Author Liesel K. Hill's Musings on Fantasia...
Showing posts with label Street Games Promo. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Street Games Promo. Show all posts
Monday, March 30, 2015
Crime Tidbit: Jesse Pomeroy, The Boy Fiend and Why We Are Fascinated By Him
Did you know that the youngest serial killer in American history lived in Massachusetts and was already killing by the age of fifteen?
It's true. Jesse Pomeroy, known as the Boy Fiend, was born to working class parents in November 1859. He was bullied a lot as a child because he was born with one all white eye.
His father was an alcoholic and an abusive drunk. He often beat Jesse for minor infractions. That lasted until one day when he took a belt to Jesse and his wife caught him. Jesse's mother chased him away and he never returned, but the damage, it seemed, was already done.
Pets and other small animals in and around the house began to suffer violence no one else actually witnessed. When Jesse was caught torturing the neighbor's cat, it was finally explained.
Soon animal cruelty wasn't enough for Jessie. He stripped, beat, and strung a four-year-old up by his wrists at an outhouse. Luckily, the child survived. A second, seven-year-old victim was also lured to a secluded spot, stripped, and beaten. This child's teeth were knocked out and his eye was blackened, as well as being whipped.
And all that before Jesse was thirteen.
He assaulted at least two more victims in 1872, both youngsters who described Jesse getting sexual release during the attacks.
In March of 1874, he committed his first murder, luring a ten-year-old girl into the downstairs room of his mother's shop. He tortured the girl and then murdered her when he grew bored. Her body was hidden--not well--in an ash heap.
A month later he took a young boy outside the city and stabbed him to death, extensively mutilating the body afterward.
Eventually Jesse was caught, tried, and sentenced to death by hanging. However, due to his age, the governor refused to sign the death warrant. He spent the rest of his life in prison and died in the Bridgewater Hospital for the Criminally Insane at the age of 71.
What is our culture's fascination with serial killers all about? Are we all just a little sinister at heart? Do we all secretly yearn for drama?
Perhaps, but I think it's a bit more noble than that. While we should always celebrate and remember the victims, rather than giving the killers fame, I do think it's important that we try to understand these kinds of people. I think our fascination with them is three fold.
1) Good vs. Evil - While Sauron and Voldemort are all well and good, they are, unfortunately for us avid readers, fictional baddies. Serial killers are the true, realistic embodiments of evil, which captures our interest and fear.
2) They behave in ways much different than the majority of the population. Their behavior defies normal human understanding, which presents a mystery. And as we all know, a mystery to us mortals often proves irresistible. We can't not investigate it.
3) We are interested in for the same reason we are interested in all fictional characters, good or bad, real or fantastical, historical or contemporary: by studying human behavior, especially against the backdrop of interesting circumstances (read: great stories), we can find greater understanding of ourselves.
I often hear people remark that they don't like people's fascination with serial killers because it ignores the victims, who should be celebrated and remembered, while celebrating and giving fame to the perpetrator.
While I agree with this sentiment whole-heartedly, I do think that understanding serial killers is important. It helps us understand ourselves and our society--hopefully so we can improve both--as well as showing us what is worth protecting.
Check out Street Games, my foray into the mind of a serial killer walking the underbelly of the a dark, inner city landscape, while a young woman searches for her lost brother.
Why do you think we are so obsessed with serial killers?
 |
| Jesse Pomeroy (Source) |
His father was an alcoholic and an abusive drunk. He often beat Jesse for minor infractions. That lasted until one day when he took a belt to Jesse and his wife caught him. Jesse's mother chased him away and he never returned, but the damage, it seemed, was already done.
Pets and other small animals in and around the house began to suffer violence no one else actually witnessed. When Jesse was caught torturing the neighbor's cat, it was finally explained.
Soon animal cruelty wasn't enough for Jessie. He stripped, beat, and strung a four-year-old up by his wrists at an outhouse. Luckily, the child survived. A second, seven-year-old victim was also lured to a secluded spot, stripped, and beaten. This child's teeth were knocked out and his eye was blackened, as well as being whipped.
 |
| Pomeroy as an older man. (Source) |
He assaulted at least two more victims in 1872, both youngsters who described Jesse getting sexual release during the attacks.
In March of 1874, he committed his first murder, luring a ten-year-old girl into the downstairs room of his mother's shop. He tortured the girl and then murdered her when he grew bored. Her body was hidden--not well--in an ash heap.
A month later he took a young boy outside the city and stabbed him to death, extensively mutilating the body afterward.
Eventually Jesse was caught, tried, and sentenced to death by hanging. However, due to his age, the governor refused to sign the death warrant. He spent the rest of his life in prison and died in the Bridgewater Hospital for the Criminally Insane at the age of 71.
