The Diner of Death

Hack used to go to a diner where he would stare at a beautiful woman eating her breakfast with such intensity that she became unnerved and was certain that he wanted to kill her. Hack became so offended that he actually did devise a plot to kill her but it got derailed when he found out that her boyfriend was devising a plot to kill him. Long story short, Hack switched to Denny’s but wrote this book about the experience.

Jonny Macho

Hack was having a drink with his cover artist Jonny M. and one of the gorgeous women Jonny inevitably has with him when a drunk started harassing the young lady. Jonny responded with his fists and when three friends of the drunk tried to come to his defense, they were all taken out on stretchers. As much as Hack despises Jonny, he was impressed by the display and wrote this novel about it.

Pug Rescuer

When Hack heard that his cover artist Jonny M.’s pug Boris came from a Korean pug rescue, he invented this fanciful story where the rescue was an underground spy organization that sneaked the dogs out of the country because a powerful mob was selling them to a pharmaceutical giant for experimentation.

When that turned out to be exactly what happened, Boris tried to have Hack killed.

The Car Max Killers

Hack’s pal Sara was having a rough time finding a car to buy and when she told Hack about a nightmarish experience she had at a Carmax dealership, he knocked out this fanciful murder mystery based loosely on her trial in which a Hack Werker-like pulp fiction writer is the killer. Unfortunately, Hack got high of reefer shortly afterward and got so disoriented that he thought the story was true, so he turned himself over to the police. It all got straightened out but not before Hack was raped in the county jail.