Toby Chalmers Hits a New Low by Jeremy Thompson

Norville Blott, Immunoblot Books’ owner/editor/sole employee, thrives as a small press humbug. Paying his authors little to no royalties, tricking them into signing away their film, hardcover, and audiobook rights (though Immunoblot Books produces no such things), and even stiffing them on the free author copies specified by their contracts, he keeps his morbidly obese wife and himself fed and housed. He is as content as he can be, he believes, until a certain manuscript reaches his inbox. 

Toby Chalmers, the author of books such as The Muff Whisperer and The Indelible Adventures of Sergeant Thundershorts, has typed up a new “masterpiece”: Marty McManus, the Scourge of the Morgue. A coming of age tale examining a gourmand of corpse flatulence, the novel triggers Norville in ways that Norville never knew he could be triggered. Deciding that its author must die for that transgression, he embarks on an interstate drive to pay him a surprise visit. 

Little does Norville know, however, that Toby Chalmers has a knack for attracting home invaders. The P’thorkians (alleged extraterrestrials desperate for a creative communion) have attained a pair of Chalmers' manuscripts, and now plan to abduct him.

A reality bending tribulation awaits. Somebody’s bound to perish. Too bad a certain author never thought to purchase an alarm system.