SELF-MURDER / Coming in April, 2010

DESCRIPTION

A dark love story of obsessive fixation, perceptual disorientation, insomnia, and psychic seizures—with madness waiting in the wings.

“Do you dare to fall in love?” asks the narrator of Self-Murder, and then answers by detailing an instance of attraction to a "breath-stealing" beauty which swiftly becomes an obsessive fixation, such that all else melts from his awareness, his sanity is stretched to its limits, and madness threatens to engulf him. Shifting emotional extremes, sensual excess, and prolonged sleep deprivation: all combine to erode the narrator's tenuous hold on rationality and propel him into a somnambulistic waking state where the distinction between what's real and imagined blurs, and he's no longer able to be certain of how he's behaving; without being aware of it, he may have committed murder.

Robert Scott Leyse's second novel depicts a hallucinatory landscape of the mind and emotions, as terrifying as it is surprisingly and astoundingly beautiful, while probing the elusiveness of memory and difficulty of accurately apprehending our inner state of affairs—or of understanding the underlying motives of our actions.

Read the opening of Self-Murder at: Robert Scott Leyse Online

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ADVANCE TESTIMONIALS FOR SELF-MURDER

“No sleep, no rest for the mind just makes the descent all the more quick. Self-Murder is the tale of a man who falls deeper and deeper into a haze of confusion, as his insomnia deprives him of sleep and he finds his only comfort in the excesses of life. As he pursues love, the strength of that emotion only spins his life out even more, and as he loses control of reality, he may do things he regrets. Self-Murder is a fascinating and excellent psychological thriller readers won't be able to put down.”

—Midwest Book Review (in "Small Press Bookwatch, February 2010")

“A phantasmagoria of unbridled lust, sexual obsession, and stealth madness, Robert Scott Leyse’s Self-Murder is a dazzling indictment of desire that brims with sensory imagery and moments of exquisite verbal beauty delivered by a narrative voice that is baroque but disturbing and more than a little reminiscent of Edgar Allan Poe.”

—Gary Earl Ross, author of Blackbird Rising: A Novel of the American Spirit and the Edgar Award-winning drama Matter of Intent

"This is a good/fun read I can highly recommend to readers searching for something different and don't mind entering the mind of the insane."

—Allbooks Reviews

“After his first novel, Liaisons For Laughs, which took Sex and the City to new heights and depths, Robert Scott Leyse's second one, Self-Murder, explores broader, deeper, and darker territories. Leyse achieves a striking stylistic gallimaufrey: Proustian memories underpinning thoughts, words, and deeds; obsession treated in a way which evokes Lolita without those irritating Nabokovian curlicues; romps that Henry Miller would have enjoyed; a finale that delivers a blow to the solar plexus.”

—Barry Baldwin, Emeritus Professor of Classics, University of Calgary, Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada

“Self-Murder is lush sensuality of language injected with menace. A vivid portrait of mental disintegration and an explosive picture-show. Hallucinations without substance-abuse. Overwrought nerves and insomnia are Self-Murder’s drugs of choice.”

—George Fosty, ESPN featured author of Black Ice and Splendid is the Sun

“Here is a psychological struggle and sensual breakout where you best get a comfortable seat, grab the joy stick, and hang on. This is a delicious look at the mystery of self-psychoanalysis, sensual release, acceptance of gifts of the tallest order, or the lowest. For those with wander-lust, and all the taste, touch and aroma imaginable in-between, Self-Murder is a journey to gorge the senses where the reader gets relished time and time again, as the protagonist chases himself through discovery of the basics that make the world go round.”

—Tom Sheehan, author of Epic Cures and Brief Cases, Short Spans

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LIAISONS FOR LAUGHS: ANGIE & ELLA'S SUMMER OF DELIRIUM

DESCRIPTION

Romps, mischief, pranks, legal maneuvering, and avoiding the poison of a media-manipulated personality.

Angie & Ella are beautiful, bright, energetic, and fearless associates at a Manhattan law firm. They are fond of reliving their escapades, as well as concocting new ones, via email. Entirely epistolary, Liaisons for Laughs chronicles their frolics during a New York summer. Told in a gleefully sassy tone, and always rich with humor, their adventures include “Trailer Trollop Romp & Martin’s Comeuppance,” “Harlot Impersonation, a Cab Ride, & Pink Grapefruit Tarts,” “Circumstances of Spying,” and “Romance Novel Hell.”

Equally concerned with furthering their careers and indulging their penchant for pleasure and pranking, Angie & Ella tell of both in a unique vocabulary, each seeking to keep pace with the other with the verbal pyrotechnics of their emails. With the frequent participation of their shared boyfriend Steven, as well as Manhattan itself, they hungrily fling themselves into a flurry of vamping, masquerading, and fantasy roles—never neglecting to get their work done on time and keep the partners happy.

PRAISE FOR LIAISONS FOR LAUGHS: ANGIE & ELLA'S SUMMER OF DELIRIUM

From Midwest Book Review:

"Some friendships are bonds that can't be broken. Liaisons for Laughs: Angie & Ella's Summer of Delirium tells the story of two best friends in a frank and entertaining method. A hilarious and endlessly entertaining collection of stories about the little things of life, Liaisons for Laughs never stops its assault on the funny bone. A fine and entertaining novel, Liaisons for Laughs is a choice pick for fiction readers."

From LA Weekly:

"...we absolutely love Robert Scott Leyse’s Liaisons for Laughs: Angie & Ella's Summer of Delirium. Leyse is the editor of the popular erotica website Sliptongue and his first book release is fun, steamy, and intelligent."

From Kris Saknussemm, author of Zanesville and Private Midnight:

“Licentious. Salacious. Those rich, naughty, mannered words from another era are given a cunning and contemporary twist in Leyse’s reinvigoration of a classic literary form—the epistolary. At a time when so many ‘real life’ intimacies are overlooked because we’re too tired to be seduced or to instigate some imaginative new direction in our mortgage anxious relationships, it’s refreshing to be reminded of the pleasures, prurient and also just plain human and often very funny, of overhearing other people’s intimacies. Fun and eroticism don’t go together nearly often enough. They do in Leyse tit for tat. This is clever, humane, word-sensual writing.”

From William T. Hathaway, Rinehart Award winning author of A World Of Hurt and Summer Snow:

“Liaisons for Laughs re-enlivens a venerable literary tradition, the epistolary novel, but now in an arousingly contemporary form. The erotic e-mails of these two libidinous heroines recount their escapades with wicked charm and droll humor. Their tales memorialize the lusty landscape of the New York corporate world, and the bratty sophistication of their narrative voices makes their sensual adventures all the more appealing. Angie and Ella are trollops for our time, and Robert Scott Leyse is a Trollope for our time.”

From Susan DiPlacido, author of 24/7 and House Money:

“You can feel the humidity in your own backyard as Angie and Ella soak up the summer in New York with various paramours with their super sexy, sex-positive attitudes. This is one of those books that, finally, puts sluts in their rightful places. They aren’t shameful or shamed. They’re proud of it, and having the time of their lives, and the reader will, too.”

For excerpts and a list of Angie & Ella's adventures visit: Robert Scott Leyse Online