Jamie Katz is a certified Florida Man and swamp creature, even if he is living in California and begrudgingly working as a writer for his two-time ex-husband Paul’s porn outfit, Scorch Studios. It wouldn’t be a bad gig except for Paul’s new wife and second-in-command, an uptight Southern Belle named Tater.When Paul is found shot to death in the alley behind Scorch, every clue points to Jamie. Which is insane because why would Jamie kill one of the only two men he ever loved? Okay, yes, the obscenely expensive wedding rings Paul desperately needed back were hiding among Jamie’s nipple ring collection. And, sure, he was still sleeping with Paul, and Paul had just fired him. And, you know what, yeah, Jamie had just blown up Paul’s life and possibly marriage after getting fired. Of course he had! What, being hot isn’t enough, now he has to be a saint too?Well, Jamie hasn’t survived four decades of his own bad ideas to go down for something he didn’t do. Between a jealous Tater and Scorch’s sketchy crew and wild porn stars, there are still plenty of suspects. So, if the cops are hell-bent on proving his guilt, then he’s just gonna have to solve this case himself.And if Jamie’s brand of investigation means jumping into bed with every guy in California, hey, that’s just a hard day’s work.

"Grady’s novel is an unvarnished portrait of queer desire and the messy work of becoming accountable to the people you love. She’s crafted a protagonist who’s simultaneously self-aware and self-sabotaging, his sardonic narration cutting through sentiment with brutal honesty, especially when he reflects on his pattern of destroying relationships before they can destroy him. The prose shifts deftly between graphic sexual content and genuine emotional intimacy, never letting either overwhelm the other. "
—Kirkus Reviews (Verdict: Get it)"Grady’s writing deftly balances the local color of the San Fernando Valley with sharp, irreverent humor. Jamie is an instantly magnetic protagonist ... His voice is both evocative and witty ... The dialogue crackles even in high-tension moments, and the humor lands without undermining the novel’s stakes—rather, it highlights Jamie’s chaotic, “one-man wrecking ball” energy. The novel’s themes of lingering obsession and the cosmic entanglement of past relationships give the mystery significant emotional weight ... the narrative keeps readers hooked until the final page. Anyone who enjoys dark humor and character-driven thrillers with a protagonist who is gloriously, unapologetically a “sicko” will find this a must-read."
—BookLife (Editor's Pick)

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Avril Grady has a Ph.D. in a STEM field and started writing in March 2025 when her stable career became calamitously unstable and she found herself asking what do I actually want to do with my life if I lose it all?But when she sat down to write an outline for a completely unrelated action novel, Jamie Katz tore his way onto the page. Three months later, Avril had a first draft of Jamie’s San Fernando mystery and was trying to learn the difference between developmental and line edits.Avril’s storytelling is informed by that feeling when the rose-tinted glasses come off and everything crashes down around you. She integrates elements of grief and loss, along with a desire to just have some goddamn fun. Avril’s goal is to make the unloved lovable, to tangle pain with joy, and to never, ever, ever get too preachy.And most of all, she just wants everyone to laugh.

Read below for a sneak peek of SICKO by Avril Grady**Note: This is an excerpt from the uncorrected proof, minor typos may be present.

