Obitchuary
Stephanie Hayes
Author Bio
Stephanie Hayes spent plenty of time working at the mall before landing a job at the Tampa Bay Times newspaper. In her a decade as a reporter, she’s covered everything from suburban politics to education to snack foods to fashion to Britney Spears underwear mishaps. She also spent a year and a half on the death beat writing obituaries. Originally from the Cleveland area, she graduated from the University of South Florida and now lives in Dunedin, Florida. She blogs at stephinfections.com.
Description
Penny Perkins, journalist, upstanding citizen, dutiful bridesmaid, just killed her date. Smashed him on the head with a bottle of Misty Mangoberry Merlot.
She is tipsy and panicked. She is wearing a heinous pink bridesmaid dress that makes her irrational. Penny knows she should call the cops and explain her date’s grabby hands, his crazy eyes. She should cry self-defense. She should do a lot of things she doesn’t do.
Things are about to get real complicated for Penny, as her dead date’s life unravels into a mystery the deeper she investigates. Death just happens to be her job.
She’s the newspaper’s obituary writer.
“Thoroughly enjoyable from beginning to end, Obitchuary delivers exactly what it promises: A good chuckle, a light read, and an enjoyable cast of characters. Author Stephanie Hayes writes with a quirky sense of humor that keeps things moving at a fast pace.”
-Underground Book Reviews
“OBITCHUARY is a near-perfect blend of sweet, tart, and salty. It’s an excellent antidote to the stresses of everyday life, a perfect book to curl up with on the couch when the economy or politics have got you down.”
-IndieReader
“Stephanie Hayes has an ear for dialogue and a deft hand with humor in the laugh-out-loud mystery, Obitchuary. …The humor is everywhere in this book; found in Penny’s relationship with her family, her relationship with her awkward coworker, even in the murder Penny commits. Hayes has a sense of humor that runs along the lines of Janet Evanovich.”
-ForeWord Clarion
Book excerpt
I stared down at his motionless body, prone on the pavement of the parking lot. I considered the plethora of rational possibilities.
Maybe he was sleeping. Or locked in ritual meditation. Finding his center. His third eye, or whatever. Maybe he was playing possum, waiting for me to turn my back just long enough to roll onto his side, James Bond style, and hack apart my Achilles with his car key, using the pink ankle strap of my tragic pink wedding shoes as a compass for vengeful hobbling. Jesus, that would have been so much better. Then I would be the victim with the stunning survival tale, the object of praise from the worldwide press, a sympathetic star for strangers in the toilet paper aisle at Target. I’d surely make bank giving inspirational lectures at churches, inner city youth centers and Elks Lodges.
I closed my eyes, knelt down slowly and put two fingers to his wrist, hoping to God I’d feel some thump of blood moving through his veins.
Except.
He was dead. And I knew it. And I did it.
Shit.
The murder weapon, or at least the neck of it, was in my trembling hand—a shattered bottle of juice wine. You know, juice wine. Costs about six dollars, is unnaturally pink. It’s technically wine, I guess, but it tastes like a big, delicious pitcher of juice, and thus goes down the hatch like juice—way too easily. Unlike juice, though, it results in slurring, smeared mascara and bad decisions.
I had approached the wedding bartender that night with my elbows in the classic “cleave” position, smooshing my boobs from the top of a fuchsia bridesmaid dress previously seen in my nightmares. The bartender passed a whole bottle of pink goodness around the side of the roller bar, apparently because the lighting was low.
It was juice wine. Misty Mangoberry Merlot. And the bottle, it seems, was deadly. I didn’t know this until I killed someone with it, but you learn something new every day.I crunched a shellacked wedding ringlet between two fingers. Maybe he was completing the cool-down period of yoga. Or praying silently God would forgive me for bludgeoning him. What a giver.
Frosted glass shards peppered the ground around his head. A screen-printed raspberry, or maybe a strawberry, or maybe a cranberry, rested on his eyelid, glinting in the streetlights. My heart thumped, way harder than the time in eighth grade when Joey Filkerson told me my “knockers” had really “come in over the summer.”
How could he be dead? Could a bottle of wine really kill a man? It’s not like I meant to kill him. These things happen, don’t they?
Clearly, the responsible thing would have been to return to the wedding reception and tell the nearest sober person I had been accosted by an aggressive weasel masquerading as a decent human being. Worse, even. Groped by a bad-breath hack who pretended to care about my thoughts on progressive tax, Eastern religion and gender equality, but really only cared about the contents of my panties.
“I battled him in self-defense,” I would cry on cue. “And I even tried all my junior-high lifeguard skills to revive him because, well, you can’t press assault charges against a dead guy. And I want my day in court!”
Except…
I didn’t. I couldn’t.
Shit.
I gripped the Misty Mangoberry Merlot bottle so hard my fingernail bent back. And I did the unthinkable.
Author Website
http://www.stephinfections.com
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