Literary Stalker

Nick is killing off his enemies in his novel, emulating Vincent Price in Theatre of Blood. But is he sure where fiction ends and real life begins?

‘Suspenseful, impeccably researched, grisly, with judicious helpings of macabre humour, I relished this 'Russian doll' story-within-a-story.’ — Simon Clark, author of The Night of the Triffids and Vampyrrhic


'I really enjoyed Literary Stalker. It’s pacy, unpredictable and often very, very funny...' — M.R. Mackenzie, author of In The Silence and Cruel Summer


'Literary Stalker works wonderfully as a genre thriller with a delightfully absurd comic edge…' — Noel Megahey, Geek Life

'Throughout the book, Keen aptly skewers both the act of writing and the business of writing so accurately that I found myself simultaneously snickering aloud and squirming in my chair whilst reading it, which works perfectly for something one might call a metafiction thriller.' — David Dubrow, author of The Armageddon Trilogy and The Appalling Stories Series


'A major question you will be confronted with over the course of this book is going to be where fantasy ends and reality begins.' — Chad A. Clark, author of Winward and Yesterday, When We Died

'This is quite a wickedly written book where at times I just didn’t know if it was a story in a story or actually happening...' — Susan Hampson, Books From Dawn Till Dusk

'Keen could have taken the easy route and written this as a straightforward novel with a linear narrative, but Keen isn't your average writer, and his use of a story within a story multidimensional narrative is more than just a gimmick, it takes reading experience into a whole new level of cleverness.' — Jim Mcleod, Ginger Nuts of Horror


'Ideal for fans of both comedic and suspense thrillers, the novel proudly wears its influences on its bloody sleeve and succeeds.’ — Josh Hancock, Morbidly Beautiful

If you value your life, don’t dare to suggest to Nick Chatterton that he’s not a good writer!

Nick is embarking on his latest crime/horror novel – a pastiche of the Vincent Price movie Theatre of Blood, where Nick draws up a hit list of his enemies in the writing world and gets his narrator to dispatch them according to the plots of classic crime and horror movies.

Top of the list is a writer who is both a superstar of the horror genre and who in Nick’s reckoning has wronged him the most. Nick first met Hugh Canford-Eversleigh at a reading more than a decade ago and fell madly in love with him, interpreting their encounter as the start of a magnificent affair. Nick’s feelings soon expanded into full-blown obsession, and he stalked Hugh, believing his love would eventually be returned. Nick was repeatedly rebuffed, much to his anger, but it was years later that his rage reached murderous proportions, due to an unexpected and outlandish twist of fate.

Now through his novel, The Facebook Murders, Nick is settling all his old scores, blurring the lines between autobiography and fiction – and with his obsessions reaching fever pitch, blurring the lines between writing about nasty stuff and doing nasty stuff for real.

Set within the milieu of British horror, fantasy and sci-fi writing, Roger’s new psychological metacrime thriller continues with the literary experiments of his previous book – the novelistic memoir The Mad Artist – involving self-begetting and nested narratives looping and interfacing with one another. As a horror/crime piece with liberal amounts of violence and multifarious nods to simpatico novels and movies, it plays with ideas of genre, and in the tradition of metafiction, it’s very ‘nudge-wink’, tongue-in-cheek and blackly comic.
Read an extended excerpt, where Nick stalks Hugh at the Meduscacon horror convention, featuring on Ginger Nuts of Horror

Read 
Noel Megahey's full review on Geek Life
Read Susan Hampson's full review on Books From Dawn Till Dusk
Read M.R. Mackenzie's full review on Goodreads
Read David Dubrow's full review on Dave Author
Read Chad A. Clark's full review on Machine Mean
Read Jim Mcleod's full review on Ginger Nuts of Horror
Read Josh Hancock's full review on Morbidly Beautiful

Read an interview with Roger Keen on The Dorset Book Detective
Read a piece by Roger on Literary Stalker's Origins
Read another interview between Roger and Darkness Visible Publishing
Read a third interview between Roger and Ginger Nuts of Horror
Read a shorter extract from the novel-within-the-novel on Gun Control

Read guest posts by Roger, relating to Literary Stalker:

The opening chapters can be read on the 'Look Inside' feature on any of the Amazon links on the left.

Copyright © Roger Keen. All Rights Reserved.