Michael in Hell
Edition: 1 edition
Publisher: Y.S. Gazelle Books
Published: June 2008
Format: Paperback
ISBN-13: 9780979674419
Subjects: Fiction; Horror
Genres: Thriller
First sentence: Michael Tucker killed at night in a one-room cabin he owned but did not live in; where the inside walls and window glass had been painted black and the window shutters were closed and locked; where old congealed blood made the wet air coppery sweet. The cabin contained a sink, a double burner gas stove, a small table with a rotating electric fan, and a rocking chair spiked to the plank floor.
Description: The future. Bizarre public executions provide mass entertainment. HIV quarantine camps and super-prisons surround Ohio cities. Michael Tucker, haunted by his father's abuse and Vietnam combat, lives in Cincinnati where he attends weekly therapy sessions to discuss how the past changed his life. But Michael has a secret Indiana cabin with black walls and windows and a swinging light above a rocking chair spiked to the plank floor. A place he calls hell, where a monster rules. You are about to enter. If you dare. Once his door to Hell slams shut behind you there is no escape...and no one will hear you scream. 
  Michael In Hell pulls no punches. It is brutal and often shocking, but is high adventure, giving the reader a chance to exist in a world that most would be terrified to encounter or enter.
Notes: Michael In Hell is based on a short story I wrote in 1973 and sent to Isaac Asimov. He suggested I turn it into a novel, which I began writing in 1992. I sent the final version to my agent in 1995. The novel was considered too graphic by major publishers due to a periodic surge of complaints about the violence in media and games. It would later be compared to Dexter, Saw, and Seven, but I wrote it years before any of those popular works. Timing is everything, and I’ve always been told that I was either crazy or ahead of my time with my fiction. Maybe I’m both.
People assume I am Michael Tucker which is why I get so close to the character. I believe he is my subconscious tribute to Robert E. Howard’s Conan the Barbarian in a contemporary setting. Time has caught up with my story, and to keep in character, the reader must suspend belief to live the modern America I created back when 2005 was my distant future.