Overview

A dark love story of emotional turbulence, obsessive fixation, perceptual disorientation, unabated insomnia--with madness waiting in the wings. ""Do you dare to fall in love?"" asks the young man of Self-Murder. He responds by detailing an instance of attraction that sweeps him clear of his accustomed life--smashes stability, breeds unsettledness, encourages distressing needs. Shifting emotional extremes, unfulfilling excess in the arms of random strangers in futile attempts to escape one woman's baffling hold upon him, accelerating paranoia and prolonged sleep deprivation further erode his grip upon rationality and propel him into somnambulistic states where the distinction between reality and suspicion and imagination blurs and he's no longer sure how he's behaving. Without being wholly aware of it, he may be committing heinous crimes. Or he may only be imagining he's committing heinous crimes.

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Reviews

""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 ""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 ""Robert Scott Leyse channels Baudelaire's Queen of Spades and Jack of Hearts, speaking darkly of dead loves. He also reminds me of James Purdy's notorious eccentricity. There's plenty of middlebrow stuff if you want it. Self-Murder isn't that.""--Kris Saknussemm, author of Zanesville and Private Midnight ""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 ""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 ""Achieves a striking stylistic gallimaufry: 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, U. of Calgary, Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada

Author Information

Author of fiction dealing with people gleefully, or uneasily, living double lives--or people drawn to stressful experiences, for the purpose of emotionally maturing, even if they haven't rationalized it to that degree and are astonished at themselves--or people getting away with unauthorized recreation on company time at corporate firms because not doing so would make them feel like they're being conned--or people so distractedly in love it's tantamount to hallucinating--or people who don't know what the bloody hell's happening in their relationship, only that it's addictive--or people flung into situations where it's tough to separate imagination from reality, reality seemingly vaporous when faced with emotional extremity--or people who love dogs, especially if said dogs are undisciplined and allow for orchestrating chaos in public places, as doing so, aside from the sheer enjoyment, is another means of exploring social boundaries. ""Psychological"" might be the single best word that describes Robert Scott Leyse's work.

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