Acrotomophilia

“Acrotomophilia” is a twisted work of literary fiction. With its surreal situations and raw, energetic prose, the story evokes the work of legendary short story writer Flannery O’Connor.

Skyler, the central character, is a would-be novelist who dreams of one day moving out to the big city and making a name for himself. In the meantime, unfortunately, he lives in a small Podunk in the middle of nowhere, toeing the line at a dehumanizing, dead-end factory job.

If Skyler’s professional life is hopelessly drab and unsatisfying, his romantic life is just the opposite: He has Acrotomophilia, a sexual predilection for amputees, and as if by the hand of Fate, the woman he’s dating is missing the lower half of her right arm. So at least in terms of his sex life, Skyler has no complaints.

One day a publishing house purchases the rights to Skyler’s latest manuscript. Initially, this seems to be the answer to his prayers, but then the publishing house mysteriously breaks off all contact with him. They stop replying to his emails, and they stop returning his phone calls.

What’s going on? he wonders. Are the people who run the publishing house toying with him? Are they sadists? What possible reason could they have for wanting to torture him like this?

Baffled, Skyler travels halfway across the country on a desperate and impulsive fact-finding mission. What he discovers at the end of this harrowing journey will not only change the way he looks at himself as a writer, but quite possibly the way he looks at himself as a human being, too.