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Join the list of schools adopting our Young Adult titles for their students. For more information, click on the “For Schools” tab above.

For a complimentary preview copy of Cracking the Ice or Offside (or both), please click on the “Preview Copy Request” tab above.

Bubba Goes for Broke, the comedy and crime caper first published in 2011 under the pen name David Bawdy, has now been reissued as a David H. Hendrickson title.

If a dim-witted, sex-crazed crook falls in love, does he get any dumber? You can bet a boob-jobbed Hooters waitress he does. And when she wants to become a televangelist with a little something extra, guess who’s going to pay? Meet Bubba Winslow.

“David H. Hendrickson tickles my funny bone in the best possible way.” — Annie Reed, author of Pretty Little Horses

“Good stuff… head-slapping, outrageous humor” — Terry Hayman, author of Chasing the Minotaur

Available on Kindle, NOOK, and Smashwords.

Pentucket Publishing is proud to release David H. Hendrickson’s latest novel, Offside, in all electronic formats. The paper version will become available in early January.

Officially, this is a Young Adult title because its hero is a teenager and the content is age-appropriate for readers 14 and up, but the same adult readers who loved Hendrickson’s previous YA title, Cracking the Ice, will love this one, too.

Offside is truly a story for all ages.

“Rabbit” Labelle loves football, but the tiny, rural Maine town where he lives isn’t big enough to support a team. After his father moves the family to the big, bad city, Rabbit finally gets his chance to play the sport he loves the most, but he must also confront the dangers of “Lynn, Lynn, City of Sin.” Since it’s 1967 and cities are torn by racial turmoil, this includes his father’s greatest fear: “the Negroes.”

Rabbit, who’d been the most popular kid in Plainfield, Maine, struggles to make friends and wonders if he’ll even survive.

Only football can save him.

Find Offside here: Kindle, Nook, Kobo, and Smashwords. $5.99

A new electronic edition of David Bawdy’s hilarious novel Bubba Goes for Broke has been released on all sites.  This version offers several improvements and corrections.

Additionally, a trade paperback will be released before the end of the month.  This will mark the first appearance of the title in a paper edition.

Pentucket Publishing is now on Twitter. We’re @PentucketPub. Follow us!

A cat that writes stories? Impossible! Her owner, Josh, can’t believe his eyes. But he believes when a pretty girl falls for him because of the sensitivity she reads in “his” stories.

Available for 99 cents in all electronic formats on Kindle, NOOK, Smashwords, Sony, Apple, Kobo, and many others. 

Feline Masterpiece

David H. Hendrickson

Copyright © 2011 by David H. Hendrickson

Cover illustration copyright ©

Lars Christensen/Dreamstime.com

While cars, taxicabs, and busses honked fourteen floors below, Josh Langfeld struggled with his novel.  He sat at a desk cluttered with sports magazines, overdue DVDs, and empty beer cans.  He swiveled to his left to watch the TV.  He played a couple video games.  He went to the bedroom mirror and checked his jet black hair, recently cut at Le Salon de Louis, then stood sideways to examine his washboard abs.  He checked to see if there was anyone online to chat with.

He wondered if he should go back to trying to be a rock star.  Or maybe consider acting even though he couldn’t memorize anything longer than a new pickup line.  Writing was hard. 

Finally, the muse cooperated.  As Josh’s new cat, Lucky, stared at the words as if they were miniature mice scrambling across the screen, Josh typed:

Julia eschewed obfuscation and screamed with petulant bellicosity.  “How could you do this to me, Darren?  I’ll never love anyone else again!  My life is over, Darren!  Over!  It’s over!!!!!” 

Josh sank back in the chair with satisfaction.  That was pretty good, he thought.  Eschewed obfuscation.  His vocabulary work was paying off. And the five exclamation points at the end of the dialogue were a nice touch.  Editors and agents had treated his novel proposal as if it were the Ebola virus, but they’d live to regret it.  This one was a keeper.

