Welcome to another day of Indie Reads Appreciation Week!
So lets review a bit! We started off the week meeting Norah Wilson and finding out about 3 of her books – Guarding Suzannah, Saving Grace and Protecting Paige. We then met Amber Scott and learned about her new book Irish Moon and Bestseller for a Day, which was yesterday, by the way – and a success by all measures! Yesterday we met Philip Ellis and found out about his book Sweet Tooth. I’m also running a giveaway of an ebook of His Elle and a Gift Card from Barnes & Noble. This giveaway continues until Sunday. Just leave me a comment with your e-mail address to enter this giveaway. Today is also the start of The Lucky Leprechaun. For lots more free books, be sure to enter that giveaway!!
Today we are going to learn about McCarty Griffin and her book Half-Inch. McCarty’s bio from Smashwords says the following:
McCarty Griffin lives in the Pacific Northwest, at the foot of the Cascades, with her husband, two children and several nonhuman family members. She is a transplanted hillbilly, born in Texas, but raised in the hollows and hills of West Virginia, where most of her works are set. She does not limit her creative efforts to any particular genre, although she does have a special love for horror, which she traces back to a childhood of Saturday nights eating Chef Boyardee pizza and watching Chiller Theatre with her mother. Before beginning her second life with her current husband, and settling in to raise her daughter and son, she served in the United States Army, went home to earn her undergraduate and law degrees, and then practiced criminal defense law for more than ten years. After half a lifetime spent doing everything but what she truly wanted to do, she finally just sat down and started writing, and she hasn’t stopped since.
McCarty Griffin’s book Half-Inch is listed as a Thriller/Suspense. Here’s the blurb to give you an idea of what the book is about.
Pammy has had enough of Bobby, her abusive drunk of a husband. One lovely spring day, she decides to kill him, despite the fact that they will soon be divorced and he will, at least in the eyes of the law, be out of her life for good. Indulging in homicidal daydreams for years has led her to devise her own perfect and completely bizarre plan.
Sounds pretty interesting, doesn’t it! I’m thinking this book will scare the pants off me at the same time it gets my adrenalin going! It’s on my TBR pile, and I think I’m going to be careful when I read it 🙂
I asked McCarty to write a few paragraphs about her book – to give us more information that just the standard blurb. In otherwords, why should we read this book. Here’s what she had to say.
Pammy Hilts, the main protagonist of Half-Inch, is a hero and a villain and a victim all rolled into one. She is brutalized for years by her husband and finally decides to strike back in a manner for which many of us would cheer her on and possibly even say out loud, “It’s about damn time.” However, very few go as far as Pammy does to get a little of her own back. Some might say she goes way, way too far, and that, I hope, is what will capture readers’ interest in this tale of extreme revenge and much-deserved comeuppance.
I’ve met many Pammys over the years, although none who took matters into their own hands so drastically. In my prior life as an attorney in West Virginia, I represented battered women at their hearings to obtain protective orders against the men in their lives, and in some cases against the women in their lives. I must admit that sometimes I wished at least one of them had taken a baseball bat to their abuser just once. Pammy is an amalgam of all those women, with a few extra kinks in her personality to keep her and the story interesting.
Sad to say, I’ve also met many Bobbys in my life and not just as an attorney, although I certainly got an advanced education in the mental workings of the garden-variety domestic batterer during my practice. Some readers may think Bobby Hilts is an exaggerated version of the men (and occasionally women) who bully and abuse their spouses and children, but I can honestly say I don’t really believe he is. The ugliness that goes on in a family, when no one from the outside world is looking, can be appalling, and so many times goes unknown and unpunished. There are far more people in the world like Bobby Hilts than many would like to admit. This time, in Half-Inch, he doesn’t escape retribution.
Half-Inch isn’t completely grim and grey, however. Pammy’s dark side, which she has suppressed for far too long and has come to think of as the “Other Pammy,” does have a sense of humor, albeit a somewhat warped one. Pammy has fun at times with her revenge in a way that may shock some, while amusing others.
After I had finished the rough draft, I submitted a portion of this story to a critique site for objective reactions and comments, and I was surprised by the number of people who wanted to know how Pammy is saved. Some readers thought that perhaps the good ol’ boy deputy character, Dwayne Parks, would rescue her from her plight, and possibly from herself before she did something irrevocably evil. I almost felt guilty about the fact that Pammy is not saved, at least in the traditional knight-on-a-white-charger sense. She is irredeemably lost from the start to her grief and hurt and rage, and wanders ever farther off the path as her story progresses. If she can be said to be “saved” in any way by the story’s end, it is simply redemption in the act of finally defending her own humanity, even if she loses a good chunk of it in the process.
Just in case there are any readers who are scandalized by the thought of a killer going unpunished, keep reading to the end for a twist that even Pammy herself, with all her plotting and planning, didn’t see coming.
Finally, I would like to thank in advance anyone who decides to give Half-Inch a try. Every writer wants someone to read what she has written; ultimately, it’s the whole reason behind the writing. I hope you enjoy reading Half-Inch as much as I loved writing it.
Please follow McCarty on Twitter or Facebook
McCarty has two books for sale on Smashwords- be sure to check them out! The links below take you directly to each book.
