"I Think I'm Going to Kill Myself"

Sometime in 2024, Dawn Barclay emailed me to suggest that I edit an anthology of crime stories inspired by the songs of Elton John. I like Elton John, but the lyrics to his songs were for the most part written by Bernie Taupin, so "Crime Fiction Inspired by the Songs of Elton John" seemed like a cheat to me, and "Crime Fiction Inspired by the Songs of Bernie Taupin" seemed like a book no one would want to buy ... and I'm embarrassed to admit that I never thought of "Crime Fiction Inspired by the Songs of Elton John and Bernie Taupin" (duh) ... so I said I wasn't interested in editing such a book but that I'd be happy to contribute a story to one if Dawn decided to edit it herself.

Dawn did, and I did, and "I Think I'm Going to Kill Myself" is the result. I'd recently written a story with an autistic fourteen-year-old girl as the first-person narrator, and I'd enjoyed playing with that voice, so for this one I decided to go with an nineteen-year-old male narrator with "a touch of the 'tism."

I think the story turned out well, and Dawn got enough submissions she liked for the project that she decided to release it in two volumes, which she organized according to when the albums that contained the songs that inspired the stories came out. "I Think I'm Going to Kill Myself" was on Honky Chateau, which dropped in 1972, early in Elton and Bernie's career, so my story's in Volume 1, which was published by Down and Out Books on August 25, 202.

Sadly two months later, in October 2025, Down and Out went out of business with no advance warning, orphaning literally hundreds of novels and anthologies and leaving their authors and editors -- as well as the authors and editors of novels and anthologies scheduled for publication but as yet unpublished -- scrambling to find alternate homes for their books. As of this moment (October 29, 2025), it might be possible to find a copy of Better Off Dead, Vol. 1 somewhere online, but it might not be. When and if editor Dawn Barclay is able to find a publisher to rerelease it, I'll update this page with a link to show where it's available.

Return to Bibliography.