AB Funkhauser was nominated as an Indie Author who deserves appreciation and acknowledgement of her work. I am pleased to present this author a showcase blog post.
Author Bio:
Toronto born author A.B. Funkhauser is a funeral director, classic car nut 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, not we it.
Her debut novel Heuer Lost And Found, released in April 2015, examines the day to day workings of a funeral home and the people who staff it. Winner of the Preditors & Editors Reader’s Poll for Best Horror 2015, and the New Apple EBook Award 2016 for Horror, Heuer Lost and Found is the first installment in Funkhauser’s Unapologetic Lives series. Her sophomore effort, Scooter Nation, released March 11, 2016 through Solstice Publishing. Winner of the New Apple Ebook Award 2016 for Humor, and Winner Best Humor Summer Indie Book Awards 2016, Scooter picks up where Heuer left off, this time with the lens on the funeral home as it falls into the hands of a woeful sybarite.
A devotee of the gonzo style pioneered by the late Hunter S. Thompson, Funkhauser attempts to shine a light on difficult subjects by aid of humorous storytelling. “In gonzo, characters operate without filters, which means they say and do the kinds of things we cannot in an ordered society. Results are often comic, but, hopefully, instructive.”
SHELL GAME, tapped as a psycho-social cat dramedy with death and laughs, is the third book in the series, and takes aim at a pastoral community with a lot to hide. “With so much of the world currently up for debate, I thought it would be useful to question—again—the motives and machinations championed by the morally flexible, and then let the cat decide what it all means.”
Funkhauser is currently working on The Heuer Effect, the prequel to Heuer Lost And Found.
“The Interview”
Tell me two things about yourself that are separate from writing. I can belt out a very impressive list of show tunes. I can also draw with exactitude anything I see.
Why do you write? I have been fortunate so far to have lived a really cool life peopled with an above average number of eccentrics. I learned so much from them, drew so many erroneous conclusions, and laughed, laughed, laughed every step of the way. How could I not explore the meaning of it all?
Brag about ONE accomplishment as a writer. I don't dare. I'm superstitious.
Name up to five people who inspire you. George Thorogood, Golda Meir, Marilyn Lightstone, Kurt Vonnegut, Hunter S. Thompson.
If you could sit down with anyone, living or dead, and have a conversation with, who would it be? Madame Chiang Kai Shek
Books:
THE UNAPOLOGETIC LIVES SERIES includes:
Heuer Lost And Found
Scooter Nation
Shell Game
The Heuer Effect (Coming Soon)
Heuer Lost And Found, The Second Edition, Released February 2018
BOOK BLURB
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 girlfriend with serious denial issues. With her help and the help of a wisecracking 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.
Synopsis: Heuer Lost And Found
Hung over mortician Enid falls face first onto the floor of the ancient funeral parlor she works in. Her manager, Charlie Forsythe, sees everything and withholds comment, pushing hot coffee and van keys into her shaky hands. It’s Monday morning, the parlor can’t meet payroll, and they’ve had the first death call in weeks. Enid must haul ass to the coroner’s office and get the body.
Enid’s work colleague, Carla Blue, joins her on the drive. Middle-aged and knocked up, she’s in no mood for Enid’s dry heaves. At the coroner’s office, the frenemies learn that the dead guy trussed up in the blood-soaked body bag is Jürgen Heuer, Enid’s old lover from twenty years ago. Married Enid, weepy, can’t understand why he died alone and unfound for so long in a filthy hermit house.
Cooze hound lawyer Jürgen Heuer wakes up dead. A preternatural residue, he is stuck with his rotting corpse to contemplate his life and the lives of those bastards that brought him to this. A kindly neighbor, Panos, climbs Heuer’s catalpa tree to see into the bedroom window, which is obscured by buzzing blow flies. Losing his footing, he splits his skull open on the hood of Heuer’s dilapidated and shrouded 68 Chevelle. While shocked neighbors wait for the ambulance, nosy neighbor Alfons breaks into Heuer’s bedroom and finds the corpse. Heuer hates the invasion, especially by the neighborhood snoop who will reveal his gross living conditions. Things improve when sexy coroner Dr. Veronika Schaufuss arrives. Heuer has spent days trying to move objects like his favorite poltergeists do in the movies. Suddenly, he can. Not only can he feel her up, but she doesn’t notice. His happiness is robbed, when she goes through his clothes and jewellery, which are pricey and fancy. It’s Pride Week. Heuer must be queer.
