Winter Blogfest: Hector Duarte, Jr.

This post is part of Long and Short Reviews’ Winter Blogfest.

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Noche Buena by Hector Duarte, Jr.

“¡Ño, que hambre!” Is something heard a lot during Noche Buena. In a Caribbean/Latin American household, the night before Christmas holds more weight than the day itself.

Noche Buena starts early. By one, two in the afternoon, family’s already gathered at the host-house. Why? Because the alpha males (many you won’t see til next year) who know best have gathered to figure out the best way to asar el lechon. No caja china here. Don’t insult the masculinity of the yard by bringing it up. Este puerco gets wrapped in banana leaves and splayed over a bed of hot coals burning a hole in the dirt.

But, be patient. This will take hours. Of listening to stories (many on repeat) of the old island; smelling the yard fill with scents of crisping skin and sizzling mojo (sneak a bite every once in a while, but don’t get caught). More listening; if it’s a Republican president in charge, most everyone’s extolling his virtues. A democrat, they’ll say the country’s going the way of Fidel and, “Cuando, Dios mio,” will a Republican take the reins again? This banter will eventually give way to the muttering of, “¡Ño, que hambre!”

Shove as many Islas Canarias croquetas down your throat; man, are they tasty. None of them quell the itch produced by el humo hotboxing la casa entera. Black beans, yuca con ajo, flan, y arroz con leche. And, of course, el cabrón lechón. Burning a hole in your stomach.  

If you’re lucky, it’s unwrapped from its steaming cocoon by nine, by which time you’re likely out of your mind from staring at domino tiles plunked onto a custom-made wooden gaming table emblazoned with some type of Cuban nostalgia.

¡Ño, que hambre!

Pero, esperate. Got to let los mayores in front of you. What kind of joven would you be if you ate before Abuela Miña? This family’s so big and generational, it adds another fifteen minutes between you and jamando. Ni te atrevas try and sneak a peek off Mami or Papi’s plate!

Finally, you eat, filling your empty stomach with the staples that have teased harder than the episode endings of one of Mami’s telenovelas.

Ño, do they fulfill.

You eat so hard and fast, by the end you’re comatose and ready for bed.

Perfect time to sneak in a nap and wake up in time to arrive home and unwrap gifts.

The older you get, the less it matters what’s under the tree. Until the day it stops mattering all together because you know all too well all those smells, sounds, tastes can’t be wrapped. There isn’t enough gift paper in all the world to cover it. Best you can do, is try to make that noche buena for someone else. If they’re lucky, they’ll get the slightest sliver of such a memory.

Just a sliver, though. Not the whole pie. Some things you got to hoard for yourself.

 

After her friend Sandy Mangual tragically falls to his death, Bailey Cohen discovers images of his grisly corpse have been uploaded and shared through social media, by someone very close to her.

Bailey enlists the help of quiet, unnoticed, underappreciated Bernardo Castillo, who works the luxury Miami Beach high rise in which she stays.

Bernardo and Bailey will have to dredge up the shady past they’ve long worked to tamp down in order to set off on the path toward vengeance. A journey that will reshape and morph each person engulfed along its way.

Icarus Over Collins is a short, punchy revenge story as cracked and slivered as hot Miami pavement.

 

Hector Duarte, Jr. is a writer/educator out of Miami, Fl, where he lives with his wife, son, and cat. His fiction has been published widely online and in print. His first short story collection, Desperate Times Call, published in September of 2018 by Shotgun Honey Books. His debut novella, Icarus Over Collins, was published by Cinnabar Moth in March 2023.

 

Buy the book at Cinnabar Moth.

Icarus Over Collins by Hector Duarte, Jr. – Exclusive Excerpt and Giveaway

This post is part of a virtual book tour organized by Goddess Fish Promotions. Hector Duarte, Jr. will be awarding a $10 Amazon or B/N GC to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour. Click on the tour banner to see the other stops on the tour.

After her friend Sandy Mangual tragically falls to his death, Bailey Cohen discovers images of his grisly corpse have been uploaded and shared through social media, by someone very close to her.

Fed up, in a stagnant relationship with an emotionally-abusive boyfriend, Bailey enlists the help of quiet, unnoticed, underappreciated Bernardo Castillo, who works the luxury Miami Beach high rise in which she stays.