He’d be like Stephen King or that Harry Potter woman.  Famous.  People would line up around the block for him to autograph his latest bestseller.  Women would throw themselves at him.  He’d have to watch out for paternity suits, but that was one of the prices of fame.  Would he do Leno first or Letterman?  Maybe, if the sex was hot enough, Howard Stern.  Oprah for sure.

Lucky’s orange-red fur bristled and her back hunched.  She pounced.  Her front paws stepped on keys that highlighted the entire story.  With a back paw, she pressed “Delete.” 

The story disappeared. A blank screen stared back at Josh. 

He sat bolt upright.

Lucky scampered across the keys. 

Josh swatted her aside, sending two empty cans clattering to the floor.

He stared at the words on the screen.

You suck.  Let me try.

Lucky licked her chops, her pink nose twitching.  She walked across the keyboard again.

I can’t do any worse than your shit.

***

Josh watched spellbound as Lucky padded back and forth across the keyboard, somehow using her paws–or perhaps it was her claws, he couldn’t tell–to select keystrokes that combined to create not only grammatical sentences but actual scenes in a story.  Lucky often stopped to think, at times not moving for minutes before resuming.  She also hacked up a few literary hairballs and had to edit the offending passages, her back arching and fur standing on end, but the story emerged line after line, page after page.

Only after nearly an hour of dazed befuddlement did Josh realize that his writing days were over.  Fame awaited without him having to so much as lift a finger.  As the owner of the world’s first writing feline, he’d be on the cover of Time and Newsweek, the lead guest on all the talk shows.  There’d be a world tour.  London.  Paris.  Rome.  He’d have to beat the women off with a stick.  Best of all, he’d never have to write another word again.  He leaned back and cracked open a beer in celebration.

When he finished the last drop, he rocked forward in his chair and fumbled in the bottom desk drawer for his camcorder, a top-of-the-line Sony HD with adjustable undercranking and overcranking, instant auto-focus, and enough capacity to record for just about forever.  He popped the lens cover off and–

With a feral snarl, Lucky sprang at him.  They tumbled to the floor’s thick shag carpet; the camcorder flew out of his grasp.  Lucky raked her claws across his chest.  Jagged holes appeared in his T-shirt.  She scrambled toward his face, radiating heat and the smell of a savage beast.  Josh ducked, throwing up a forearm.  Lucky’s claws tore open angry, red gashes.

Josh threw her off, sprang to his feet, and backpedaled.  Lucky took one step forward, teeth bared and hackles raised, then held her ground, hunching her back.  Her green eyes, so pleading when he’d gotten her a couple weeks ago at the animal shelter where his latest girlfriend worked, now looked wild and filled with hatred.

Josh backed slowly into the bathroom.  He closed the door.  His forearm stung.  Blood trickled from the deep, red tracks of Lucky’s claws.  He double-checked his face in the mirror.  Not a scratch.  Josh shuddered at what might have been.  That had been a close call.

Was the cat rabid?  He’d only gotten the damned thing to impress Marisa, show her he had a sensitive side.  She said it had gotten all its shots and there’d been no signs of rabies.  Of course, there’d also been no signs that the damned thing could write stories.  Perhaps, Josh wondered, the same abnormality that had bestowed the ability to write had also triggered this attack.  All the more reason, he figured, to get the writing documented on film.

Josh cracked open the bathroom door and peered outside.  The clicking of keys sounded from out by the computer.  He opened the door wider, tiptoed out, and poked his head around the corner. 

Lucky stepped on a few more keys, hopped off, then looked at him.  Her eyes still glowed with fury.  She lifted a paw and pointed to the screen.

Josh inched toward the desk, his eyes never leaving hers.  Lucky had opened a second document and written in a large font.  I could have gotten your face if I wanted to.  Pull that stunt again and I won’t miss.  No cameras! 

