I’m thrilled to be kicking off October by welcoming Barry Maher to Novel Kicks and the blog tour for his book, The Great Dick: And the Dysfunctional Demon.

Thrillers set in the 1980s have a special kind of atmosphere—before cell phones, before constant connectivity—where the shadows felt darker and the dangers closer. The Great Dick: And the Dysfunctional Demon takes full advantage of that tension, weaving together a decaying church, occult rituals, and a reluctant hero who doesn’t believe in any of it…until he has no choice.

Steve Witowski’s life is already in shambles—he’s a failed songwriter and a fugitive—but everything unravels further after he rescues Victoria from a violent assault. Victoria has just bought a crumbling church with a haunted past, and the secrets inside refuse to stay buried. Soon Steve finds himself in a world of grave robbing, fire-lit ceremonies, and a demon whose desperation grows more terrifying by the day. Even as visions plague him and the face of the man he killed appears on his skin, Steve insists it’s all delusion. But denial won’t save him, and the cost of survival may be more than he can pay.

Barry has kindly shared an extract from The Great Dick: And the Dysfunctional Demon with us today. We hope you enjoy. 

(Content warning: language.) 

*****beginning of extract*****

Back in the 60s . . .

On Wednesday October 13^th, 1968, a faculty panel recommended the dismissal of Professor John Harris—in absentia, as no one at Harvard had seen or heard from him in weeks. Harris later bragged about delivering his final lecture on “one shitload and a half of LSD.” According to the recording made available to the faculty panel, this was the sum total of that lecture:

“Good afternoon. Wow. American Literature, hunh? Let’s see. Moby Dick today. Right?”

“Moby Dick?” asked a confused voice. “No. What happened to The Scarlet Letter?”

“Right. Moby Dick,” Harris continued. “Great book. None of you have read it. None of you are going to read it. Nobody ever does. What you need to understand is that as far as I’m concerned—and I’m the fucking professor—Moby Dick is the same story as The Great Gatsby, which some of you may read. I call it, ‘the half-assed struggle of the individual to put their world to rights in the face of a failure that threatens to define their life.’ I think that’s from my thesis. Though maybe it’s not pretentious enough.”

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