What do you think?
Rate this book
Hitman
Charlie Kearns is a professional hitman. He kills in cold blood for cold hard cash. But he also has a terrible secret, and even when he decides he wants out of the business, his secret follows him - and so does his past. His challenge becomes simply to stay alive, a difficult feat for a man whom everyone wants dead.
101 pages, Kindle Edition
Published May 21, 2016
About the author
Steven J. Conifer
16 books3 followersGreetings, fellow readers (and scriveners)!
BASIC BIO & AUTHOR C.V.
Originally from southern West Virginia, I am an attorney by trade and also the self-published author of more than a dozen books, with a combined sales total of over 5,000 copies since January 2013. In 2012, I was awarded two monetary prizes in the annual West Virginia Writers, Inc. competition, 2nd place (out of 96 entries by authors from around the country) in the "Short Story" category and 4th place (out of 46 entries) in the "Genre: Horror/Sci-Fi/Fantasy" category; the winning tales, both collected in PITCH BLACK (2011), were "The Flat" and "Process of Elimination," respectively. In 1997, as a junior in high school, I was asked for a roughly 200-word vignette by a newspaper with a circulation of approximately 250,000 and over 25,000 daily subscribers. The result was the publication in that paper (the Charleston DAILY MAIL, now sadly defunct) of "When God Must Be Sleeping," a short-short which also appears in PITCH BLACK.
IMPORTANT NOTE: For various reasons, to date I have published all but two of my books under a pseudonym, Michael Prescott, and a few of my books ONLY under that pen name. That is why my author page on Amazon, the link to which is supplied above, is for Michael Prescott; I thought it better to link to a page with ALL of my books on it (save the two mentioned earlier) rather than merely most. The two exceptions are a very short (about 30 pp.) compilation of poetry called DECADES, and my fourth and most recent short-story collection, CALL ME ANYTIME. Those can be found at amazon.com (and perhaps BN.com as well).
MORE (FAR MORE EXTRANEOUS) INFO. ABOUT ME + BOOKS/AUTHORS I [INSERT HEART ICON HERE]
My hobbies include tennis, skiing, chess, watching good films, exploring philosophical and metaphysical topics (I was a philosophy major in college), and, of course, reading avidly. I'm also a huge fan of poker, in particular Texas Hold 'Em, and have played regularly for about six years now, once winning a >$1,000 pot. (I won't tell you the size of the biggest pot I lost. :-)
By way of some (largely random) biographical data, I now live on the West Coast and still drive the same car (a 2006 Toyota Corolla) I bought when I was twenty-nine years old. (My book sales, I'm proud to report, have more or less paid for it! So, for that and more importantly your faithful readership itself, thank you to all my loyal fans.) I'm just shy of 6'2" and of narrow frame, bearing a somewhat eerie resemblance to Bill Wilson (a good friend of mine), only with much darker features.
My favorite authors include Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., Breece D'J Pancake, Stephen King, John Irving, Raymond Carver, Raymond Chandler, John Cheever, Augusten Burroughs, David Foster Wallace, Michael Chabon, Dave Eggers, Pearl S. Buck, J.K. Rowling, Kathryn Stockett, and Denise Giardinia. My writing HEROES, on the other hand, include most of the usual suspects: Hemingway, Fitzgerald (perhaps my favorite of all time), Faulkner, Steinbeck, Graham Greene, Edgar Allan Poe, Stephen Crane, Ralph Ellison, Aldous Huxley, Kerouac, Mailer, Updike, and Philip Roth.
My five favorite novels of all time, in descending order of awesomeness, are as follows:
1. ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST (Kesey)
2. THE GREAT GATSBY (Fitzgerald)
3. THE CATCHER IN THE RYE (Salinger)
4. CAT'S CRADLE (Vonnegut)
5. A FAREWELL TO ARMS (Hemingway)
Two honorable mentions (both collections of short stories):
6. THE COLLECTED STORIES OF BREECE D'J PANCAKE (brilliant WV writer who took his own life, tragically, in 1979 at age 27, and is buried about eight miles from my childhood home)
7. WILL YOU PLEASE BE QUIET, PLEASE? (Raymond Carver)
I write in many different genres, including psychological suspense, horror, humor, and mysteries, but my bread and butter tends to be mainstream literary fiction. Among my most popular works are OUT OF IOWA, and DEEP COLD (eight stories and one novella).
