My short story ‘Thin Skinned’ is now available for Kindle! You can get it free through Kindle Unlimited, or for only 99 cents. Click HERE.
The deliciously profane Chuck Wendig posted on his blog for writers terribleminds a challenge to experiment with e-publishing, just to learn the ins and outs of this new and rapidly evolving option. After hemming and hawing, I finally decided to give it a try. It’s easier than you’d think! Now let the bucks start rolling in. (sarcasm alert.)
‘Thin Skinned’ is a dark, disturbing and gruesome short story (only about 2,250 words) in which an Irish immigrant exacts terrible revenge on the English lord who ruined her life and family. It’s set in the mid-1800s, in the Chihuahua desert near Las Cruces, New Mexico.
Those who know me might wonder where a story like this came from. Ah, but perhaps they don’t know me as well as they thought! I tapped into a very dark place for this one.
I’ve always been intrigued by “revenge” stories, going back to the Curse of the House of Atreus, the bloody Jacobean plays, and Shakespeare’s “Timon of Athens.” Unlike later works, including “The Count of Monte Cristo” and other more “civilized” revenge stories, these early works show little in the way of remorse. They are brutal, savage tales of reckoning and madness, unburdened by Christian morality and guilt.
I was also inspired by “Chato’s Land,” a wickedly ingenious Apache revenge movie from 1972 that starred Charles Bronson and Jack Palance. That and another revisionist western, “Ulzana’s Raid” (starring Burt Lancaster), taught me that cruel revenge had nothing to do with chivalry or fair play, and everything to do with barren, desolate places, both geographically and in the depths of a wounded soul.
If a person were stripped of family, homeland, religion and human dignity, what might they be capable of doing to the person they held responsible, given the opportunity? And a carpetbag of kitchen cutlery!
Purchase ‘Thin Skinned’ and find out.
Patrick Dorn 