YEAR OF THE TIGER coming soon!

In my previous blog post, I gave you the whole sordid history of the story that became a novella then a screenplay then a novel and finally a Much Better Novel (read it here). It is the story of obsession, of desire, and of desperation as one man fights to possess his soul, a soul he believes he shares with a man-eating Bengal tiger. 

Don't you just hate when that happens?

As a young sci-fi aficionado, I asked the what-if question that started it all back when I was a teen writer with a big imagination. What would it be like if a regular guy shared his soul with an animal. Of course, it is more (or different) than sharing a soul; it is sharing a consciousness - the ability to see each other's world, share each other's thoughts. 

The story of working out a scientific paradox could only be expanded into the hard realities of a hunt for a man-eating tiger. Lots of reading and a lot of research later, I learned about hunting, about the lifestyle of tigers in the wild, all about India, and the operations of a mental hospital in the 1980s. Once the central conflagration is sparked - by the act which makes our feline hero into a man-eater - the hunters begin to converge.

So here is the blurb - now that I've pre-explained it - which goes on the back cover of the paperback.

In the lottery of souls sometimes mistakes are made. Sometimes one soul becomes split between two bodies.

Karl has strange, violent dreams. He sees the world through the eyes of a Bengal tiger and it's driving him insane. Fortunately, his sexy wife knows a hunky doctor who can help - help her have Karl committed, that is. Locked up, the nightmares worsen as the tiger hunts down the men who killed its mate.

Karl has a plan to save himself. All he has to do is escape, get to India, find that one tiger and kill it. Only then will he have the mind they share all to himself.

But others are interested in joining the hunt. The doctor who put Karl in the mental hospital, fearing Karl will reveal his crimes. And famous big game hunter Colonel John Barrington will come out of retirement, with worldwide media in tow, for one last chance at a man-eating tiger!

And the first page of the text, a prologue of sorts, which sets the stage and the theme: the hunter vs the hunted.

YEAR OF THE TIGER is in press as I type this and should be available soon - like, umm, before the end of this month. Because in a pandemic all we really have is a to-be-read pile which needs to constantly be restocked.

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