Heuer
Lost And Found
Unapologetic
Lives
Book
1
A.
B. Funkhauser
Genre:
Adult, Contemporary, Fiction,
Metaphysical,
Paranormal, Dark Humor
Publisher:
Solstice Publishing
Date
of Publication: April 23, 2015
Number
of pages: 237
Word
Count: 66,235
ASIN:
B00V6KLAMA
Formats
available: Electronic, Paper Back
Cover
Artist: Michelle Crocker
Book
Description:
Unrepentant
cooze hound lawyer Jürgen Heuer dies suddenly and unexpectedly in
his litter-strewn home. Undiscovered, he rages against god, Nazis,
deep fryers and analogous women who disappoint him.
At
last found, he is delivered to Weibigand Brothers Funeral Home, a
ramshackle establishment peopled with above average eccentrics,
including boozy Enid, a former girl friend with serious denial
issues. With her help and the help of a wise cracking spirit guide,
Heuer will try to move on to the next plane. But before he can do
this, he must endure an inept embalming, feral whispers, and Enid’s
flawed recollections of their murky past.
Is
it really worth it?
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Reviews:
Fresh
writing filled with rich vocabulary, this story features a vivid cast
of colourful, living-breathing characters. This one will keep you
reading late into the night until the final page.—Yvonne
Hess, Charter Member, The Brooklin 7
Ms.
A.B Funkhauser is a brilliant and wacky writer …Her distinctive
voice tells an intriguing story that mixes moral conflicts with dark
humor.—Rachael
Stapleton, Author, The Temple of Indra’s Jewel and Curse of the
Purple Delhi Sapphire
The
macabre black comedy is definitely a different sort of book! You will
enjoy this book with its mixture of horror and humour. —Diana
Harrison, Author, Always and Forever
Heuer
Lost and Found is a quirky and irreverent story about a man who dies
and finds his spirit trapped in a funeral home with an ex-lover who
happens to be the mortician. The characterization is rich the story
well-told.—Cryssa
Bazos, Writer’s Community of Durham Region, Ontario, Canada
Author
A. B. Funkhauser strikes a macabre cord with her book "Heuer
Lost and Found". I found it to have a similar feel to the HBO
series "Six Feet Under".--Young,
Author, A Harem Boy’s Saga Vol I, II, and III
Short
Excerpt:
Enid
Krause nee Engler had made her way down to the embalming room where
he lay waiting for her. She paused on her way to dither over some
emails and, he noted with approval, to check out Kijiji for vintage
GTO’s. Next, she mucked about with the coffee maker, juicing up her
brew with two bags of pre-packaged Columbian. This, he noted wryly,
was not the wisest thing to do when one’s hands were already shaky.
It was apparent to him that she liked her booze as much as he did,
and if she were to play around with sharp things, she stood a good
chance of facing him sooner, rather than later.
“It
is here that you must speak to her,” the lamp intruded, muddling
his thoughts and destroying his pleasure. He did not like this
popping in and out at will inside his head. He hoped her powers were
limited to audiences in the basement, but not so—she was a body
trapped in a house she did not choose, yet her spirit travelled,
permeating the mind at will. “If you want to move on, it must be
so. Put things right, mein Schön.”
He
frowned at her use of ‘Schön.’ It was his term of endearment,
yet she took it for her own, as if her right to trample him escheated
once he agreed to do her bidding.
Make
amends. Sure. The Holy Moly Book of Hooey said so, but to which place
would he go thereafter? The land of milk and honey, where everyone
ran around in bed sheets? Or the other place, where no amount of
sunscreen would help? “Neither,” the lamp said confidently, her
words ironic, because she was a lamp and obviously hadn’t been
anywhere. “To your purpose,” she said, twisting him in the
direction of Enid, who muttered under her breath as she fumbled with
her earrings.
He
grinned, longing to see what she would do next: Fraulein Engler was
obviously struggling over his dramatic return, and for good reason.
They had not parted on the best of terms. She wept sentimentally in
the coroner’s suite—woman’s tears—much to her colleague’s
chagrin, and now she was dragging her feet like a shotgun bride.
Walking alongside her, he thought about theatres and floorboards and
actors moving from mark to mark, their steps mapped out strategically
on the floor with sticky tape. “This is why people spend so much
time and money on make believe, Mächen,” he said. “It’s so
much better to watch.”
Enid
managed to get past the door that separated the O.R. from Weibigand’s
outer hall, where she was greeted by the buzz and hum of a big fan
that would keep his stink off of her. He concentrated on the noisy
traffic that was her brain: like car tires spinning, rubber burning,
a lonely heart hammering, and an incomprehensible fear. He was in
despicable shape and it would take every ounce of skill to bring him
to heel.
About
the Author:
A.B.
Funkhauser is a funeral director, fiction writer and wildlife
enthusiast living in Ontario, Canada. Like most funeral directors,
she is governed by a strong sense of altruism fueled by the belief
that life chooses us and we not it.
“Were
it not for the calling, I would have just as likely remained an
office assistant shuffling files around, and would have been happy
doing so.”
Life
had another plan. After a long day at the funeral home in the waning
months of winter 2010, she looked down the long hall joining the
director’s office to the back door leading three steps up and out
into the parking lot. At that moment a thought occurred: What if a
slightly life-challenged mortician tripped over her man shoes and
landed squarely on her posterior, only to learn that someone she once
knew and cared about had died, and that she was next on the staff
roster to care for his remains?
