A serial killer thinks he overstepped his bounds on his last murder. He attempts to seek help on the serial killer website REDRUM. A psychiatrist who believes he can help psychotic killers through counseling sets up a group therapy meeting dubbed Psychos Anonymous. Six masked murderers attend the meeting but one of them is not there to be counseled.
Cedrick was in love with writing before he even realized it. It started first with his love of film. With movies like Flash Gordon, Star Wars, Cooley High and The Warriors. Those films opened up his creativity. There were times when visiting his Grandmother or his great Aunts on their secluded farms in the state of Texas when his imagination was all he had.
As a teen, he moved to Florida and that’s where his creativity took off. In his first couple of days in a new school, he was approached by a classmate who asked did he know how to rap? He answered no, but the classmate replied by saying I’ll show you. Cedrick began to write raps which back in the eighties was more like stories and much different than it is today. He wrote the story and the classmate rearranged the words and organized them into rap lyrics and from there he just couldn’t put the pen down. After the classmate moved away, Cedrick kept on writing stories and turned them into rap lyrics even though he couldn’t rap to save his life.
After high school, he kept writing but a discovery in a magazine helped him go in a different direction. He came across an advertisement for writers, a store that sold books that taught you how to write screenplays. His love for movies and writing came together.
Life happened and he put away his pen to provide for his family but the stories swimming around in his head wouldn’t go away. Even though he was busy with work and taking care of his family, he made sure that he made time to write. He wrote a ton of scripts and entered a few screenwriting contests, but he realized to make it in Hollywood you’d more than likely would have to move there and would be a lot more difficult to get in the door. His wife kept telling him for years to write books instead but he didn’t think he was cut out to be an author in that capacity.
A life altering event plus the fact that he’s not getting any younger finally caused him to take the plunge.
He published his first book in January 2018 with more to come.
In 1867, Eden Fitzgerald marries, not for love or money, but to persuade her influential in-laws to obtain her father’s release from a contrived prison sentence. Cleverly evading those who believe she, like her father, is a smuggler and Fenian collaborator, Eden does what she can, what she must to achieve her goal. When legal methods are exhausted, she dons a mask, carries a pistol and, using her wiles, wits, even her seductive beauty, robs wealthy citizens to amass enough money to arrange her father’s escape.
Her life grows ever more complicated by the lustful attentions of several men who profess to love her, and the one man she loves but dares not trust. As her crimes worsen, culminating in what may be treason, and her enemies grow more dangerous and determined to apprehend her, she must run for her own freedom.
PRANKS. OIL. PROTEST. JOKES BETWEEN NEWLYWEDS. AND ONE HILARIOUS SIEGE OF A MAJOR CORPORATION.
Remmy grows up with Beth in Bellhammer, Illinois as oil and coal companies rob the land of everything that made it paradise. Under his Grandad, he learns how to properly prank his neighbors, friends, and foes. Beth tries to fix Remmy by taking him to church. Under his Daddy, Remmy starts the Bell Hammer Construction Company, which depends on contracts from Texarco Oil. And Beth argues with him about how to build a better business. Together, Remmy and Beth start to build a great neighborhood of “merry men” carpenters: a paradise of s’mores, porch furniture, newborn babies, and summer trips to Branson where their boys pop the tops of off the neighborhood’s two hundred soda bottles. Their witty banter builds a kind of castle among a growing nostalgia.
Then one of Jim Johnstone’s faulty Texarco oil derricks falls down on their house and poisons their neighborhood’s well.
Poisoned wells escalate to torched dog houses. Torched dog houses escalate to stolen carpentry tools and cancelled contracts. Cancelled contracts escalate to eminent domain. Sick of the attacks from Texaco Oil on his neighborhood, Remmy assembles his merry men:
“We need the world’s greatest prank. One grand glorious jest that’ll bloody the nose of that tyrant. Besides, pranks and jokes don’t got no consequences, right?”
:: PRAISE FOR LANCELOT SCHAUBERT AND BELL HAMMERS ::
“Schaubert recounts a mischievous man’s eight decades in Illinois’s Little Egypt region in his picaresque debut. Remmy’s life of constant schemes and pranks and a lifelong feud with classmate Jim Johnstone and the local oil drilling company proves consequential. This is a hoot.”
— Publisher’s Weekly
“BELL HAMMERS is written in a style not unworthy of John Kennedy Toole and William Faulkner – the vivid characterization of Southern ethnography commingled with stark, episodic spectacle breathes with the spirit of quintessential Americana. It is a text I would happily assign in an American Novel class and would expect it to yield satisfying discourse alongside works in the canon, whether beside the sardonic prose of Mark Twain or the energetically painful narratives of Toni Morrison.”
— Dr. Anthony Cirilla
“Schaubert’s words have an immediacy, a potency, an intimacy that grab the reader by the collar and say, ‘Listen, this is important!’ Probing the bones and gristle of humanity, Lancelot’s subjects challenge, but also offer insights into redemption if only we will stop and pay attention.”
