Dr Matt Fullerty

The Murderess and the Hangman: Update

Hello! I'm happy to report that I've written about half of my second novel The Murderess and the Hangman, about 52,000 words. I aim to make it past 90-100,000 words, but that remains to be seen. All in all, I should have a complete draft in October / November.  

 

Please see this link for more details about The Murderess and the Hangman. I just hope you like murder and mayhem, hangings, detective fiction, a grimy London of the nineteenth century, and a female killer. Hopefully this book brings them all to life. As Russ Abbott would say, "I love a party with an atmosphere." 

Right, back to it!

Happy reading, and happy writing!

Matt Fullerty

 

Characters and settings from THE PRIDE AND THE SORROW and THE MURDERESS AND THE HANGMAN

American Sophomore is a biographical novella of James Hogue, the runner, conman and prisoner – partly inspired by Geoffrey Wolff’s biography The Duke of Deception (1979), articles I read in The New Yorker in recent years and my own experience running marathons.

Told in the first person, we learn directly about this real-life conman who tricked his way into Princeton University under a false identity. The remarkable thing about Hogue was that he was talented as a runner. But his expectations for himself were so high that he kept on desiring his life to reach higher levels of perfection. This compulsion led to Hogue assuming various false identities and casting himself frequently as younger than he was – all to reach a pinnacle of physical and intellectual self-esteem. I will aim to begin Hogue’s story while I continue work on The Murderess and the Hangman.

The novel is entitled American Sophomore because of Hogue’s penchant for returning to schools (again and again) in order to fulfill his running fantasy. We all want second chances…especially in American lives!

Click above on The Pride and the Sorrow book cover!

The Pride and the Sorrow: Book Review, June 2008

 

New Zealand novelist Geoff Cush, a member of the Bookhabit judging panel, had the following to say about the Bookhabit Award 2008:

 

"What made Matt Fullerty's writing stand out, from the very first sentence, was an unusually strong and individual way with words. Taking us into the vanished world of old America and Europe he uses a highly textured language to give an almost physical experience of being in that place and time. Drawing subtle lines between a society top-heavy with leisure and the profligate genius it produced in Morphy, he holds back the historical and personal reckoning while letting it gather and brood like the storm that finally washes away New Orleans. In my view this makes The Pride and the Sorrow a stand-out all rounder in the craft of literary fiction.

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Paul Morphy's story is a rites of passage tale about a boy who becomes famous by playing chess. It is also a cautionary tale about New Orleans, family pride and a mind who cannot cope with the real world...The Pride and the Sorrow is a cross between Josh Waitzkin's Searching for Bobby Fischer (about a chess prodigy) and Vladimir Nabokov's The Luzhin Defense (about chess causing madness). Paul resists gambling and dueling and despite Morphy family rivalries he takes on the Europeans at their own game. But the red-light district and temptations on the other side of New Orleans are never far away...

 

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The Pride and the Sorrow: Interview, June 2008

A 23-minute interview with Matt is now available through www.reviewyak.com with Clare Tanner of the Bookhabit Show. "Every month over 20,000 listeners download our podcasts for The Bookhabit Show where we tell the author's story behind the story."

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Bookhabit.com is pleased to announce the winner of the inaugural Bookhabit Unpublished Novel Competition is Matt Fullerty's The Pride and the Sorrow.

Matt receives a US$5000 prize and is "thrilled" about winning the first Bookhabit competition. We will be posting an interview with Matt on Bookhabit.com shortly. Congratulations from Bookhabit!

This page was last updated on 30 August, 2009