Solitary Eyes on Fire and Other Stories

About the Book

"Dark, edgy and riveting, the stories by John David Wells are white knuckles for the mind, capturing the incomprehensible depths of madness, cruelty and despair in modern society. Written from the gut these stories rise up from the same lyrical dark well as Bukowski, Shelby Jr.. and Burroughs."

—Robert T. Allen

A narcissistic, confused college student is brutally raped and murdered; a "bony-headed psychopath" makes his two step-sons clear out rats in the basement; a traveling American finds horror in a Casablanca opium den; a young man is driven insane by the voice of English writer Daniel Defoe; three college students have a drug-fueled menage 'a trios in the back of a Range Rover with disastrous results, and a drummer in a rock band hallucinates the Apostle John from the Book of Revelation flashing out of an MTV video.

Reading Solitary Eyes on Fire and Other Stories is like having a veil lifted from your eyes, revealing a world more intense, terrifying, and imaginary than you ever knew. Traveling through the book, we meet a vivid unforgettable cast of characters driven to all sorts of depravity—drugs, sex, murder, madness—as they hurl ninety-miles-an hour down dangerous dead-end streets.

Solitary Eyes on Fire and Other Stories reveals in stark detail the omnipresence of the grotesque in everyday life. Mired in dystopia, these characters have lost their their fragile hold on sanity, entering a world where reality is up for grabs, bizarre, and repulsively ugly. Often they innocent victims torn between the heartless demands of society and the desire to maintain their sense of identity and freedom.

About the Author

John David Wells was born in the heart of the coal mining region of the Appalachian Mountains. In the 1960’s, he dropped out of college and began a bohemian nomadic life traveling around the world to remote and exotic regions of Mexico, Russia, China, Africa, and South America. Before settling down to an academic career, Dr. Wells managed a record store in San Francisco, played collegiate basketball in Mexico, drove a forklift in a Russian factory and repaired pretzel machines on the graveyard shift in New Jersey. Dr. Wells he has written numerous articles on American popular music, two books in American Studies, and four novels including The Barfly Boys, Dinner for Two, Magic and Loss, and The Plague Virus. Solitary Eyes on Fire and Other Stories is his first collection of short stories. He lives in Virginia with his fox terrier “Mickey.”