Forty Pounds of Flesh

Forty Pounds of Flesh will leave you gasping as the repercussions of honesty—or deception—in romance are pushed to their flashpoints.
Damon was born of rape, a bastard whose adoptive father hanged himself after learning he’d been duped. The solace Damon later finds in murder-mystery movies inspires him to one day write his own.
When Damon meets Deidre he's blown away by her young Savannah beauty, evocative of the women of his sex-goddess movie posters. It's true, if tormented love. Despite aspirations to make her a star in his imagined romance triangle screenplay, she remains capricious, still caught up in a richer promise of an easier path to Hollywood glamour.
When a surprise pregnancy changes everything, Damon and Deidre are soon living their shared dream. Damon works construction and writes by night, while Deidre prepares for acting-school.
The dream is shattered when Damon's new family vanishes without a trace, leaving him wracked and suicidal. That is until a blockbuster movie inspires him to write the script of a lifetime.
Might Damon’s angst-driven screenplay catapult him to fame and fortune and win his family back for good—or will his blurred boundary between fiction and reality incite a real mystery infinitely more sinister?

Praise for Forty Pounds of Flesh
“Not for the faint-hearted, Sans Emmert’s writing is compelling as he introduces us to the dark psychological trauma highlighted by the complexity of nature vs. nurture. Patricia Highsmith fans might truly appreciate the way Sans Emmert dives into this genre.”
“Fantastic novel...reminiscent of the most heinous murder mystery of decades past, this coming of age tale of obsessive love is the whydunit everyone’s been waiting for.”