Preta

by R. Jean Mathieu

"It was the little dharma bum Owen Weinstein and me, sitting in my tiny apartment in North Beach and cooking up macaroni and beans, when Michael died and came back."


Donna Mueller's finally found her place in this samsara wheel of wail, hanging out with the bums and bright mad dreamers of San Francisco. She's read the Buddhist dharma and snapped up the jazz and shouted "GO! GO!" to all the poets.


Then, one night, her boyfriend kills her, but neither he nor she stay dead. Now they've risen with an undying hunger, that makes him smile and think of dark and noble lords. But Donna knows better. She knows what they've become: Never dying and never satisfied. Hungry ghosts. Preta. What he calls a blessing, she calls a curse. Now what's a down and out dharma bum got to do about it?

ebook

First published October 2, 2013

About the author

R. Jean Mathieu is the fiction writer of all trades. From award-winning stories of the Peace Corps and meditators on Mars (“Gods of War”) to time-traveling mysteries of a Mexican detective solving his own murder (No Time: The First Hour), Mathieu revels in different genres, different voices, and cultural chop suey. Under other noms de plume, he writes romances, thrillers, pulp adventures, Westerns, and mysteries.
Mathieu grew up in Morro Bay, California. He enrolled in college at fifteen, where he would spend the next ten years. With an Associate’s degree in International Studies and $100 in his pocket, Mathieu traveled to China, alternately working as a teahouse server, organic farmhand, Hong Kong movie extra, and English teacher. Despite being deported thrice, he won his degree in Sociology (minoring in Business) over his five years in China, refining his craft along the way. From the streets of Shenzhen to the Thousand-Handed Bodhisattva to the color of industrial sunlight in a mountain town, he continues to draw on the experiences and life lessons he learned there.
He lives in Morro Bay with his wife Melissa, where they keep a good table when not writing side-by-side or chasing trains to the next adventure. A convinced Quaker, he attends Central Coast Friends Meeting in between writing and publishing his fiction, learning new languages, and practicing Uechi-ryu karate. Besides anthologies and magazines, you can find all his stories at Amazon.com and his commentary at RJeanMathieu.com.