Bernardo will have to dredge up the shady past he’s long worked to tamp down in order to set off on a journey of vengeance that will reshape and morph each person engulfed along its way.

Icarus Over Collins is a short, punchy revenge story as cracked and slivered as hot Miami pavement.

Tras la trágica caída accidental de su amigo, Bailey Cohen descubre que imágenes del cadáver han sido clandestinamente descargadas a redes sociales. Por alguien muy cercana.

Bailey contara con la ayuda de Bernardo Castillo, empleado del condominio lujoso en Miami Beach cuya Bailey habita.

En nombre de su amigo fallecido, Bernardo y Bailey tendrán que excavar sus pasados umbríos en camino hacia la venganza. Un viaje que reformara a todos envueltos.

Icarus Over Collins es un cuento de venganza tan caluroso y rajado como las aceras bordeando todo Miami.

Enjoy an Exclusive Excerpt

We’re actually talking about it.

Conspiring voices confirm and finalize the plot in a whirring background buzz as I look across the street to Las Brisas. Gabe’s window is closed. Has been the last two days. Why the fuck do I keep checking?

I’m listening but there’s a persistent hum in my ears. Like I’m stuck inside a tunnel with a persistent buzz. Might be my conscience, Amaury Sambrano tapping my shoulder from beyond the grave, nudging me forward, yelling at me to quit acting like such a scared baby.

I ticked all the boxes after high school. College, check. Bachelor’s degree, check. Moving out of my folks’, check. Established independence, check. Nothing shook Amaury’s ghost off my back.

I had a good gig on my own. A steady part-time in the evenings while I built a client list during the day. A small efficiency way out west, a stone’s throw from The Miccosukee reservation. I loved it, every night crossing from the glitz and glamor of the beach to settle in The Everglades’ quiet swampiness.

About the Author:Hector Duarte, Jr. is a writer/educator out of Miami, Fl, where he lives with his wife, son, and cat. His fiction has been published widely online and in print, like the recent anthologies Pa Que Tu Lo Sepas: Stories to Benefit the People of Puerto Rico, and Shotgun Honey Presents Volume 4: Recoil. In September of 2018, Shotgun Honey Books published his full-length short story collection Desperate Times Call. He welcomes you to follow him on Twitter.

Publisher Author Page | Goodreads

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The Foundation of Median Gray by Bill Mesce, Jr. – Guest Blog and Giveaway

This post is part of a virtual book tour organized by Goddess Fish Promotions. Bill Mesce, Jr. will be awarding a $25 Amazon or Barnes and Noble GC to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour. Click on the tour banner to see the other stops on the tour.

The Foundation of Median Gray

A number of elements came together to make Median Gray happen, but the basic foundation came from my own experiences as a twenty-something suburban Jersey kid working in New York City for the first time in an era when the city was more than a little crazy, quite a bit scary, and for all that, exciting…but maybe exciting like a walk through a spookhouse is exciting.

I started working in New York in 1980 and the city had yet to begin its turnaround. This was still the New York I remembered from movies like Midnight Cowboy, The Taking of Pelham 123, The French Connection. In my early years in the city, the 42nd Street and Times Square area seemed like the porn capital of the world. There’s an incident in Median Gray involving a cab on fire in Times Square that’s exactly as how I saw it. In fact, many of the incidents that don’t involve the main plot I took from things I or friends of mine witnessed.

In that period, I was hit by a taxi, saw a series of manhole covers a block from where I worked explode because of a gas leak, caught someone in the act of trying to pick my pocket, missed a bank robbery on the same block as the Empire State Building by ten minutes or so… The list goes on, but it gives you some idea of what the city was like back then.

When I first started dabbling with the novel in the late 1980s, it was sort of a response to what I was seeing. Over the years as I worked through rewrites, it became something else; kind of a nostalgia piece, a way of capturing and reliving those head-spinningly bizarre days. It’s a cliché to say this, but I wanted that New York to be an active character in the story, not just background.

I’ve always been a fan of police stories: dramas, procedurals, mysteries, the whole gamut. Maybe that’s why I’ve also been long fascinated by the police and police work, particularly on the mindset and the psychological wear and tear of being a cop. I’ve read a lot of books about being a cop, I’ve known – and even been related to – a number of police officers. I wanted to try to get that worldview right, even though this is a much more dynamic story than most real-life cops ever experience.

