It is my pleasure to introduce you to Derringer Award-winning author C.W. Blackwell and his latest collection of crime stories. C.W. also has a wonderful story in Midnight Schemers & Daydream Believers and I have included the first four paragraphs of that story below as bonus content!

Title: Whatever Kills the Pain

Author: C.W. Blackwell

About the book: In this gritty collection of crime stories, Derringer Award-winning author C.W. Blackwell mourns an America lost to the shadows, exploring a broken economic system that has given rise to rampant inequality, violence, and darkness.

Filled with characters desperate to reclaim what has been unjustly taken, plotting the heist of a lifetime, or grappling with chance encounters that might free them from the bonds of wage exploitation-or send them to early graves, Blackwell fearlessly documents an America sick with greed and hate.

Nearly everyone has an angle, a fight, or a spark of hope, yet some have learned there isn’t a cure for every ill, and that sometimes the best medicine is whatever kills the pain.

About the author: C.W. Blackwell is an American author from the Central Coast of California. He is a two-time Derringer Award winner and four-time nominee. C.W. is a member of International Thriller Writers and the Short Mystery Fiction Society. His recently released short story collection, Whatever Kills the Pain, is available from Rock and Hard Place Press. Find him on Instagram at @cw_blackwell_writer

FIND THE BOOK: https://books2read.com/u/bPpN5

Excerpt from ‘Making Up for Lost Time’ by C.W. Blackwell from Midnight Schemers & Daydream Believers

It wasn’t the first time someone told me I looked like Tag Sandoval, the famed Silicon Valley tech CEO, but it carried an unbearable irony now that I was living in a downtown shelter with two dozen men whose luck had run completely dry.

“Maybe not twins,” Jerry said. He was a new social worker on shift, a guy who had a ready comment for everything. He studied my ears as if they had something to do with the resemblance, but I’d always thought it was my nose and jaw that were most similar. “But you could be his older brother. Cousins for sure.”

“Maybe I’ll ask Sandoval for a bridge loan,” I said. “Since everyone thinks we’re long-lost brothers.”

“Ask him for me, too. I’m this close to getting a cot here myself.”