The Eulogist
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About this ebook
Charlie Sandors is a peculiar man with an even more peculiar hobby of attending funerals and delivering eulogies for people he does not know. Charlie doesn’t see anything inherently wrong with his hobby as make-believe mourner. He enjoys creating a new character for each situation. He likes being a part of the crowd of grieving souls: always accepted, no questions asked. That is until a particularly well-delivered counterfeit tribute entangles Charlie in a dangerous conspiracy of money, drugs and murder in the name of medical miracles. It could be worse. Charlie could be falling in love with a beautiful woman who believes he's a successful writer about to immortalize her beloved dead husband in what's surely to be an award-wining best seller. Trapped in a make-believe world of his own bizarre creation, Charlie finds the longer the charade continues, the harder it is to turn away, and the easier it is for him to become a target of murder.
Charlie was orphaned at nine when a house fire claimed his entire immediate and extended family. Maybe that’s when he became obsessed with death, secretly craving the attention and fame he had so fleetingly as the once-famous surviving child. Maybe he’ll mow down all his co-workers one day, then turn the gun on himself while neighbors comment on what a quiet guy he was. But maybe Charlie simply craves the acceptance and closure that comes with funerals—something he was denied when his own family perished.
It doesn’t hurt that, in addition to his day job as a freelance insurance fraud investigator, Charlie has a tidy second income as a house sitter . . . since trustworthy souls with no commitments are hard to find. This provides him with a steady stream of new surroundings to help augment his ever-changing funeral characters. It’s the perfect combination of zero attachments and wide-open possibilities. He has superior technology skills and access to resources beyond the normal person, and a chameleon-like ability to adapt to any environment. And really, given the choice, would you be true to yourself or to the best self you could create?
Liz McKinney Johnson
Liz McKinney-Johnson spent the majority of her professional life as an award-winning marketing copywriter and creative director, running her own agency for most her career. There she honed the ability to wade through piles of client-provided data, unearth the one or two pieces of information a normal person might actually find interesting, then craft that discovery into an attention-grabbing message. It’s a skill that translates well to plot and character development. As does the field itself, since most advertising is about 98% fiction. In her debut novel, The Eulogist, Dead But Not Forgotten, McKinney-Johnson slips into the skin of a character 180 ̊ from her own reality, turning her back on the classic advice to, "write what you know." She believes the goal of a writer should be to expand what you know, to delve into new, intriguing topics that can be woven into stories to captivate an audience. "I get to meet all kinds of interesting people," says McKinney-Johnson. "I've interviewed psychologists, neurosurgeons, pharmacologists, priests, even FBI agents. Everyone has a story to tell, and I love to listen. Eavesdropping on the people in front of me in line at Starbucks® or the grocery store is kind of a nasty habit, but great for dialogue." McKinney-Johnson was raised in and still writes from the Pacific Northwest, staring out between sentences on a view of the forested foothills of the Coast Range. Her three children are grown but still spend plenty of time around the house and its surrounding twenty acres, or as it is better known: Rancho Relaxo. When not writing, McKinney Johnson is a sewing and craft enthusiast who knows her way around a buttonhole and blind hem. She is one of the masterminds behind the wildly successful sewing website, Sew4Home.com, which brings home décor creativity to over a million visitors each month. And, she can bust out a triple time step, thanks to a love of tap-dancing that goes all the way back to high school
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