Chapter 1Writing porn is not my dream job. But it does feel like the only job I can do.These days, at least.Which is funny, because I never wrote much of anything in my twenties or thirties. But now that I’m firmly in middle age, the words flow pretty easily. I type and porn appears, easy paycheck.And it’s just a thing I do to get by, really. To live a life that resembles all the other lives around me. To wake up every day with somewhere to go—specifically a studio in the strip mall near the Burger Boy—and be able to pay rent on my one-bedroom with a pawnshop view.I will say, the thing I didn’t expect about porn was all the rewrites. The notes. The criticism. I sort of thought I’d be most taxed by the soul-baring vulnerability and humiliation of writing dirty talk multiple hours a day.But the dirty talk is not the problem. And if it is a little humiliating to type and stare, and type and stare, over and over, at the words “suck my dick,” well . . .I don’t mind a little humiliation.But the notes, man. Those fucking edits. Apparently, my tastes run a bit esoteric, or so Paul the Studio Head tells me. The number of times I’ve read “too esoteric” in the little bubble comments . . . It’s enough to make a guy a little crazy.Fucking Paul. Not sure why the head of Scorch Studios needs to micromanage a low-level scriptwriter. Maybe his hovering, hands-on approach is left over from our marriage, back when he was Paul My Husband Who I Cheated on Regularly. And before that, he was Paul Who Signed Me Up for an Orgy Without Telling Me Ahead of Time. Twice.I’m still a little mad about the orgy thing. You really need to know if the whole party expects to fuck you. At a certain point, it’s just about safety. Their safety. I’ve been known to headbutt when cornered.All those Pauls were far from my favorite Paul who appeared on one magical summer’s eve, when he became Paul Who Did So Much Coke He Barreled Through a Thin Wall at a House Party Like the Kool-Aid Man. God, that was awesome. That was before I married him, back when it was all destruction and drugs, like we were trying our damnedest to embody every epic musician from the ’80s and ’90s who crashed hard and died young.You know, the fun years.But then, bam, divorce. No more fun. No more Kool-Aid Man. No more falling into bed and waking up tangled in each other’s limbs, sharing morning breath. Not that I didn’t see the divorce coming—I’m not that far up my own ass. Fixing broken things becomes a lot harder the more you like breaking them. And, based on the volume of angry phone messages clogging my inbox since my teen years, I’m a bit of a one-man wrecking ball.Eventually, the person helping you glue everything back together starts to wonder if it's worth their time. Break enough things and suddenly Paul the Studio Head has a lot to fucking say about my repetitive dirty talk and unhinged plot development. Sending me feedback like “No one wants to see that” or “We can’t shoot that, it won’t make any sense and it will weird people out” or “This should be illegal.”Lot of nerve he has, pretending that I don’t know his weirdness on a deep and intimate level. I’m talking letting-him-use-an-ovipositor-on-me-for-his-birthday type shit. Just the once, but still. It’s not not weird.And honestly, isn’t the whole fucking point of sex to be fucking weird?I tap my fingers impatiently on the edge of my keyboard, settling deeper into my patio chair. The screen is frozen. Again. My laptop’s going down hard and fast, unlike this astronaut suspended in time on page 2 of Plant Daddy.Getting a new laptop shouldn’t be an issue. But instead of asking for half of Paul’s Miami-grown fortune, I asked for a job. Or, to be more accurate, he offered a job, and I jumped on it.I don’t know why that made sense to me at the time. It’s not like I was unemployed—I was working as a part-time stripper, part-time Zumba-slash-Aquafit instructor. But there’s something about turning forty that makes you question how long you can conceivably expect people to pay to see you naked.So I asked for a job rather than half his assets. Maybe because of how many times I cheated on him. Or the time I totaled his car. Still, maybe he should have thought about that ovipositor bullshit and given me the whole fucking thing instead of tying it all up in an erotic film studio venture in San Fernando.At a bare minimum, I should have asked for that ridiculous “family crest” he ordered from an Orlando business back in his early twenties. Is it worth anything? I have no idea. Would it have been as much punishment for me to have it, given the damn thing weighs almost a hundred pounds? Yes. But I still should have taken it. It tore the hook clean off the wall in our first apartment. Almost cut my foot in half.I swipe my fingers over the touchpad, checking if I’m good to go. Nope, still frozen. This attempt to make up for taking a nap at work and then leaving two hours early is really backfiring on me. I sigh, gazing up at the wasp hovering above me. Its spindly little legs hang down like yellow twigs floating in the wind.I like to write outside. Not for the ambience of my luxurious second-floor apartment patio, with its chipping painted cement that roughs the bottoms of my bare feet. I freeze as the ancient sun-bleached