The Shadow Player

by Ellis Kross

A young man risks his own life to seek the truth about his past, which will either destroy him or set him free.

While learning how to cope with a tragedy that took place in the haunted wetlands of Sinclair Leprieur, Louisiana, Henry Burl escapes through the music of one particular musician who, not only projects a similar sentiment as Henry when he pours his heart out into every song, but also embodies the tormented spirit of a true artist exploring the darkest corners of one’s self. The enigmatic, provocative, flamboyant, and often controversial musician is Mr. Vortex.

Henry’s dreams of being a musician, like his idol, Mr. Vortex, soon trend toward reality when one day on the way home from school he is drawn to a rare Jagger saxophone with the initials, H.M., behind the window of a local pawnshop. The saxophone is eerily close to the one that Mr. Vortex plays; however, what Henry doesn’t know—at least not until he plays the saxophone for the very first time—is that the instrument has unexplainable powers.

After another event, which brings to light a disturbing string of unsolved cases that involve missing children, Henry has no other choice than to confront the demons of his dark past, as well as uncover the origins of the mysterious saxophone, which are much closer to home than Henry could ever imagined.

390 pages, Paperback

First published May 24, 2013

About the author

Ellis “Izzy” Kross is a multi-genre author and graphic designer who has written numerous novels, screenplays, and short stories over the span of his career.

Kross’s writing career began in the spring of 2013 when he published his debut novel, The Shadow Player. The inception of The Shadow Player originated in the fall of 2011 after he discovered one of his mother’s old vinyl records that had been stashed away in storage. The record was ‘Didn’t I (Blow Your Mind This Time)’ by The Delfonics. Kross, having been known to sit on many stories, wanted to write a story about the relationship between a young aspiring musician and his enigmatic father who was left victim to his family’s dark and disturbing past. A former musician himself, Kross knew this was the first story he wanted to publish. He dedicated the following two years writing the trilogy which would later be known as The Fifth, a story which essentially put into question the existence of the American Dream and how far a young man would go in order to achieve It. The story mirrored Kross’s own misfortunes during his brief stint as an audio engineer and stagehand working under several headliners in the music industry and helped shine a ray of light on a greater opus to come.

After the first volume of The Fifth was published in 2013, Kross showed no signs of slowing down. Soon following The Fifth, Kross took a step in a different direction and created a two-part series called Freeze. The first book, A Week With Mr. Hopkins, was a modern spin on the infamous Greek mythological figure, the legendary Medusa. Freeze was adapted into the screenplay, Hard Copy, and received positive reviews on Black List.

Kross later went on to create his follow-up to Freeze, The Hate Train, a riveting coming-of-age story based around the dangers of virtual reality, as well as the hardships of losing a loved one; and then, later that same year, the Hitchcockian crime drama, The March to Sundown, was released. Kross has also written other works including Fictional Reality: A Nuclear Kid in Embryo Or A Procrastinatory Approach To End A Conversation, a blockbuster-type thriller which was inspired by his childhood obsession with Japanese anime, as well as the phantasmagorical Spell of the Eye, which reads like a lost chapter from the feverish Reagan-era culture.