Like
funeral directing, the writing called, and four years and several
drafts later, Heuer Lost and Found was born.
What’s
a Heuer? Beyond a word rhyming with “lawyer,” Heuer the lawyer is
a man conflicted. Complex, layered, and very dead, he counts on the
ministrations of the funeral director to set him free. A labor of
love and a quintessential muse, Heuer has gone on to inspire four
other full length works and over a dozen short stories.
“To
my husband John and my children Adam and Melina, I owe thanks for the
encouragement, the support, and the belief that what I was doing was
as important as anything I’ve tackled before at work or in art.”
Funkhauser
is currently working on a new manuscript begun in November during
NaNoWriMo 2014.
I
was born in Scarborough, a suburb of Toronto, but now live in Pickering,
another suburb, albeit further east.
Tell us your latest
news?
I
went out for my first run last week after a chilly winter of enforced physical
idleness. It practically killed me…the running, not the winter. ;) Oh, and I
have a book that just released on Amazon. All the Amazon’s really .com .ca
.co.uk I have to learn how to get that
global short link so that people can find me.
When and why did you begin writing?
I
began shortly after the death of a close friend. We were students and work
colleagues together and had grown codependent. His death was unexpected and a
complete shock, so I began a grief journal as a means of trying to make sense
of everything. My friend and I both shared an off the wall kind of sense of
humor that got us into trouble at school occasionally, so it didn’t take long
for my journal to lapse into utter nonsense. It became a work of pure fiction.
A writer friend told me it looked like a book and that I ought to keep going,
so I did.
When did you first consider yourself a writer?
After
my first open mic reading. It was in a pub and the audience was made up
principally of other writers, many of whom were already published. In such
esteemed company, I picked up some of their good vibes. They literally rubbed
off on me. That made me ‘real’.
What inspired you to write your first book?
Thirty
years of living and watching and waiting for a platform from which to launch my
tropes; my ‘bones of contention.’ In no particular order they are as follows 1)
nostalgia hurts more than it helps 2) kindness can be found in the oddest
places 3)prying is a lousy thing 4) some questions don’t need answers 5)insular
people will, sooner or later, give in to others because we are social 6)we must
find and then let go of that thing we need so that we can keep it forever.
Do you have a specific writing style?
It’s
not conscious; it just grew out of my interests and the music of words. I’m
fond of old tymy classical Greek literature so omniscient narrators and a
chorus made a lot of sense to me. Combined with modern vernacular and some
gonzoid absurdities and you get pretty close to me…like an Aesop fable as told
through eccentrics.
How did you come up with the title?
Heuer
Lost and Found began as a much larger work—The Heuer Effect—which forms the
majority portion of the third novel. In its original form, Heuer kept getting
lost; the manuscript kept getting bigger and bigger and I fought constantly with
side characters to hang on to him and keep him in the forefront. The idea to
hive the manuscript into two separate works came from a third party who saw
very clearly that this was a story of two lives lived in real time and then in
memories. Once separated, the title for the new manuscript was clear. I’d lost
him, then I found him.
Is there a message in your novel that you want
readers to grasp?
The
past is a great place to visit, but don’t stay there too long.
How much of the book is realistic?
About
seventy per cent.
Are experiences based on someone you know, or events
in your own life?
Every
fiction is loosely based on a fact or observation. The funeral home, for
example, is an amalgam of four separate businesses that no longer exist. The
rooms I describe have been demolished and live on in memory alone. I love that
I was able to preserve them in my own small way. Likewise, people. Some of my
men friends believe that they are “Heuer” but they aren’t. There’s actually
some of me in there… and a little Dean Martin.
What books have most influenced your life most?
Satire,
poetry, biography and the bible.
If you had to choose, which writer would you
consider a mentor?
Kurt
Vonnegut.
What book are you reading now?
The
Curse of the Purple Delhi Sapphire by Rachael Stapleton
Are there any new authors that have grasped your
interest?
Claire
Fullerton, Nina Schluntz, Rachael Stapleton and David K. Bryant. Memoirs by
Young Vol. 1,2,and 3, were eye popping as well.
What are your current projects?
HEUER
LOST AND FOUND is the first in a six volume series titled “Unapologetic Lives.”
I’m currently working on the fourth: POOR UNDERTAKER, but will break over the
summer to ready the second: SCOOTER NATION.
What would you like my readers to know?
That
I’m still having a ball. This is not work for me, but a love story between my
heart and my imagination. Come along if you like, but don’t forget to laugh.
Links:
Facebook: www.facebook.com/heuerlostandfound
Definitely see the second trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-C5qBpb0Yc
Where I talk funeral parloring, Six Feet Under and
the art of gonzo.
Buy Link (United States)
Buy Link International (Country specific Amazons)
Direct buy presale link (United States): http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=ntt_athr_dp_sr_1?_encoding=UTF8&field-author=A.B.%20Funkhauser&search-alias=digital-text&sort=relevancerank
Tags:
#contemporary #paranormal #adult #mortuary #fiction
with a hint of #gonzo #HEUER LOST AND FOUND #amazon #kindle
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