ANDREW BISS

Today my new novella A Mouth Full of Ashes became available for purchase on Amazon's Kindle store. The book is something of a departure for me, so I'll be interested to see what sort of reaction it gets. The description is below. If you have a Kindle or Kindle App and would like a free copy, I'm gifting copies to the first 10 people who'd like one. Just send me your email address to info[at]andrewbiss[dot]com. Overview: A young student is brutally raped and murdered. Her parents, Tom and Christine, are now confronted with the daunting task of processing their grief and attempting to come to terms with the horror that befell their child. The paths they take in doing so, however, couldn't be starker in contrast. Christine has withdrawn into a deadened world of suppressed rage and bitterness that has left her incapable of seeing beyond the terrible tragedy that has visited her. Her husband, Tom, on the other hand, has taken the unusual step of publicly ann...

In a few days from now I’ll be releasing my new book “A Mouth Full of Ashes” and I’d like to share with you how this story came about. A couple of years or so ago, I came upon a news story that grabbed my attention in a way that many others don’t. It involved a murder, but of course we read about murder, death, and all manner of tragic events on a daily basis. We read them, lament them, and then move on. This one, however, had a different angle to it that gripped my imagination. In a small town somewhere in the Midwest (I believe) a young pastor was delivering his Sunday sermon to his congregation. A young man with no associations to either the town or the pastor drove into town that morning, walked into the church and shot the pastor dead in the middle of his sermon. It was one of those inexplicable, mindless, random and tragic events that defy reason. The pastor was married and had two young girls who would now grow up without a father. Fast forward just a week or two ...

All of the work I've been putting into publishing and marketing The End of the World these last few weeks has taken my focus off of my plays, which have been quite active of late. This week my one-act Carbon-Based Life Form Seeks Similar opened in New York as part of the Curan Repertory Company's Notes From The Underground festival. I received a lovely email from the director this week, telling my what a fantastic experience it's been for her and the actors to work on the play, which was very gratifying to hear. I wanted to get up there and see it myself, but at such short notice (the run ends today) it just hasn't been feasible, which is a great shame. I will be in New York this coming Thursday, however, for the reading of my full-length play The Treachery of Images . It's being given a reading by Heiress Productions , a great company that donates money from all of their productions to various cancer charities. The play was selected by Heiress as a winner in thei...