Dead Lines

This digital edition of DEAD LINES includes a new foreword by David Niall Wilson, as well as an Author's Foreword by Criag Spector, and an Afterword by John Skipp.DEAD LINES is about a young writer/artist type, Jack Rowan, in NYC, whose career never took off. Hs life is in the toilet. He's broken up with his girlfriend and crashing on the couch of his more successful photographer friend, Glen's, loft while Glen is off in LA on a shoot. In the first chapter, Jack finishes his manuscript - a collection of short stories titled NIghtmare NYC - swigs off a bottle of vodka, then boxes the manuscript up, writes DO NOT OPEN UNTIL DOOMSDAY on it, and hides it in a crawlspace in his friend's apartment. Then he walks up a ladder he set up in the living room, puts the rope he knotted to a steam pipe around his neck/ He takes one last swig off the bottle, looks at a photo in his hand of himself and a woman, says, look what you made me do. Then he tosses the bottle and pitches off the ladder. The rope goes taut. Jack's neck snaps as he pinwheels around in mid-air, knocking over the ladder, swinging wildly as he hangs himself. Finally he goes still. His body hangs there for weeks, visible thru the fourth floor windows of the loft¿ if anyone was looking, which no one is. He remains there until Glen gets back.Glenn freaks out and promptly moves out. The loft is renovated for new tenants - a couple of girls who don't know each other move in. One, Meryl, is from a wealthy family in Boston and trying to escape her overbearing father by going to college at NYU; the other, Katie, is a waitress who used to know Glenn¿ and Jack. Meryl convinces Katie to pretend to be her roommate to get Meryl's father off her back.