Eldercide available now on Kindle

At long last, my novel Eldercide is available on Kindle, and you’ll soon be able to buy a printed copy and other e-pub versions as well. I first published the novel in 2008, but it’s as timely as ever. Here’s what I wrote for the 4000-character description that people will see when they bring up the book on Amazon. If you have any comments or suggestions, I’d love to hear them. Does this promo tempt you to buy the book?

When quality of life declines with age and illness, who decides if you’re better off dead? Nursing supervisor Claire Lindstrom suspects a killer is making the final judgment call for the clients of Compassionate Care. 

A woman with Alzheimer’s disease dies unexpectedly in the night. Another is found dead beside a stream. Claire sees the beginnings of a sinister pattern, but Paula Rhodes, her temperamental boss, doesn’t want her raising questions. The survival of the home health care agency in upstate New York depends on its reputation for quality care, and a rash of mysterious deaths could kill the business.

Claire antagonizes the county coroner and becomes the prime suspect in the eyes of the police. All the while, from his vantage point near her cottage on Kooperskill Lake, a killer called Gabriel is watching, channeling his obsession with Claire into passionate paintings. Under another name, he’s a man she already knows – but which one? And is he part of a far larger scheme of Eldercide, taking orders from a shadowy organization?

Author Julie Lomoe knows home health care from the ground up. After working as a creative arts therapist in a psychiatric hospital for over a decade, she founded ElderSource, Inc., a Licensed Home Care Services Agency in upstate New York. As President and chief administrator, she handled quality assurance, human resources and marketing, while a nursing supervisor was responsible for patient care. A Registered Art Therapist and counselor with training in family therapy, Julie couldn’t legally provide hands-on care, so she became trained and certified as a Personal Care Aide. Filling in when other staff couldn’t be found, she learned the business at the most basic level, helping clients cope with their declining bodily functions, comforting Alzheimer’s patients through sleepless nights, waiting impatiently for relief staff to arrive. In the process, she developed enormous respect and empathy for the aides who make home care their life’s work, and Eldercide is dedicated to them.

As a small, start-up business facing stiff competition from established agencies, ElderSource built its reputation and case load with an ever increasing emphasis on round-the-clock live-in care, recruiting many of the aides from New York City. Compared to Compassionate Care, ElderSource had relatively smooth sailing. Some of the agency’s seriously ill clients died during the agency’s watch, but all of natural causes. But as ElderSource grew, so did Julie’s stress. Like Paula Rhodes, she agonized over meeting the payroll and packed on pounds while trying to cope by means of comfort food and antidepressants.

Eventually, realizing the agency could quite literally be the death of her, Julie transferred the staff and clients to another agency, and ElderSource closed its doors. Several years passed before Julie came to terms with the loss and gained the perspective she needed to explore the experience through fiction.

In the years since Julie first published Eldercide, the real-life issues and ethical questions raised in the novel have grown ever more acute. The percentage of elderly in America continues to swell, yet the services to care for them have not kept pace with the need. With less disposable income, working harder and longer to meet basic expenses, people struggle to provide care for their elders, and the tensions and conflicts that tear apart the families in Eldercide are if anything greater than ever.

Our society is rapidly aging, our allotted life spans growing ever longer, but at what cost? Eldercide explores ethical dilemmas most of us will face sooner or later—if we live long enough.

Does this description tempt you to buy the book? If so, why not head over to Amazon right now? Type in my name, Julie Lomoe, and you’ll see Hope Dawns Eternal and Mood Swing: The Bipolar Murders as well as Eldercide. Just think: you could own all three of my published novels for less than $9.00—the price of a fair-to-middling glass of wine. And you’d earn my undying gratitude. If you do decide to click on that shopping cart icon, please let me know so I can thank you personally.

Above is the cover for the original edition of Eldercide. If you see it on Amazon, don’t buy it there! I’m no longer with the original publisher, and I won’t see any of the profits. I’m still fond of the cover illustration, which I did in pastels, but I decided to go with something less terrifying, since the killer in Eldercide is kinder and gentler than he looks here. But if you’d like to buy this version with my original artwork, I still have some around. Just contact me at julielomoe@gmail.com and we’ll work it out.

 

 

 

 

 

In memory of dogs loved and lost

Lucky and Me (Author photo for Mood Swing: The Bipolar Murders

This morning my daughter’s dog Sequoia died peacefully at the vet’s office in Woodstock. A black chow mix, Sequoia had been Stacey’s devoted companion for 16 years. The dog had been abandoned, tied for hours to a fence post in Tompkins Square Park in New York’s East Village when Stacey rescued her, and they’ve been together since before her marriage and the birth of her children.

Over the past couple of years, Sequoia’s been declining both physically and mentally. She developed a form of dementia not unlike Alzheimer’s, and became unpredictably aggressive to the point where she could no longer safely coexist with my young granddaughters. She still regarded me with affection, though, and I spent quality time with her yesterday, stroking her, giving her treats and tummy rubs. I couldn’t bear to accompany Sequoia and Stacey on that final visit to the vet, but my husband was there for them.

Within the past few years, I’ve had to take three dogs on that last journey. All three were critically, terminally ill, and their passing through lethal injection at the hands of the veterinarian was peaceful. In my novel Eldercide, an elderly gentleman suffering from Parkinson’s comments that he wishes society allowed people the same gentle exit we provide our beloved pets. But humane as these assisted deaths may be, it’s never easy for the human families left behind. 

Do you have a pet you’d like to remember here? I’d love to her about him or her.

In the author photo above, I’m joined by Lucky, a beautiful golden retriever who graced our lives for less than a year. A family in Woodstock could no longer keep him because of rivalry with other pets, so we adopted him. As it turned out, he was suffering from lymphoma, and despite aggressive treatment, he died at only four years old.

Dogs have figured prominently in both my mysteries. Now that my husband and I share our home only with two cats, I expect cats to play a stronger role in my fiction. (Photograph by Hot Shot Photos in Albany)