Whimsical Tales and Preposterous Parodies
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Winner of the 2023 Best Indie Book Award for best short story collection!
Meet a bunch of Uncooperative Characters in this (mostly) humorous collection of 25 quirky short stories, including a teapot private eye hired by a spoonlike femme fatale, a mystic who can only give Magic 8 Ball responses, three spies who play a deadly game of rock-paper-scissors, a serial killer who has a dispute with the story’s narrator, a family who wake up to find themselves trapped in their own home, and an author who convenes a Zoom meeting of stock characters.
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A Rock & Roll Fairytale Murder Mystery
White as Snow is a tongue-in-cheek murder mystery that uses the story of Snow White as a very loose backdrop.
While walking back to her dormitory one winter’s night, Brown University college-sophomore Bianca Snowden collapses and expires in the snow. Her friends, who exhibit character traits oddly similar to those of the seven dwarfs, are devastated by the revelation that Bianca died from an overdose of drugs and alcohol. Twenty years later, one of the group is murdered. And then another. The culprit leaves a musical calling card at each crime scene, consisting of a song related to the manner of the killing. One of the friends, Detective Charles “Chip” Munck, seeks to determine who is bumping off the other members of the “Heigh-ho Supper Club” and why.
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Don Quixote in Manhattan?
As the story begins, the cranium of Don Quincy, a retired NYPD detective, has an unfortunate encounter with a heavy falling object. In his delusional state, Don believes that he has been recruited to be a superhero. Adopting the moniker of “The Coyote,” he sets out to fight evil, generally making things worse in the process.
The Coyote’s main quest is to find a woman known as ‘Dull Cindi,’ with whom he has fallen in love. Unfortunately, Cindi is also being sought by a drug kingpin and his two unusually intelligent henchmen, because they believe she may have witnessed a murder they committed. Along the way, The Coyote meets a homeless man named Pancho Sanchez, who helps him in his quest.
Any similarities to the tale of Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes are purely coincidental. Or not.
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Pete Simons is the author of The Coyote, White as Snow, and Uncooperative Characters. A graduate of Brown University and the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, he is an ex-finance professional who worked in the petroleum business and the agricultural industry. After retiring from finance, he joined the Teach for America program and attempted to teach high school physics, landing him in therapy with a whole new appreciation for high school professionals. He lives in Minnesota but grew up in New Jersey, which explains a lot. But to know what it explains you would have to know him. Mr. Simons evidently learned nothing whatsoever from the process of publishing three works of fiction, since he is currently mulling ideas for a fourth one. He is also actively searching for a new biographer.
Rosie Simonse is a graduate of Thomas Aquinas College in Santa Paula, California, where she earned a bachelor's degree in liberal arts. She is currently working on a Master of Fine Arts degree in graphic design at the California College of the Arts in San Francisco. In the interest of full disclosure, she happens to be the author's daughter. But that isn’t her fault.