Beautiful, Naked & Dead by Josh Stallings

Prior to reading Beautiful, Naked & Dead by Josh Stallings, I hadn't dreamt about a book I was reading since my Oscar Martello reading days right before Christmas.  I was starting to think I'd lost my, uh... touch, for lack of a better word. I mean, it's not like I can will a character into a dream. In fact, my one and only dream about Oscar Martello didn't even have Oscar Martello in it.  Moses McGuire on the other hand...

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Having never been in a club that featured GIRLS! GIRLS! GIRLS! I was doing a pretty good job at blending in. My skirt was short and tight. My hair was teased to perfection. My make-up was immaculate. My music choice was hard-core 50 Cent with the perfect thump, thump, thump.  My pole dancing skills were flawless.

Wait a second. Flawless?

Ah, man!  The beginning of this dream is a nightmare of catastrophic proportions. Me, in a nudie bar with perfect pole dancing skills? Ya, right!  I can't walk in a straight line sober. What on earth made me think I could try my hand at pole dancing... even in a dream?

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Well, before we get back to that, let me tell you about this book I found on the twitter feed. It was pushed on us really, really hard by my friend @McDroll (This is how we address ourselves on twitter. I'm @sabrinaogden). Anyway, @McDroll read this book written by this guy, @LysdexicWriter (Josh Stallings), that she found on twitter and totally loved. So she pimped it and talked about it until we were all forced to buy a copy.

Then an amazing thing happened.  People started reading it, people started talking about it, and people started falling madly in love with the main character, Moses McGuire. True story. Read the reviews on Amazon.

In Beautiful, Naked & Dead by Josh Stallings, you'll meet Moses McGuire.  Moses is an ex-marine, an ex-con, and an ex-husband in debt to the ex-wife and ex-bookie.  He's also been recently cut off from his drug dealer for passing a bad check.  The guys got a new career as a bouncer at a strip club, and for the most part, well, let's just say he takes his job pretty seriously. Moses is pretty miserable and he's pretty much made a mess of his life, but the one thing that I think keeps him going from day to day is the one woman at the club that isn't a stripper.  Her name is Kelly, and she's the only light in his world that is covered in darkness.

True darkness. Moses has been considering suicide since he was six years old. And at the very beginning of Beautiful, Naked & Dead we read about his personal day to day decision to either live, or die. 

In the story you'll read about Moses getting lap dances, popping pills and taking too long to come to the aid of the one woman that seems to matter the most to him, Kelly. After you read that, you'll learn of Kelly's brutal death and Moses going kick-ass crazy on the guys that did it. You'll also meet Kelly's twin sister, and read about a totally screwed up and, thankfully, brief romance. 

But most importantly you read about Moses. My guess will be that you will fall in love with him like so many of us already have. And while you're reading, you'll find that Moses is just as modest about his good looks in the book, as the author Josh Stallings is about his writing.  Maybe it's the modesty from both men that's making all the women nutty. I don't know. All I know is that I read this really incredible book with an amazing character and story line and that all I've wanted to do is read more about this character and encourage and support this author with his writing.  It truly is an amazing book. Hard-boiled, dark, full of suspense and fast cars, this is a debut novel with a character that can be stuck on repeat for years without me getting weary.  Seriously. I didn't call Moses hubba-hubba superlicious in a previous post for no reason, ladies. 

As for the dream...

I'll leave that to your imagination.

Josh Stallings is your average ex-criminal, ex-taxi driver, ex-club bouncer, film making, script writing, award winning trailer editing, punk. Over his time in Hollywood he wrote and edited the feature film “The Ice Runner,” a Russian/American co-production. “Kinda Cute for a White-Boy” an independent feature he directed and co-wrote with novelist Tad Williams, won best picture at the Savanah International Film Festival. He also wrote “Ground Zero Texas,” a best selling Sony video game with Edward Neumeier (writer of RoboCop). His first novel BEAUTIFUL, NAKED & DEAD is garnering great notice from readers and reviewers alike. OUT THERE BAD (Moses #2) Will be published early summer. He is currently working on the third Moses McGuire novel. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife Erika, his bullmastiff Nelson, Lucy the lab pit mix and Riddle the cat.

You can read more about Josh Stallings at his website HERE!

Beautiful, Naked & Dead is available on the both the Kindle and the Nook. You can also purchase this in paperback on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.