Enid blows it in the prep room trying to embalm Heuer. He is badly decomposed and she can’t forgive the way he dumped her all those years ago. She gave him everything and kept it secret because she was underage. Now he expects her to pry his sternum off? Hell no. Someone else can stuff the kinky bastard.
Holy terror and prearrangement funeral councilor Jocasta Binns eavesdrops on staff conversations to get dirt while rearranging furniture in the parlor. This enrages owner Ziggy, her half brother, who won’t acknowledge her because her mother Helme Loom played the organ and their father too. Envious of Carla Blue with her serial marriages and ‘screw the world’ mentality, Jocasta kills Rat, the company mascot, with a shovel and leaves his body to be found by Carla. Heuer finds him first, commenting on the creature’s beauty and self-sacrifice: before his death, the noble beast steals an emerald ring off the body of Emmy Shawson-Cooke with the intent of giving it to Carla whose husband, Danny, has abandoned her. She needs money, or she will lose her apartment.
Heuer is glad to be out of his house, but now he’s stuck at his funeral parlor listening to his weird, elderly parents squabble over the cost of his funeral. He’s not surprised—they’re stoic Krauts that do death well. What he wants is a bar stool in Dominica or a front row seat on Bourbon Street. Confined to places of unfinished business, his afterlife sucks.
Heuer explores the funeral home basement and finds The Lamp tucked behind some junk. Supernatural and creepy, she promises him a way out of purgatory if he makes amends to those he’s screwed over and does her a favor. Heuer makes a mess of Panos’ funeral home visitation, materializing in front of Alfons, sending him into an angina attack.
Back at the funeral home, Enid learns from Heuer’s Alzheimer mom Hannelore that Heuer is not her unrepentant WW2 Nazi officer husband’s son, but the son of a gentle Jewish musician who survived the concentration camp by turning informant. Enid finds this hard to believe, until Hannelore tells her about Heuer’s photographs, how beautiful they are, and how Enid is a recurring subject in many of them. Heuer was an artist, just like his father.
A visit to his place of work reveals a post mortem paternity suit that would see a vast share of Heuer’s estate going to an infant. Heuer, pleased and appalled, watches as his loyal assistant Guillaine rebuffs HRs request for a hairbrush, anything with DNA. A finder’s fee has been promised.
Enid’s husband Aaron watches her puff on cigarettes while she embalms a rat in a bratwurst pot in their garage. She hasn’t smoked in twenty years, and she won’t explain her recidivism. Enid’s 99 cent horror smut writer friend Dale telephones with a writer’s block problem. Enid tells her about Heuer, whom Dale also knew. Dale appreciates her shock, but can’t square her friend’s emotions. Enid and Heuer weren’t lovers.
Enid lies to herself and others about Heuer and how much he meant to her. A blue photo album containing proof of their history is missing and she must find it. Breaking into Heuer’s house, she finds boxes floor to ceiling, mounds of expensive, but dirty clothing, loaded firearms, toys and pornography. Finally breaking emotionally, she alternates between love and hate. Heuer, following her there, is perplexed by her behavior. When she grew up, she wanted to marry him; when he hit her, she wanted to be his mistress; when he died, she wanted to be his widow. Searching the boxes for the album, Heuer overhears a conversation between his “father” Werner Heuer and Alfons; the house is to be sold and Heuer’s possessions will be thrown away. His parents, acrimoniously divorced, are to be reunited. They are getting a new home with Heuer’s money. Heuer, having made provision for Hannelore, cannot agree and moves to stop Werner’s scheming.
The Lamp reveals herself: she is Irmtraut Weibigand, wife of the funeral home founder, trapped in an inanimate object. Bitter over her husband’s betrayal, warped that his bastard Jocasta dreams of taking over the business, she reminds Heuer that nastiness doesn’t set one free. On her orders, he retrieves Rat’s body to be found where Jocasta left it. He does not complete her request. Eavesdropping on a conversation between Irmtraut and her controller—a disembodied, but familiar voice—Heuer discovers she is trying to trick him into taking her place so that she can go free. On confronting her, Irmtraut denounces his life as a lie; there is no redemption, he will never be found. Heuer smashes her to bits.
Upstairs, it’s bedlam. The ring Rat stole has been discovered by Jocasta, who baldly accuses Carla of the crime. Jocasta is slammed for being an unfeeling bitch. Carla keeps the ring. Heuer knows more than they do. Jocasta has visited him in the basement and declares herself a creature led by her own heart. She cares for her ailing half-brother Karl-Heinz, whom she loves, and seeks relief from a life of misunderstandings. Heuer sends her off with kind reassurances; his first act of beneficence.