deck chair creaks under my weight, making clear that it was here before me and will be here when I’m gone. No, I write outside because I like to write dirty things in clean places. No one knows what I’m writing; they just think I’m some bland, middle-aged guy writing an email to my stock analyst or doing taxes.And I like to be outside. Despite the many benefits that come from befriending the porn actresses at work—lively drinking buddies, waxing expertise, I could go on—I do spend most of my time inhaling coconut perfume and glitter. Sometimes I just need to breathe fresh air instead of hairspray. Flush the volatilized baby oil out of my lungs. And I like to feel the gentle valley breeze chilling my scalp—my hair still damp from the shower—and penetrating little pockets of the old purple fleece I’ve had for decades. I got it back when I was wearing almost exclusively black jeans and no shirt. (Unless you count nipple rings as a shirt, which most liquor stores do not.) Somehow, in that haze of skintight leather and ripped denim, I picked up this granola-head fleece and kept it, as if compelled by a vision of what I would someday become: a middle-aged porn writer.After I click a few errant keys, gibberish lands on the page. Finally. Finally, I can get back to crafting my esoteric boner-killer filth for good ol’ Paul. Okay, where were we in all the sexy action?That’s right, the astronaut was just starting to trace his fingers slowly through the leaves of the glowing green space plant twice his size. His breathing quickens as the leaves start to stiffen, becoming greener, wetter, wrapping around his arms and legs and torso to pull him forward into their embrace. As their green ooze runs down his palm and wrist, tracing glistening trails across his forearm, an extra-stiff leaf crawls up his neck, sliming its way along his cheek to brush lightly at his lip . . .I pause. Frown. Open up a search window and start to ask, “What is the definition of ‘esoteric’?” The alarming chorus of 4 Non Blondes’s “What’s Up” blares next to me.I jump a little, my laptop doing a treacherous knee-to-knee wobble. I catch it and use my other hand to flip over my phone.Kim. Perfect timing.“It’s your night,” she singsongs.“Let me guess.” I lean back and run my hand through my dark, slightly overgrown hair, hopefully speeding up the air-drying. “Dive bar karaoke.”Kim laughs, her voice throaty like she’s already a couple dirty margaritas in. Or like she just filmed the highly anticipated Manic MILF Episode Four: Stuck in a Bush.“I was thinking more midpriced woodsy lounge. Mountain men, dead deer, waitresses in skimpy plaid. You can buy me dinner and drinks.”“Hayman’s it is. You need a ride to Burbank?”“Nope, just a slutty washed-out twink willing to pay for dinner.”I bark out a startled laugh. She always knows just what to say.“Wow. Been a while since I’ve heard that one.”I hang up on her ongoing attempt to clarify exactly which one I haven’t heard in a while, “slutty,” “washed-out,” or “twink.”Open your eyes, Kim. It’s not the first two.Back inside, I drop my laptop on the counter. A wet towel is tossed over the couch, my mail scattered on the floor by the door. I grab my keys and toe on Birkenstocks. My well-worn jeans and purple fleece will have to suffice. The thought of spending another second in the lonely silence of this dim one-bedroom apartment with popcorn ceilings, empty unfurnished rooms, and dust-coated windows covered by broken blinds makes me want to sink down through the floor and let myself into the gates of Hell.Besides, it's not like I need to dress up for a night out with a friend. I pad down the cool cement walk to the street parking out front, tossing my glittery shark key chain into the air in a high arc and then catching it in my other hand. I crank open the squawking rust-filled door of my 1986 dirt-brown Ford Bronco. The springy seat bounces jovially as I sit, making me feel like a jack-in-the-box.Yeah, I think, inhaling the familiar fumes of leaky oil and something I hope isn’t antifreeze, it’s nice having friends you can be yourself around.* * *“Jesus, Jamie,” Kim says as soon as I step out of the car, “you look like gay Screech.”She’s leaning against her old Mustang outside Burbank’s one and only redneck bar, with big wood panels that try to create a log cabin feel but land a little closer to unfinished DIY project. The big, tacky St. Patty’s Day wreath on the front door doesn’t help.A passing couple freezes before picking up the pace, stroller wheels clacking against the uneven sidewalk. She shoots them an apologetic wave.Kim is a tall blonde in her late forties who has cornered the MILF market at Scorch. She has a penchant for thick black eyeliner, outdated sequins, and excessive tanning on the roof of her apartment building, which is across from an old cemetery—making it all the more bewildering that we often find ourselves competing for the same men and drunkenly fighting about it later. Still, she’s a formidable opponent, with her shimmery plum dress boasting a beaded silver pattern that forces my extremely uninterested eyes to her substantial cleavage.“Did you ever see My Cousin Vinny?” I ask.She whips her hand forward, hitting my key ring out of my hand.