Free Hard Bite and Other Short Stories by Anonymous-9

work-in-progress, and will be issued as an e-book in 2012.
     
    HARD BITE is nasty and brutish. Just the way you gotta love ‘em.
    --Charles Gramlich, Write with Fire
     
    “Nasty, but a beating heart underneath. [HARD BITE is] very clever; lovely writing.”
    --Patti Abbott, winner Derringer Award, 2008
     
    Your style reminds me a little of Vicki Hendricks' work, but with a voice of its own. I see you're expanding "Hard Bite" into a novel. It won't be like anything else out there, and that's not something you can say about most novels.
    --James Reasoner, Author, 40 published novels
     
    “Hard Bite” is phenomenal.
    --Kristen Weber, Developmental Editor, former senior editor, Penguin
     
    It’s not that difficult, really, to shock a reader. Too many self-styled noirists rely on the curdled note, the wince of revulsion – easy enough to accomplish in an opening line or scene – and never bother to develop their characters enough to make us care. Anonymous-9 does her due diligence: her prose eviscerates and then sticks around to consider the tableau. Her characters are layered and complex, and even at their most horrifying, they smack of humanity and humor and even compassion.
     
    “I like to kill people,” Hard Bite begins, and we don’t doubt it’s true. But by the end of the story your heart aches a little for the narrator. That’s the true goal of fiction, or it ought to be – to shift you on your foundations in the reading, leaving you off in a slightly different place from where you started.
    --Sophie Littlefield, A Bad Day for Sorry & A Bad Day for Pretty
     
    Tequila Spike
     
    “Tequila Spike” was my first short story written in 2007 and it sat in a short-story zine’s e-mail box with no acknowledgement for 6 months until Glenn Gray told me to send it somewhere else. I was terrified it was no good. Todd Robinson picked it up and published it in Issue #21 of Thuglit. The story just says it’s by Anonymous, and the cover has no hyphen between Anonymous and 9. I think “Tequila Spike” is the story closest to my heart.
     
    Claw Marks
     
    The idea came to me while I was sitting in the car outside a restaurant in Long Beach, CA, waiting for a friend. I scribbled it on a used envelope and polished it over the course of a week. Christopher Grant from A Twist of Noir published it and then nominated it for a Derringer in 2008.
     
    Anonymous-9 knows her stuff. Who else can have you hanging on the edge of your seat with a tale (or perhaps that should be tail) of murder told from the POV of a cat?”
    --Christopher Grant, Editor/Publisher of A Twist Of Noir
     
    Organic Chicken Tortilla Soup with Chopped Finger Garnish
     
    Originally published at DZ Allen’s Muzzleflash; when that site went down there was no longer any evidence of the story. So I sent it to Aldo Calcagno who accepted it for Powder Burn Flash and then nominated it for a Derringer Award in 2009. Bless you, Aldo.
     
    Killer Orgasm
     
    Cindy Crosmus, the long-time editor of Yellow Mama, and one of the foundational short-story publishers of the Internet, picked this story up and wrote me an encouraging note. I gained a lot of confidence as a result. It was published with original artwork by Gin E. L. Fenton. Thank you, Gin, your art perfectly captured the story.
     
    I actually lost a friend over this story. I met a gold dealer who bought some jewelry from me when I was short on the rent. He told me to meet him in an alley in Santa Monica and actually brought a little electronic scale with him. He was very polite and trustworthy, weighed my gold, paid me cash and that was that. We remained email pals and one day I sent him the link to this story and he emailed back and said it was weird. Next thing I knew, I was off his email list and never heard from him again. It wasn’t the first time my fiction scared somebody. Probably won’t be the last.
     
    “When you read “Killer Orgasm” you realize 1) the writer is wicked, and 2) she had a