AUTHOR, JEFF VILES!

After graduating from the University of Missouri, Jeff Viles had stints at “Die Welt”, a world-wide and highly regarded German newspaper and the Columbia Tribune. When he left journalism, he bought and built up a small petroleum distribution, then became a hotel owner and restaurateur; went on to start a modest construction/design company which eventually segued into ownership of commercial real estate. Throughout all of his ventures, Jeff occasionally worked on short stories and eventually began to work on a novel in earnest, which turned into A Sasquatch Murder.

THE SASQUATCH MURDER: NOW AVAILABLE FOR PURCHASE!

Hardcover, 272 pages
Published July 25th 2017 by Beaver’s Pond Press
ISBN 1592987699 (ISBN13: 9781592987696)
Edition Language English
URL http://sasquatchmurder.com/

THE SASQUATCH MURDER (A LOVE STORY)

They’re out there, you know–those bipedal hominids commonly called Sasquatch.

This imaginative, tightly woven tale explains just how those creatures came to be traipsing around in the big trees surrounding Mount St. Helens. While local oddballs and elbow-benders talk Bigfoot and relate their peculiar yarns at Hee-Haw’s Tavern, Jake Holly and Jessica O’Reilly are falling in love despite an age difference that Jessica’s powerful father cannot abide. When Sasquatch enters the picture, a tripwire is broken and every preconceived notion is instantly turned upside down. Utilizing intricate details and language that’s often dressed up in literary lipstick, Jeffery Viles weaves a fast-moving story of events that consume the town of Aurora, and reverberate into the White House and around the world.

Look Inside
Some fourteen thousand years ago, on a windswept ocean’s rim near what would come to be known as Vancouver, stood two groups of hominids. One was a group of twelve. The other numbered nearly three hundred. A large male stood at the front of the bigger group and faced the other dozen. He made a series of head shakes and throaty, one-syllable sounds followed by the sucking of air through clenched teeth. He pointed a thick finger toward the deep and ancient forest beyond. The smaller group was cast out, its witless members cursed to fend for themselves. They would live or die on their own. Remarkably, the castouts did, indeed, survive. But they evolved and improved very little compared to their brethren, though they did become physically large and astonishingly secretive. And they continued reproducing into our own time. Certain of the Pacific Northwest native tribes, themselves begat from the larger group on that prehistoric shore, came to call them Sasquatch.

MY REVIEW HERE

JEFF’S AMAZON  SITE

INTERVIEW WITH JEFF – HERE

This is one author interview you do not want to miss! Talented and mysterious, Jeff Viles has a way with words that provokes deep thought and consideration.

Events & Reviews
Events
Goodreads contest
A second contest for “The Sasquatch Murder (a love story) giveaway will start just after the holiday.  Thanks to all who entered the first.

PUBLICIST CONTACT:
Happy to have Ellen Whitfield of JKS Communications, a literary publicity firm, to lead the distribution of information, advertising and related pushes for “The Sasquatch Murder (A Love Story)”.  Her contact info and initial press release link are shown here: Ellen Whitfield, Publicist JKS Communications ellen@jkscommunications.com
Events

Book reading and signing
Will be doing a short talk/reading/signing event in Southwest Missouri on September 29 at 2 p.m.  Readings can trend to boring if the author goes on too long so I’m thinking of passing out cups of vodka to help the audience drink me smarter.

 

MY BOOK REVIEW

 AVAILABLE NOW!

 

Columbia Daily Tribune author profile
August 22, 2017
http://www.columbiatribune.com/entertainmentlife/20170820/jeff-viles
Hometown: Aurora, Mo.
In Columbia since: Mid-1960s
Medium: Fiction; creative nonfiction; journalism

Recent work: Viles recently published his first novel, “The Sasquatch Murder: A Love Story,” via Beaver’s Pond Press.
Never a dull moment: The road that led to Viles’ first novel had a number of intersections, forks, on- and off-ramps.
He came to Columbia to study journalism at the University of Missouri; putting that coursework — and a German minor — to good use, he took an internship at a German newspaper and was given a long leash, using his enterprising nature to uncover feature stories worth telling.
From there, Viles served in Vietnam before relying on his journalism studies again, working for the Tribune as a features reporter and news editor.
He then took a bend in the road into business, finding success in oil, restaurants, real estate and more. Viles was able to live out his ideal: a life of purposeful restlessness.