“Did you ever get fucked?” she whoops, kicking the clattering keys farther away as I lunge for them.“Yeah, plenty,” I mutter, snatching them up before she can send them even closer to the road.“I’m gonna treat you to a little secret, Jamie,” Kim throws over her shoulder as she stomps toward the front door. “Do not ever, ever comment on what a hot girl is wearing.”She pulls the door open and bows me inside with an exaggerated motion.I raise an eyebrow. “Hey, thanks—”“You’re so welcome—”“—but I think, if you’d seen My Cousin Vinny, you would take it as a huge fucking compliment. You may be hot but you’re no Mona Lisa, doll. Besides, am I not a hot girl? Did you not do the same to me, Kimberly?”“Yes, Jamie, you’re hot. Everything is about you,” Kim says.The hostess flinches at our entrance, gripping the polished wood stand. That’s understandable. We’re a bit of an acquired taste. Or, I’m an acquired taste.I learned that young, when the parents in my second-grade class signed a petition to have me removed for trying to kiss all their sons. Maybe I could have gotten away with that in San Francisco or Portland or some other godless liberal haven, but it was a tougher sell in Pensacola. I don’t really know what became of that petition, actually. Gram went to some meeting and no one ever talked about it again. And I went right back to following the boys around at recess.Not that there weren’t upsides to being raised in Florida’s armpit. That town gave me the special glimmer of panhandle psychosis that enabled me to torch Paul’s car. I might have referred to that as “totaling” it earlier; it is functionally the same thing, since he wasn’t able to drive it after I lit it on fire. And only a Florida swamp boy could have married and divorced Paul twice over a fifteen-year period.. . . I also may have forgotten to mention that he’s my twice ex-husband. That could be more why I didn’t take half his life savings: the flaming car and the multiple divorces.You might not know it looking at me now. These days, I aim to be West Coast cool and California casual. But honestly, I’m not. I’m crazy!But I’m also hot, or at least I was. Now I’m “hot for a guy in his forties,” which is funny, because I’m not “crazy for a guy in his forties.” I’m just crazy.Kim and I slide into an upholstered booth beside a large picture window covered in gauzy forest-green curtains and framed in a garland of shiny plastic shamrocks. We don’t let the hostess leave before she takes our drink orders. Bad form, but we take drinking seriously. A dirty margarita for Kim and an espresso martini for me.Kim plops her purse on the glossy tabletop and starts rifling through the contents. I lean back, the fake red leather groaning dramatically, and peruse the evening’s assortment of diners and drinkers. It’s a mixed bag, for Kim at least. The room of mounted animal heads with desperate glassy eyes isn’t my type of hunting ground. This crowd’s mostly lumberjack wannabees.If I’m gonna fuck a lumberjack, I’m gonna fuck a lumberjack. A real one, with a hatchet. Or an axe. A saw? Honestly, I’m not sure what they carry around.Other than wood.“You looking?” Kim asks, reading my mind.I shake my head, eyeing a bug-eyed buck mounted directly behind Kim, its mouth hanging open as if shocked to find itself in Burbank.Me too, buddy.She snorts. “You’re gonna tell me who he is eventually.”“What?”“Oh, come on, how dumb do you think I am? And—honestly—that’s bitch behavior. You’re just scared I’m gonna steal your mystery man out from under you.”“Wow, okay. There is no mystery man,” I say, spreading my hands. “But thank you for calling me a bitch while I’m surrounded by dead animals.”“Baby, you’re from Florida. I think you know about dead animals.” She cuts me off as I open my mouth. “And you better not be lying to me.”“I’m not. You’re being paranoid. I’m not hiding things and I wouldn’t lie to you,” I say, giving her steady eye contact.She sighs, combing her fingers through her hair. “Fine. I’m just imagining things.”I wave her off. “Where are our drinks, what’s taking so long?”It’s not particularly crowded; more than half the tables and booths are empty. What’s the point of forcing your order on the hostess if it isn’t going to speed up the process?“My Mustang is fucked, by the way,” Kim says. “The whole way here it was shaking my fuckin’ tits off. I need you to find me a mechanic.”“Me?”She shrugs, one of her plum dress straps slipping down her shoulder. “Yeah, you. Who else is going to find one for me? Besides, you seem like you would know a mechanic or two.”“I knew a guy in Miami who was good with cars,” I admit after a moment, stretching my neck side to side and popping it. Knew being the operative word. I can’t imagine anyone less likely to do a favor for me than Joe Russo.“Oh yeah? Did you blow up his car too?” Kim asks, tracing the tabletop with her long turquoise nails. Except the two short ones on the index and middle fingers of her right hand.“No,” I say. “I didn’t touch his car.”She hums. “Wow, you must have liked him if he got off that easy.”“I wouldn’t say that.”Not the “liking him” part. I did like him. That was never the problem. The problem was he didn’t always appreciate my way of liking him. Or, I guess, the chaos I brought with me, in the process. Some guys just aren’t up to the challenge.