What is our culture's fascination with serial killers all about? Are we all just a little sinister at heart? Do we all secretly yearn for drama?
Perhaps, but I think it's a bit more noble than that. While we should always celebrate and remember the victims, rather than giving the killers fame, I do think it's important that we try to understand these kinds of people. I think our fascination with them is three fold.
1) Good vs. Evil - While Sauron and Voldemort are all well and good, they are, unfortunately for us avid readers, fictional baddies. Serial killers are the true, realistic embodiments of evil, which captures our interest and fear.
2) They behave in ways much different than the majority of the population. Their behavior defies normal human understanding, which presents a mystery. And as we all know, a mystery to us mortals often proves irresistible. We can't not investigate it.
3) We are interested in for the same reason we are interested in all fictional characters, good or bad, real or fantastical, historical or contemporary: by studying human behavior, especially against the backdrop of interesting circumstances (read: great stories), we can find greater understanding of ourselves.
I often hear people remark that they don't like people's fascination with serial killers because it ignores the victims, who should be celebrated and remembered, while celebrating and giving fame to the perpetrator.
While I agree with this sentiment whole-heartedly, I do think that understanding serial killers is important. It helps us understand ourselves and our society--hopefully so we can improve both--as well as showing us what is worth protecting.
Check out Street Games, my foray into the mind of a serial killer walking the underbelly of the a dark, inner city landscape, while a young woman searches for her lost brother.
Dark Remnants (Street Games #1), Desolate Mantle (Street Games #2) (Available 4/2015)
Why do you think we are so obsessed with serial killers?
Monday, January 12, 2015
Desolate Mantle (Street Games #2) Cover Reveal!
I'm finally getting ready to release Desolate Mantle, book 2 of Street Games! I've seriously been trying to get this book out for a year. But life happens and it kept getting back-burnered. Well, it's finally time! I'm aiming to get book 2 out in February, though I don't have an exact date yet.
Meanwhile, courtesy of the the great Kelean Patrick Burke, here is the cover of book 2. Enjoy!
Synopsis:
Meanwhile, courtesy of the the great Kelean Patrick Burke, here is the cover of book 2. Enjoy!
Desolate Mantle (Street Games #2)
In the most dangerous city in the country, one controlled by the sadistic Sons of Ares gang, Kyra Roberts recently crossed paths with detective Gabe Nichols. She dismissed any liaison with him as impossible, but telling him the truth may prove inevitable...
Walking the Slip Mire nightly, dressed in her disguise and trying to infiltrate a homicidal gang, Kyra sees plenty of things she can’t explain. When she begins to suspect a serial killer might be at work, she decides to approach Gabe again.
Gabe has plenty to keep him busy: a bizarre missing persons case, a new development in his brother’s cold case, a new neighbor, and the grisly murders that are a nightly ritual in the Slip Mire. When Kyra shows up unexpectedly, he jumps at the chance keep her around, but it’s harder than he bargained for. She’s not an average source any more than she’s an average Mireling.
Their partnership crumbles, but when things become even darker than usual in the Slip Mire, they’ll need one another get survive a hellish situation. If they can’t work together to shoulder their burdens, they’ll find themselves utterly alone. In Abstreuse, it’s not a matter of not coming out of the darkness, but of being absorbed by the darkness itself…
Monday, February 3, 2014
Tips for an Awesome KDP Promo!
This past month (January) I ran my first real KDP promotions, and they went great!
The first one I ran was on my book Quantum Entanglement, Book 2 of Interchron. I knew it would be kind of a weird promo, because it's book 2 of the series. Usually you do a book 1 promo. Now, I wouldn't necessarily recommend doing book 2, but my hands were tied here. Book 1 was self-published, which means I can't control the price. Book 2, on the other hand, is self-published. So, I just decided to do a promo on book 2 in the hopes that at least some people would go back and download book 1 and make me some money. (I won't actually know whether or not they did for another week or so, when I get my royalty report from my publisher, so I'll let you know. :D)
Anyway, long story short, I did the promo on Quantum Entanglement, and just didn't expect much. To my shock, 1,328 copies were downloaded over 2 free days. Yippee!
Now, before anyone lectures me, I know that not everyone delves into their free books right away, if at all, and that if anyone does download book 1, the percentage will likely be small.
Yeah, I don't care.
Anyway, long story short, I did the promo on Quantum Entanglement, and just didn't expect much. To my shock, 1,328 copies were downloaded over 2 free days. Yippee!
Now, before anyone lectures me, I know that not everyone delves into their free books right away, if at all, and that if anyone does download book 1, the percentage will likely be small.
Yeah, I don't care.
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