“If you could, about every 5, 6, 7 years, things start getting to be routine, and it would be nice to just take off that hat and put on a different one,” he recalled thinking. “I more or less managed to do that.”
Getting down to business: While Viles enjoyed his many business pursuits, he missed sitting down before an empty page and creating something from nothing.
He returned periodically to writing, penning short stories in intentionally disparate styles, then stowing them away in a drawer — where they remain. Longform fiction seemed like an eventual destination, but first he had to find time to get there.
“I always thought it would be really fun to have the total freedom to write about things that were not true,” Viles said. “In other words, to write a whole book of lies.”

Viles thought there was a novel somewhere amid our endless fascination with the Sasquatch, or Bigfoot. But he wasn’t sure where to enter the story.
Then a light bulb went off in the form of a question: What if someone shot one of the fabled creatures and brought it back to their town? What would the aftermath look like?
“The Sasquatch Murder” poses one possible answer, as Jake Holly, a small-town Washington man, finds himself facing a murder charge after accidentally firing upon one of the fabled creatures. As the story winds toward its conclusion, readers are introduced to a community of colorful characters, townies and significant outsiders, who try to make sense of it all.

Viles worked on the book on and off for six years, finding time after attending to his varied business tasks. He found fiction writing more liberating, and more difficult to reign in, then journalistic writing.
In the former, you gather sources, quotes and facts, then the story knows what it is, he said; it begins to write itself. With fiction, he often wasn’t sure where to go next. The key was character development — once characters were firmly established and fully fleshed out, they led him to the next point.
“They tell me what they’re going to say and what they’re going to do,” Viles said.
He enjoys the quirks and traits of all his characters, but Holly hits closest to home. In the town of Viles’ creation, there are three schools of thought regarding Sasquatch. The first two are true believers and non-believers. Then, there’s Jake Holly.
“The lead character told me that he was a Bigfoot agnostic,” Viles said, acknowledging a common plot of ground between himself and the character.
The next chapter: Viles isn’t content to move on from writing; the lifelong pursuit, woven throughout the other moments and seasons of his life, is one he plans to continue.
He has a next step in mind — he has begun to open that drawer full of short stories, take them out and begin to rework them. A story collection is a very serious possibility, he said. Viles’ life has had a number of chapters, all of them rewarding in a way, and those experiences ensure that he will have stories to tell as long as he has an audience.

 

REVIEWS:

The Sasquatch Murder

Nov 07, 2017
J.D. Dehart
“…it was amazing”

“Moving from a mythic view of the Sasquatch to a more grounded story of human interaction, Viles works in a variety of ways in this book.

I was first captured by the title and concept, with Bigfoot being something that has interested me since I was a child. The writing style and development of the book kept me in the book.”

Nov 12, 2017
Janette Mcmahon
“…liked it.”

“A perfect book for those who like to think about creatures not yet proven to exist. The story was fun, though the hum drum and murder charges were a bit far for me. If someone had shot a Sasquatch, hype would be beyond comprehension.”

Oct 03, 2017
Ellen Whitfield
“…it was amazing.”

“A fascinating and funny book that will hook you immediately and make you reconsider your beliefs about Sasquatch! Jeff Viles is a truly talented writer — I couldn’t believe this was his first book!”

“A delightful tale for both conspiracy theorists and romantics, or anyone who believes there might still be some mysteries hidden out there in the woods.”
—Greg Michalson, publisher, Unbridled Books