— Erika Robuck, national bestselling author of Hemingway’s Girl
“Myth, regret, the lore of our heritage and the subtle displays of our castes — no one so accurately and imaginatively captures the joys and sorrows of life in the Midwest as Schaubert does here. BELL HAMMERS is a Tree Grows in Brooklyn as told by Gabriel Garcia Marquez if Marquez lived in rural Illinois and only told stories to his grandkids. Seriously a delight to read.”
— Colby Williams, author of the Axiom Gold Medal winning book Small Town, Big Money
“Loved BELL HAMMERS because Lancelot wrote about people who don’t get written about enough and he did it with humor, compassion, and heart.”
— Brian Slatterly, author of Lost Everything and editor of The New Haven Review
“I’m such a fan of Lancelot Schaubert’s work. His unique view and his life-wisdom enriches all he does. We’re lucky to count him among our contributors.”
— Therese Walsh, author of The Moon Sisters and Editorial Director of Writer Unboxed
Brooklyn Petitjean is young, hot, rich, and hunted in post-pandemic Los Angeles, 2023, a city that’s cracking with tension, tent cities, roving Neo-Nazis, and a nasty gang of unemployed salesgirls. In this helter-skelter landscape, Brooklyn clashes with her fading movie star mother, finds love with a celibate ex-child star, and glimpses a terrifying future through a young psychic who tells her, “Something’s chasing you and it’s not done with you yet.”
Reader’s Favorite Book Reviews *****
“What an excellent read for psychological thriller fans who are also curious about what goes on behind the beautiful faces and places, the glitz, gloom, and glamour of Hollywood… Readers follow Brooklyn’s thoughts and movements with increasing tension, and when she comes face to face with the real monsters of her childhood, she can barely breathe, and neither can we!… The complex plot is thoroughly engaging and full of twists.”
IndieReader—
“Gewirtz writes with an enjoyable poison-pen tone… “…an engrossing story with a dizzying array of complicated plot lines, many of which speak to timely topics like ageism, cancel culture, and even… the Coronavirus pandemic. It’s a thrilling, engaging read that will keep readers in suspense until the last page.”
Foreword/Clarion Reviews—
“Fascinating descriptions of the machinations of the movie industry also come through… Ending on a note of grace, Don’t Kill Me Because I’m Beautiful is a dark thriller in which Hollywood’s beauty belies its true evil.”
Online Book Club —
“Don’t Kill Me Because I’m Beautiful is an intriguing story with an array of complicated plots and twists in a storyline that examines human behavior.”
“The book is a page-turner, full of terrors and compassion, with the sense that some of the events happened or came damned near close to happening.” —Amazon Customer
“Every plot twist (and there are many) had me guessing — and then surprised. Perfect, escapist entertainment…”
— Amazon Customer
“An array of fascinating, funny, and freaky characters. I highly recommend.” — Amazon Customer
A cocky police detective, Dallas Scott and his best friend and partner, Ray Davis chase after a notorious hit-man, McNeil, and a bad decision by Scott lead to Davis’ death.
Scott is haunted by his choice and it leads him to become a bad cop and a horrible husband.
Now partnered with a new young detective, John Crawford, they finally get a lead on the killer only to come up short.
Days later, they find McNeil dead on the street and this still leaves Scott unhappy because he didn’t kill the man responsible for his partner’s death himself.
McNeil’s wife asks Scott for help but he refuses and this is a huge mistake which leads to her and her child’s death. This incident brings McNeil’s ghost to come back and haunt Scott and causes him to have a car accident.
Now in the afterlife, the chase is on again with Scott having to go after McNeil for bringing chaos to the people who murdered him and his family.
The Stakes are higher than ever in purgatory with Scott having to stop McNeil and having to prevent his soul from getting in the hands of the devil due to his own sins.
A serial killer. A troubled young woman. An unlikely suspect.
Minneapolis TV research assistant, Gina Adams, devotes her life to recognizing patterns and anomalies and providing feedback on that. When she spots a woman clad in vintage garb that’s out of the ordinary for a Minnesota winter, her curiosity is piqued. What she soon discovers, however, upends the experienced researcher’s life.
Detectives Vilnas and Renford pride themselves on their investigative skills. That’s why they’re the perfect candidates for an FBI task force assigned to root out and apprehend an elusive serial killer who has gone to great lengths to cover their tracks.
When the detectives stop by headquarters for an impromptu holiday visit, a simple favor for a colleague opens a Pandora’s box of strange coincidences and their connection to a troubled young woman and her psychiatrist—the psychiatrist who also is a member of the task force.
As seemingly unconnected events come to light, the detectives’ investigation leads them in a new direction, where they’ll need more than analytical skills to solve the case and bring the vicious serial killer to justice.
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