Mother's Worry

A novel by Chris D.

The year is 1987, and outlaw Ray Diamond’s mother Lorna is the queenpin of a cesspool of crime and perversion in Mystic, Georgia. When Ray is discharged from the Navy in San Diego, he absconds with a .45, planning to rob and drug deal his way east to his hometown. But when Ray arrogantly knocks over a mob-connected El Paso liquor store, he doesn’t count on the owner’s psychotic son Eli dogging his trail, and his life corkscrews deep into nightmare.

Back home in Mystic, Ray’s girl Connie Eustace resorts to stripping at Mama Lorna’s club to make ends meet. After witnessing a murder by the local sheriff, she goes on a drug and drink bender. Barely holding on until the long overdue, strangely changed Ray returns, Connie jumps from the frying pan into the fire.

“It takes a sick mind to write a book as thoroughly warped as MOTHER’S WORRY. How lucky we are that Chris D has turned his pathological impulses to creative, rather than destructive, endeavors. This novel is of a piece with Chris' work in music, film, and poetry – a crazy dive into a universe populated largely by monsters – and is a classic update of the Gold Medal/Lion Library loser-noir tradition. Great work, man.”

– Byron Coley, writer for WIRE magazine and co-author (with Thurston Moore) of NO WAVE: POST-PUNK UNDERGROUND NEW YORK. 1976-1980