SARAH KILLIAN

Someone is Taking Their Love of Crime Thrillers Too Far?
By E.C. McMullen Jr.
Back in 2016, a California writer, Mark Sheldon, released his new Crime Thriller, SARAH KILLIAN Serial Killer (For Hire!).

Published world wide by Crystal Lake Publishing, a small South African print and eBook publisher, it did reasonably well and garnered a handful of enthusiastic reviews at Amazon.

Skip forward to 2020 and now two books into the series. Joe Mynhardt, CEO of Crystal Lake Publishing, notices a trend in the responses he's getting at the book's Facebook page for the series.

People are messaging the near obscure page inquiring if this is legit. Are they really offering the services of a serial killer and if so, what do they charge?

"Started in 2018," Joe tells me, with one request. And for 2020? "Five of them were this year."

"This is getting insane now," Joe said on his personal Facebook page. "This is now about the 5th time (this year) someone messaged the group for more info on hiring us to kill someone. Is the world really this crazy?"

For a fact, the world is full of crazies but its also full of bored hoaxsters, pranksters, trolls, and other Internet Ne'er-do-wells who spend their slovenly time scrolling through their social media, finding something to leave a humorous or snarky post about, and moving on.

What makes Mr. Mynhardt think the latter isn't the case?

According to Joe, the majority of requests came from the Philippines and used a search term like 'serial killer for hire' to find the page in the first place.

"Two requests were in different languages. I actually had to run a translate on Google to see what they said. One definitely Chinese. All but one of them are actually Asian countries. Some definite fake names in there, as well."

By "fake names" Joe means the person who called themself, "William Hakespeare".

Further, and perhaps a bit chilling, as soon as four of these suitors were rejected they didn't simply mock and move on, they immediately cancelled their own Facebook presence.

So besides a global population that is likely spending more time in quarantine with family that is starting to drive them batty, what is compelling folks, for whom English may be a second language, to get drawn to Mark Sheldon's Faceboook Book page?

HERE WEAR ONE OF MINE
Long Past the Point of Cute T-Shirt by FeoAmante	Feo Amante Long Past the Point of Cute T-Shirt by FeoAmante

The book's description:
- Sarah Killian is not your average thirty year-old single woman. Foul-mouthed, mean-spirited, and a text-book-case loner. Also, she is a Professional Serial Killer. Sarah works for T.H.E.M. (Trusted Hierarchy of Everyday Murderers), a secret organization of murderers for hire headed up by the mysterious Zeke. But a wrench is thrown into the clockwork of Sarah's comfortable lifestyle when, on her latest assignment, she is forced to take on an apprentice, Bethany–a bubbly, perky, blonde with a severe case of verbal-vomit. In short, Bethany is everything Sarah is not. Will Sarah be able to adjust and work with her new apprentice, or will she break her contract with T.H.E.M. and murder the buxom bimbo? -

How does that come across in a search engine language translator? It's not like this can't happen. The Dark Web is renown for such all too real requests and such Internet users tend to be low watt dim.

Fortunately, Sauron's story came to a definite end so no one should be trying to buy a contract with it.

Mark Sheldon's Crime Thriller, SARAH KILLIAN Serial Killer (For Hire!) is available for order at most online bookstores and retail outlets everywhere.

E.C. McMullen Jr. is the creator of Feo Amante's Horror Thriller and has been published by Easy Rider Magazine, Charles Scribner's Sons, Harker Press, and Crystal Lake Publishing.