In doing that, I also wanted to puncture that myth of the rogue cop, the Dirty Harry-like rule breaker who cuts through the b.s. to take down bad guys everybody knows are bad guys but who manage to hide behind legal technicalities. That always grated on me a bit as it occurred to me: what if Dirty Harry or the Lethal Weapon cops or any of the popular mavericks weren’t the dead shots they’re always portrayed to be (most cops are not exceptional marksman; Chicago cop Dennis Farina, who went from being a consultant on crime movies like Thief to acting in movies and on TV used to joke he was such a bad shot his colleagues called him “The Great Wounder”). Pop culture maverick cops are unerring in their suspicions, and never miss their targets when they pull the trigger; there’s never any collateral damage to innocent bystanders.

In a busy metropolitan area like New York, well, to be blunt, it just ain’t gonna happen that way, and I wanted to capture just how dangerously messy that kind of citizen wish fulfillment could be.

The last major component was, believe it or not, the 1970s sitcom Barney Miller which was set in a fictional lower Manhattan police precinct. I had remembered a trivia question back during those days that there had been a survey of police officers about which cop show then on TV they felt most accurately reflected the day-to-day sense of what it was like to be a police officer. Their Number One choice was Barney Miller (picked over, if I remember correctly, Police Story and either Baretta or Kojak). Miller, officers felt, captured the camaraderie, the humor (sometimes dark), and the craziness that was routine. That cued me to what the tone of the novel needed to be.

I’ve never written a book that was sparked by one thing. Usually, elements percolate in my head, collide, and when they adhere to each other, at a certain point there’s a conceptual critical mass and then it’s time to sit at the keyboard. That’s what happened with Median Gray.

New York City, Summer 1963

Rookie beat cop Jack Meara is bleeding out on the dirty floor of a tenement hallway – next to the body of another cop. The eyes of the shooter burned into his memory. Meara watches and waits to see the shooter brought to justice, but, instead, “Tony Boy” Maiella climbs up the Mob ranks, slipping off indictments as easily as his designer overcoat. But on the eve of his retirement, Meara decides on one last kamikaze-like try to even the scales of justice.

New York City, 1983

Rookie detective Ronnie Valerio finds himself unknowingly pulled into the wake of Meara’s quest. A go-go palace bartender is being stalked, a body turns up in a neighborhood dumpster, machine guns blaze in the night, a New York bookie turns up dead in the Jersey Pinelands and the only thing they all have in common is, in one way or another, they all tie back to Jack Meara.

How far does a cop go to even a score? How far does a brother cop go to shield him? Is justice worth any price when the line between right and wrong blurs?

Enjoy an Excerpt

He hears a shout upstairs, something panicky about cops out front, feet stumbling down the stairs. He gets up, turns as a figure hurtles around the second-floor landing and down the upper stairs of the first flight. He barely gets his gun up, hasn’t even said anything when they collide, entangle, and there’s one, brief, brilliant second of mental clarity – when he’s swamped by just what an unbelievably fucking bad idea it was to come down that hall – and then that clarity collapses into panic as he and the figure grapple and try to untangle themselves, and then he feels himself losing his balance, falling backward, he reaches a foot back but there’s nothing there and now he’s on his back, his breath punched out of him as he skids down the stairs to the hallway floor.

He’s still got his pistol in his hand but he’s dazed, he can’t get enough breath to move, and he looks up, sees the guy he just wrangled with standing on the landing over McInerney, silhouetted against the soot-streaked window, sees the guy’s right arm coming up and he knows what that means, he fucking knows, and he feels everything from the pit of his stomach down to his groin turn to cold mush, he’s trying to draw in some air, enough to get his own piece up –

There’s a flash. Quick, bright, like lightning. In that flash, dark eyes look down on him, cold fucking hard eyes.

And with the flash…

There’s a POP – a small noise, like a single clap of hands, but in the confines of the hall it sets his ears ringing…

About the Author:Bill Mesce, Jr. Is an award-winning author and playwright as well as a screenwriter. He is an adjunct instructor at several colleges in his native New Jersey.

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