NOQS: THE KILLING TYPE, Adult Paranormal Thriller

Title: THE KILLING TYPE
Genre: Adult Paranormal Thriller
Word Count: 80,000


My Main Character's Greatest Fear:

My mother hanged herself when I was six, but by then she was hardly my mother. I never believed in her monsters. She had schizophrenia. She was paranoid, and I pitied her before I understood what it meant. My grandparents said I’m just like her. I’m not. I take care of myself. I can function somewhat reliably in the world. We’re nothing alike. I keep fighting. I can be on my own, independent. I will never be like her. Even if I can feel that rope around my neck. I’ve seen the inside of the ward. I’m not going back.


Query:

Charlotte Grimly does a decent job hiding her schizophrenia, except when she’s trying to ignore the white noise buzzing in her ears and hold down a job at the same time. All she wants is to be normal, but when a series of murders staged as suicides shakes her small town, Charlotte finds herself struggling to hold her reality together.

As the body count rises, the white noise become deafening, and the looming threat of a killer does nothing to soothe her anxiety. Charlotte begins waking up in odd places, discovering mysterious bruises and broken fingernails. Her hallucinations fill with menacing shadows and grotesque waking visions of mutilated friends. Even Charlotte begins to doubt her innocence.

Half-remembered incidents begin to click into place and aligning with the suicides. Flashes of buried memories hold the key to solving the crimes, but Charlotte has to hold her disintegrating life together long enough to figure out the answer. If she can’t decipher the events of her past, real and imagined, she’ll be convicted, or worse, committed.

THE KILLING TYPE is an 80,000 word stand-alone Adult Paranormal Thriller.

Meghan Schuler graduated from Brenau University with a B.A. in English and Journalism. Her poetry and short stories were featured in Brenau's Elixir Magazine. After graduation, she worked for The Gainesville Times. She currently writes for CriminalElement.com and is a member of the Horror Writers Association.


First 250 words:

Her hand trembled. The metal drew the heat from her skin, quickly warming. She closed her eyes, replaying the raised voices, the idle thoughts to do what she was now on the brink of doing, felt the bruises coming up, fingerprints in black and purple. The door slammed again in her mind, rattling her skull and sending a fresh wave of tears over her face, scorching. The barrel slid into her mouth. She smelled the gunpowder from shots spent the previous evening, tasted what remained of smoke and charcoal. She spat the muzzle out, shaking her head, before replacing it at her temple, feeling the hollow end against her skull. One bullet was all it took. One straight shot.

The crack of gunfire echoed in the house as she crumbled to the floor, the gun landing inches away.

#

Murder had always held a grim fascination for Charlotte, and true crime held a special place in her heart. She propped her feet up on the chair across from hers and unfolded the paper a customer had left on the table, the headline blaring: Woman Found Dead in Home, Possible Homicide.

The newspaper crinkled in her hands, spelling out in grisly detail the death of Amanda Tyler, age 28. The authorities were questioning the boyfriend, apparently known for fits of jealous rage; the suspect had an altercation with the victim the previous evening, in which the words, “I’ll kill you, bitch, just you wait,” had been liberally applied. The corner of Charlotte’s mouth quirked up, more a spasm than a smile.