“When the truth doesn’t satisfy, people make up stories.” An imprisoned man writes letters to his son, trying to explain the bizarre circumstances that led to his incarceration. But can his son believe him? Award-winning author Deborah Sheldon keeps you guessing with this novelette of secrets, lies, conspiracies and paranoia. Writing about ‘Hand To Mouth’, the author recently said: “On the surface, this is a novelette about an imprisoned man who writes letters to his son to explain why he’s behind bars. It’s also a sci-fi exploration of cutting-edge technology. And while Hand to Mouth is a horror story, it’s a puzzle too; a layering of truth and deception, like a ‘choose your own adventure’ story. Ten readers will have ten different interpretations of what happened. It took a lot of drafting to work in so many possibilities.” (cover by Adrian Baldwin)
Author
I'm an award-winning author from Melbourne, Australia. I write poems, short stories, novelettes, novellas and novels across the darker spectrum of horror, crime and noir. My award-nominated titles include the novels Body Farm Z, Contrition and Devil Dragon; the novella Thylacines; and the collections Figments and Fragments: Dark Stories and Liminal Spaces: Horror Stories. My collection Perfect Little Stitches and Other Stories won the Australian Shadows 'Best Collected Work' Award, was nominated for an Aurealis Award, and long-listed for a Bram Stoker. My short fiction has appeared in many well-respected magazines, been shortlisted for numerous awards, translated, and included in various 'best of' anthologies such as Year's Best Hardcore Horror. I've won the Australian Shadows 'Best Edited Work' Award twice: for Midnight Echo 14, and for the anthology I conceived and edited, Spawn: Weird Horror Tales About Pregnancy, Birth and Babies. Other credits include TV scripts such as NEIGHBOURS, feature articles for national and international magazines, non-fiction books published by Reed Books and Random House, stage plays, poetry and award-winning medical writing including Better Health Channel.
