Cedric “Sudsey” Mervin could feel the weight of his secret life—heavy like the wound, steel garrote that tightened around his neck. Being a gay man in the 1940s was not easy, and made even less easy with the paparazzi from those yellow rags hounding his every move.
When a zealous journalist discovers Sudsey’s carnal bent and blackmails him on the verge of playing the New Year’s Eve Countdown, the popular pianist finds himself renewing acquaintances from the old neighborhood in order to raise needed funds and protect his secret—a situation that entangles him deep within a web of crime, deceit, and a powerful mafia family and binds his destiny to a rare piano that has already claimed the souls of everyone who ever owned it.
Piano of the Damned is a novelette by Christopher D Schmitz and was originally published in the anthology Ransom, Give Me What I Want and I’ll Go Away (Maybe) [2011 Wicked East Press].
Description:
Cedric “Sudsey” Mervin could feel the weight of his secret life—heavy like the wound, steel garrote that tightened around his neck. Being a gay man in the 1940s was not easy, and made even less easy with the paparazzi from those yellow rags hounding his every move.
When a zealous journalist discovers Sudsey’s carnal bent and blackmails him on the verge of playing the New Year’s Eve Countdown, the popular pianist finds himself renewing acquaintances from the old neighborhood in order to raise needed funds and protect his secret—a situation that entangles him deep within a web of crime, deceit, and a powerful mafia family and binds his destiny to a rare piano that has already claimed the souls of everyone who ever owned it.
Piano of the Damned is a novelette by Christopher D Schmitz and was originally published in the anthology Ransom, Give Me What I Want and I’ll Go Away (Maybe) [2011 Wicked East Press].