BASIC BIO & AUTHOR C.V.
Originally from southern West Virginia, I am an attorney by trade and also the self-published author of more than a dozen books, with a combined sales total of over 5,000 copies since January 2013. In 2012, I was awarded two monetary prizes in the annual West Virginia Writers, Inc. competition, 2nd place (out of 96 entries by authors from around the country) in the "Short Story" category and 4th place (out of 46 entries) in the "Genre: Horror/Sci-Fi/Fantasy" category; the winning tales, both collected in PITCH BLACK (2011), were "The Flat" and "Process of Elimination," respectively. In 1997, as a junior in high school, I was asked for a roughly 200-word vignette by a newspaper with a circulation of approximately 250,000 and over 25,000 daily subscribers. The result was the publication in that paper (the Charleston DAILY MAIL, now sadly defunct) of "When God Must Be Sleeping," a short-short which also appears in PITCH BLACK.
IMPORTANT NOTE: For various reasons, to date I have published all but two of my books under a pseudonym, Michael Prescott, and a few of my books ONLY under that pen name. That is why my author page on Amazon, the link to which is supplied above, is for Michael Prescott; I thought it better to link to a page with ALL of my books on it (save the two mentioned earlier) rather than merely most. The two exceptions are a very short (about 30 pp.) compilation of poetry called DECADES, and my fourth and most recent short-story collection, CALL ME ANYTIME. Those can be found at amazon.com (and perhaps BN.com as well).
MORE (FAR MORE EXTRANEOUS) INFO. ABOUT ME + BOOKS/AUTHORS I [INSERT HEART ICON HERE]
My hobbies include tennis, skiing, chess, watching good films, exploring philosophical and metaphysical topics (I was a philosophy major in college), and, of course, reading avidly. I'm also a huge fan of poker, in particular Texas Hold 'Em, and have played regularly for about six years now, once winning a >$1,000 pot. (I won't tell you the size of the biggest pot I lost. :-)
By way of some (largely random) biographical data, I now live on the West Coast and still drive the same car (a 2006 Toyota Corolla) I bought when I was twenty-nine years old. (My book sales, I'm proud to report, have more or less paid for it! So, for that and more importantly your faithful readership itself, thank you to all my loyal fans.) I'm just shy of 6'2" and of narrow frame, bearing a somewhat eerie resemblance to Bill Wilson (a good friend of mine), only with much darker features.
My favorite authors include Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., Breece D'J Pancake, Stephen King, John Irving, Raymond Carver, Raymond Chandler, John Cheever, Augusten Burroughs, David Foster Wallace, Michael Chabon, Dave Eggers, Pearl S. Buck, J.K. Rowling, Kathryn Stockett, and Denise Giardinia. My writing HEROES, on the other hand, include most of the usual suspects: Hemingway, Fitzgerald (perhaps my favorite of all time), Faulkner, Steinbeck, Graham Greene, Edgar Allan Poe, Stephen Crane, Ralph Ellison, Aldous Huxley, Kerouac, Mailer, Updike, and Philip Roth.
My five favorite novels of all time, in descending order of awesomeness, are as follows:
1. ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST (Kesey)
2. THE GREAT GATSBY (Fitzgerald)
3. THE CATCHER IN THE RYE (Salinger)
4. CAT'S CRADLE (Vonnegut)
5. A FAREWELL TO ARMS (Hemingway)
Two honorable mentions (both collections of short stories):
6. THE COLLECTED STORIES OF BREECE D'J PANCAKE (brilliant WV writer who took his own life, tragically, in 1979 at age 27, and is buried about eight miles from my childhood home)
7. WILL YOU PLEASE BE QUIET, PLEASE? (Raymond Carver)
I write in many different genres, including psychological suspense, horror, humor, and mysteries, but my bread and butter tends to be mainstream literary fiction. Among my most popular works are OUT OF IOWA, and DEEP COLD (eight stories and one novella).
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
No one has reviewed this book yet.