“But . . . why?”

I won’t be part of your freak show.

“It won’t be a freak show.  You’ll be a celebrity.  The cover of People magazine.  On all the shows.  Oprah will go gaga over you.”

A freak show.  

Josh couldn’t fathom it.  The damned cat could have the whole nine yards and was turning it down.  “You don’t want to be on Oprah?  You don’t want the cover of People?”

I want my work judged on its own merits.  I don’t want it to be “great for a cat.”  I want it to be great.  Period.  No qualifiers.  Now leave me alone.  I’ve got a story to finish.

“You don’t understand.”

I understand perfectly well.  Please go away.

“Let me explain,” Josh said, his voice shrill.

You’re not used to hearing the word “no” much, are you?

“This isn’t about me.”

It’s always about you.

Josh was quiet for a long time.  “You know,” he finally said, “I liked you better when you were dumber than me.”

The correct wording is “dumber than I.”  The pronoun is a subject, not an object.  And just for the record, I’ve never been dumber than you.

(The full story is available for 99 cents in all electronic formats on Kindle, NOOK, Smashwords, Sony, Apple, Kobo, and many others.)

When a woman says you have a mind of your own, she’s usually right. But never more so than on this night. An unforgettable horror story by award-winning author David H. Hendrickson.

Available for 99 cents in all electronic formats on Kindle, NOOK, Smashwords, Sony, Apple, Kobo, and many others.  Published by Pentucket Publishing.

Baby, One More Time

by David H. Hendrickson

Copyright 2011 by David H. Hendrickson

Cover art by Dmitry Ersler/Dreamstime.com

She always said that I had a mind of my own.  Never in her wildest dreams, or nightmares, could she have guessed how right she was. 

It is why I creep toward her now.  I am drawn to her even though she plunged the butcher’s knife into Jimmy’s chest so many times.  Even though, as his life ebbed away, she performed her final act of revenge, savagely cutting me and then waving me in front of his face.  As blood dripped onto his nose and forehead, she screamed words of vengeance and hurled me toward the foot of the bed.

Sobbing, she gulped down an entire bottle of pills, then climbed back onto the bed and pushed him away with the fierce jab of one foot. Jimmy landed on the floor with a loud thump.

Her tears dried.  She drifted off. 

One final night from which she wouldn’t wake up.  The finale for the three of us. 

Not the threesome Jimmy and I had been hoping for.

I will soon be as dead as he is, but there is life in me still.  Even while I am wracked with pain, the nerve endings screaming out their anguish while blood leaks out of me, I am still alive.  Enough life remains, I believe, for one last time.  A final pilgrimage, if you will.

And so I creep toward her.  Slow and caterpillar-like.  Hunching myself up and then springing forward.  Just like a fat caterpillar.  Hunch up and spring forward; hunch up and spring forward. 

Homeward bound. 

The pain is unbearable, but I must push that aside.  And so I think of her.  Not the way that Jimmy would have: the flawless complexion, blue eyes and long black hair.  My thoughts of her are more primitive and elemental; my needs are more basic.  I crave her warmth, the way she squeezes me in her loving embrace.  It is that special place which beckons.  Those are the thoughts I use to ignore the searing pain.

And so I inch onward.

In the beginning, she loved me.  She worshipped me, if I may indulge my well-endowed ego and say it.  She only began to hate me when she found out about Cindy.  That was a mistake.  Not Cindy, of course.  Cindy was worth it, as were all the others.  Oh, yes!  The mistake was getting caught. 

(The full story is available for 99 cents in all electronic formats on Kindle, NOOK, Smashwords, Sony, Apple, Kobo, and many others.  Published by Pentucket Publishing.)

We’ve begun by featuring short stories, but our first novel  Bubba Goes for Broke will be appearing soon.  Take a look at the outstanding cover developed by Renee Barratt at The Cover Counts.

Bubba Goes for Broke