Have you ever loved someone who’s mortally wounded you? Phineas Poe, disgraced cop and morphine addict, has just been released from a psych ward when he meets a beautiful woman named Jude in a hotel bar. Red dress, black hair, body like a knife. He takes her back to his room and wakes up the next morning in a bathtub full of blood and ice, missing a kidney. Falling for her is the start of a twisted love story that takes him from the snowy streets of Denver to the high plains of Texas, where the boundaries between torturer and victim, killer and accomplice, become nightmarishly in Mississippi in 1966. Old Southern family. Lived in Montreal and Italy as a child. Spent high school years in Memphis, Tennessee. Attended college in New Orleans, Louisiana (Tulane). Dropped out. Finished B.A. at Memphis State. Received MFA 1995 from Jack Kerouac School at Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado. California since 1996, Bay Area, L.A., now Santa Barbara. Worked as homeless counselor, taxi driver, bartender, video store geek, college professor (Evergreen State, Olympia, Washington), screenwriter, and journalist. Short stories published in numerous places, notably Nerve and Bomb. Married, one child by previous marriage. One brother. Parents still living in North Carolina.