Read about the adventures of a bumbling sexual predator that uses the Internet trolling for conquests. Arlen J. Stevenson, a hack zombie author from Alabama, ends up on large social networking site hoping to be the most popular writer there. What happens to him is a fusion of dark humor and unexpected consequences.
Meet Arlen J. Stevenson, an author of three zombie novels. This middle-aged good ol' boy from Alabama spends much of his time chasing women. Whenever he meets a new conquest, he presents her with a gift bag filled with sexy black lingerie. Also pursuing women online, he's led to correspond with a Los Angeles-based writer of term papers, Helena Hoffman. She isn’t aware of what Arlen is as she only sees his amusing and entertaining side in their daily email messages.
Told in alternating points of view, we see Arlen’s self-absorbed lifestyle as he endeavors to screw his numerous catches all over the South. Helena and Arlen get friendlier via their online communication, and he invites her to be his personal manager because of her communications skills, gullibility factor, and location. She launches a MySpace site for his new company. Soon he realizes there are thousands of available women in his region alone. Helena is aware of his perpetual cheating and decides to investigate it in person. What happens after that is alternately scary and darkly humorous.
Professional Reviews
Mesmerising
Helen Hoffman is a wannabe writer who stumbles across established author Arlen J Stevenson in an online writer's forum. At first their online meeting is based on shared distrust of a vanity publishing scam but their friendship soon turns into something more sordid. As months of chatting over the internet turn more intense Helen is soon running very dubious websites for Arlen without realising (initially) that Arlen is using these to meet women to satiate his insatiable sexual appetites.
For me the main pull of the story is Arlen J Stevenson. Lisa Malaga has conjured up a most colossal character in this man. He is completely without a moral compass and is most detestable and yet I found him extremely fascinating. I was totally mesmerised by his exploits. It was like watching someone crash and burn and being unable to look away for fear of missing anything salacious! He totally brought out the voyeur in me! I think the other characters paled in his presence and were like shadows at the edges of this man's adventures. He overwhelmed and drowned all and sunder.
For me the story only stalled with the deluge of online chatting. I guess I was much too impatient to move onto Mr Stevenson next exploit!
A truly mesmerising read.
A book-length psychodynamic study of pathological narcissism, relationships
with abusive narcissists, and the Narcissistic Personality Disorder, using a new vocabulary.
I met Jerome on a busy city street in Baltimore, Maryland, when he was forty-five years old. On that particular day, I was out and about, enjoying a much-needed day off from work.
I wanted to purchase a sukiyaki sub. I parked my car in an area of