Heuer visits Hannelore at Werner’s squalid apartment. The old man has taken her out of the nursing home with the intention of keeping her there with a dodgy caregiver while he pockets the money. Heuer returns to his home, now empty, and puts a match to it.
Enid, devastated, learns that Heuer’s funeral arrangements have been scrapped in favor of a cheap direct disposition cremation with no family or friends in attendance. With the help of Carla and her co workers, she dresses Heuer for his journey and places him in his casket. She doesn’t know why he came back to her, but she is glad. His home told the story: a man living in dreams and in the past. He could never love her because there was too much in the way. Enid produces the body of Rat, preserved and shrouded; an act of love and a relief to Carla. Carla has something for her too, a little blue photo album which she found in the basement next to the shattered lamp.
Enid thumbs through the pages as Carla places Rat at Heuer’s feet. Both pilloried, both misunderstood, both beautiful. It is fitting that they go together. Enid searches the photos for traces of the heat that once existed between her and Heuer. It’s still there. In the hallway, Heuer stands looking at the back door, which hangs ajar. His life was strange; the life he goes to, maybe stranger. But he’s rocked peculiarity and is unafraid. He walks through. He does not fall.
Short Excerpt: Enid and Heuer in the O.R.
She tossed the spring forceps, stiff with the torsion of angry fingers, into the concurrent disinfection bath where they landed with an undignified splosh.
Don’t look back, her heart thumped. But she didn’t hear it. Against its wild beats, Heuer clasped his hands to her ears. The past was a wasteland of wreckage and regret which was precisely why she had to go there. “Erinnern Sie sich Schön. Erinnern—Remember, beautiful. Remember,” he urged.
Enid, startled, whirled round. It pressed. It was right behind her.
God help me.
She focused, hard, sifting through dust and faded photographs tucked away in the back of her mind. Images, at first slow, came on faster, spinning, disorienting her, pleading, appealing, making a case for what was: Youth, eyes of indigo, penetrating, distant, in complete opposition to her own made large by the lamplight; her eyes, yellow, coming out of the darkness; at the cottage, undulating bands of purple snaking across the constellations; the late day sun burning large behind the blinds. A dramatic moment, he looked at her, caressing. “You seem like a wolf to me.”
Pure lightning. What followed was an awareness of teeth—her own—their surfaces individual and unique, and very sharp.
You seem like a wolf to me.
He ran his thumb across the surface of her teeth pausing meaningfully at the canines. Mesmerized.
What magic is this?
He was speaking German to her, winding her long hair tightly around his wrist. “What does the wolf do?” he commanded.
Enid looked at Heuer, blue-black on a festering table. “I’m hysterical. I can’t fall apart.”
A weepy funeral director was like a soldier who refused to fight. It was a dereliction of duty plain and simple. And yet, his blood was everywhere: on the table, in the sink, and there had been some splashing when she unshrouded him, so it was on the walls and on her shoes too.
She let out a guttural laugh, its coarseness surprising even her.
“You bastard. You have done this on purpose.”
Recall happens just like that, and when it does, it’s like taking a bullet.
“I think I wanted to marry you. Now, I’ll push you up the aisle in a box.”
She backed away from the table and from the force of him. The survivor inside her screamed “RUN!”
But not yet.
She was a professional, and she refused to bolt from this room like a pimply teenager at a horror show.
She disinfected her instruments, covered his body, and pulled off her blue nitrile surgical gloves with the clap, clap of man-made material against skin.
“There is unfinished business here,” she said, turning her back to him. Alternate arrangements would have to be made. There was no way in hell she’d be able to hold his sternum in her hands.
Website links:
Amazon Author Page: https://www.amazon.com/A.B.-Funkhauser/e/B00WMRK4Q4
Twitter: @amfunkhauser
Final Thought …
Coming Soon THE HEUER EFFECT
Sometimes love can't stay dead. It's 1979 and Jürgen Heuer and Enid Engler are alive and well and doing as much damage as possible. The prequel to Heuer Lost And Found (Solstice Publishing, 2015) The Heuer Effect maps out for all to see, what really happened all those years ago. Who is the predator and who is the prey? Get ready for the shock of your life.
From Amy's Bookshelf Reviews:
"5 Stars
Highly imaginative!
I really enjoyed this story, especially the premise of not truly knowing who your neighbors all. It's very imaginative, and the characters had a great depth to them. The story teetered between humor and suspense, more like mysterious. The names of the characters were exceptionally funny and lend a great deal to showing the story to the audience. Magnificent story about Carlos the Wonder Cat ... and so much more! Loved it! Absolutely loved it, and will probably read again."