Jock Stewart and the Missing Sea of Fire by Malcolm R. Campbell — Excerpt #1

Jock Stewart and the Missing Sea of Fire
by Malcolm R. Campbell
Vanilla Heart Publishing
ISBN-10: 1935407147
ISBN-13: 978-1935407140

Mainstream humor with a dash of mystery… A throwback to Hollywood’s film noir reporters, Jock Stewart is out of touch with the looming world of digital journalism.

While Stewart goes out of his way to mock those in authority by pretending to kowtow to them, he admits he does his best work by “being an asshole.” A mix of Don Rickles and Don Quixote, Stewart is the man for the job when the skirts are up and the chips are down.

Hard-boiled reporter Jock Stewart wakes up on the morning after the Star-Gazer office party with a hangover and an old flame in his bed and  he cuddles up with the mayor’s wife in the back seat of a 1953 Desoto. Between these defining moments, he investigates the theft of the mayor’s race horse Sea of Fire and the murder of his publisher’s girl friend, Bambi Hill.

Stewart discovers the truth for his news stories via an interview style based on lies, pretense and audacious behavior.

EXCERPT:

            County Road 3724 closely followed the lay of the land like the arm of a lover or a python crushing its next meal.

            While his ancient Kaiser Jeep CJ-5 followed the road well enough through the scrub forests and pastureland, it lacked the feline grace of the midnight blue Porsche that sped by on a blind curve with the top down and a woman’s hair free of restraint.

            Ten minutes later, he reached a place with a black mail box marked “G. Starnes” perched on top of a leaning 4×4 post next to a mixed pea gravel and mud farm road. About 100 feet off the right of way, Grayson had built a small white-washed ranch style house with no landscaping or other embellishments flanked by three-horse gabled barn. Two of the house’s front windows were covered by sheets of cardboard and the barn’s Dutch paddock doors had been left open to the elements. Two things in the resulting pastoral were as out of place as bullshit on a Minton Bone plate, the lady and the car. Both were parked next to the paddock at a rakish angle.

            He pulled up close enough to the Porsche to see the world reflected in more than one of its mirrors, but Lucinda didn’t flinch.

More of Jock Stewart:
First Chapter Online
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BIO:

After working as a college journalism instructor, corporate communications director, technical writer and grant writer for many years, Malcolm R. Campbell published The Sun Singer in 2004 and Jock Stewart and the Missing Sea of Fire in 2009. 

Campbell’s articles have appeared in Nostalgia Magazine, Nonprofit World, The Rosicrucian Digest, Quill & Scroll, Training and Development Journal and the former Atlanta Journal-Constitution Sunday magazine. 

He is a contributing writer for Living Jackson Magazine.