder and theft, are interwoven
with a literary puzzle the protagonist solves even as her life is imperiled.
Excerpt
“Yeah, well, they meant business, so I knew something was going down there.
After circling the house, the cops pounded on the door again, then one of them
looks through a window he’d already passed and returned to, standing on his
toes, and yells something. The other one comes back to the front, or I guess,
really a side door, and starts kicking at it. Then both of them were smashing
their boots against the door. I mean, I’ve seen this kind of smash in the door
on TV, but to actually see these guys break something down is damned
impressive.”
Suddenly, I wanted him to slow up and not say the next part out loud, but Sam
urged him on. “Then?”
“They went in, and I ran across the street like I was still jogging and
looked in the open doorway because I guess I wasn’t thinking about anybody
having guns, and I realize that wasn’t the smartest thing for me to do—see, I
wasn’t even thinking about myself at that point.”
“Andrew!” I wanted to slap him.
“It was awful, really. This guy, he was hanging from the ceiling fixture at
the top.” I covered my face and Sam gripped my arm, her painted nails digging in
and leaving little impressions. “They were trying to get him down, so they
didn’t see me. One cop grabbed his legs and pulled him back to the top of the
stairs to check for a pulse. Then he let him go, accidentally, I think, and the
guy starts swinging back and forth like a pendulum. I stepped back then because
I’d never seen a dead person hanging like that, and that’s when I saw his boot
at the bottom just inside the door. One of his boots was still on, but the other
had fallen. I was so close that I could have picked it up. I went back to the
other side of the street and called my friend Jay to come get me. I was starting
to feel sick.”
At first the detail of the boot seemed pointless and then I saw the image as
clearly as Andrew had, marking the death of the individual. Michael’s boot, the
worn, old leather ones that he wore every day. “How do you know the shoe or boot
was Michael Lawler's?” Sam asked. “Did you know him?”
“No, never heard of him, but when an ambulance pulled up and the EMTs went
in, I was still waiting for my friend. Jay had been sleeping in that morning
because he didn’t have class, so he wasn’t there yet. See, I didn’t feel like
running anymore, I was nauseous, like you.” He looks at me, then said, “Just
like you. Another cop came and took pictures, then they brought out his body
covered up like on a TV show. One of the cops said to the other, ‘Anything in
his pockets?’”
““License says Michael Lawler,” I’m pretty sure the cop said. “Student ID on
him too. University of Rochester student. Suicide.” I didn’t want the cops to
notice me, so I stepped back further and ducked around behind a house. Thinking
about what I did now, maybe it wasn’t such a good idea because they might have
thought I had something to do with it, like I was involved in a murder or
something. I mean, he was hanging, but who knew how he got there, even if he did
say suicide?”
“Oh, no,” was all I could get out. Sam was crying. Looking back later, I
realized Andrew might have been the one to put the word 'murder' in my head.
“You’re sure?” Sam asked, and he nodded. I liked Sam a little bit more during
those moments we were drawn together in horror. Whatever else life held for
either of us, we experienced a temporary bond in that claustrophobic space where
breathing becomes more difficult.
Andrew waited a few minutes but saw that neither one of us was up to
questioning him further, so he walked off, ready to repeat his tale. He probably
had friends back home who had yet to hear of his dramatic morning. That would be
all the experience was for Andrew, an opportunity to enlarge his life.
Sam hugged me, and I took that solace greedily. We finally stopped holding
one another. “You okay?” she asked.
I nodded, “I can’t believe it.”
“Me either. I’m so sorry, but I’ve got to go,” and we parted. As soon as I
left the bookstore, I was hit again, my whole body aching. By the time I reached
my apartment, my head hurt so badly that I turned off the lights, pulled the
curtains, and rolled into a fetal position on my bed where I stayed for hours.
It didn’t help and changed nothing. Hours later, I woke to restless fear and
more nausea.
Although I didn’t know Michael well, I was aware of his peculiarities, his
withdrawn silence, his intelligence and gentleness. What was certain was I
wanted to know him better. What I recognized him best for, however, was his
talent. We had read each other’s work on multiple occasions, wrote a few
comments that were generous rather than critical. I couldn’t quite believe that
Michael had taken his own life, that he was gone. Logically, my search should
have ended there with his death and certainty. We were told he had hanged
himself. Everything should have been obvious, as related circumstances appeared
to be to nearly everyone around me, but suicide and Michael did not fit, would
never fit.
My mind kept seeing Michael’s worn boot at the bottom of the stairs and then
him swinging when the cop let go of his body either accidentally or
deliberately. Unlike Andrew, I was not a witness, had not been at the crime
scene, but I might as well have been because I conjured up the sight as clearly
as if I had been standing outside in the snow, looking through that open
doorway. My eyes followed a line of dread up narrow stairs in disbelief, but I
kept turning away before seeing his distorted face, as if I couldn’t bear to
look at him in death, even in imagination.
Author bio and links
Writer, poet, and educator Nancy Avery Dafoe, Homer, NY, has published books
on teaching writing,
Breaking Open the Box and
Writing Creatively:
A Guided Journal through Rowman & Littlefield Education in 2013 and
2014, respectively. Her latest book on education policy,
The Misdirection of
Education Policy: Raising Questions about School Reform was published by
Rowman & Littlefield in June 2016. Her first chapbook of poetry,
Poets
Diving in the Night, is due out from Finishing Line Press in January
2017.
She recently won the William Faulkner-William Wisdom creative writing award
in poetry for 2016 and previously won the New Century Writer award for short
stories. Dafoe’s poems, essays, and stories have appeared in numerous literary
publications. Her fiction work also appears in the anthology
Lost
Orchard, published by SUNY Press in 2014.
Social media:
Website URL: https://www.nancydafoefiction.com/
Blog URL: info@dafoenteachingwriting.com
Facebook page:
Nancy Dafoe, Nancy A. Dafoe, Dafoe Writing and Consulting
