The Fortune Teller's Factotum
The final cover
The stories were never far from Mary Dorn.
Some families tell a suppertime story of a relative who found a purse that held nine hundred and ninety-something dollars and handed it into the police. The better tale is how that relative pocketed it and blew the money on a spree in Vegas. Others have an uncle, or an aunt, who robbed a small-town bank and lived on the proceeds or got a stretch in jail and forever felt foolish. Some have a grandpa who swam the Hudson in winter or walked the Mason-Dixon line for kicks, a grandma who gave Richard Nixon a piece of her mind as he approached his car, or kissed JFK as he approached his–or the other ways round. Others feature a cousin spoken about only reluctantly, whose attempted burglary turned into a conflagration that maimed and traumatized, or a girl-cousin as removed as possible who, in a dispute over inches in a yard boundary, slaughtered a neighbor with a garden implement.
Mary’s family, the Firemont Dorns, was full of stories, but one put all the others in the shade: the family was full of mass murderers. It was never related at suppertime nor at any other time, just festered in corners of the Dorn house, as if waiting for Mary to tease it out.
Ashley Hyde and Mary Dorn were destined to renew an interrupted friendship, linked by a daytime TV celeb cat and ties they could never have guessed at. The Fortune Teller’s Factotum is a delve into the devastating secrets at the hearts of two families.
It was published by Hear Our Voice LLC, a new US publisher, on 31st October 2023. Order the book here.
Some families tell a suppertime story of a relative who found a purse that held nine hundred and ninety-something dollars and handed it into the police. The better tale is how that relative pocketed it and blew the money on a spree in Vegas. Others have an uncle, or an aunt, who robbed a small-town bank and lived on the proceeds or got a stretch in jail and forever felt foolish. Some have a grandpa who swam the Hudson in winter or walked the Mason-Dixon line for kicks, a grandma who gave Richard Nixon a piece of her mind as he approached his car, or kissed JFK as he approached his–or the other ways round. Others feature a cousin spoken about only reluctantly, whose attempted burglary turned into a conflagration that maimed and traumatized, or a girl-cousin as removed as possible who, in a dispute over inches in a yard boundary, slaughtered a neighbor with a garden implement.
Mary’s family, the Firemont Dorns, was full of stories, but one put all the others in the shade: the family was full of mass murderers. It was never related at suppertime nor at any other time, just festered in corners of the Dorn house, as if waiting for Mary to tease it out.
Ashley Hyde and Mary Dorn were destined to renew an interrupted friendship, linked by a daytime TV celeb cat and ties they could never have guessed at. The Fortune Teller’s Factotum is a delve into the devastating secrets at the hearts of two families.
It was published by Hear Our Voice LLC, a new US publisher, on 31st October 2023. Order the book here.
"Mary Dorn, where DID you get that gun?"
The Makarov
A sound from downstairs; Mary's dad coming in. Or a repo man. A cop, maybe a burglar, an assassin. She picked up a Makarov pistol and weighed it in her hand. Mary never forgot that she had once saved the day with that gun, the first one she had found in the house.
A Man with a Lot of Explaining to Do
Jeremiah’s Dorn's first son was Emmett, born 1876. His motto, embossed onto business cards, was Be bold, or stay home. And he was, and he didn’t. He became a professional loose cannon, answering to no government, system or family. His deeds may have included impregnating a concubine of Turkish sultan Abdul Hamid in Istanbul and murdering a eunuch in the process. He may have finagled sponsorship from the Greek War Ministry for agitating in favor of Greek independence in Turkish territories, then spent the money on travel, wine, women, and casinos. He may have assassinated a Prussian official in Paris, fixing it so that a wine merchant from Herzegovina got the blame, freeing a good-looking and well-off widow to marry into the unbeheaded remnant of the French aristocracy. By accident or mischievous design, Emmett may have exposed a plan by European spymaster Sidney Reilly to steal French naval defense plans from an office in Marseilles, nearly getting Reilly killed in the process. There was also evidence that Emmett supplied Serbian nationalists with guns, possibly including the one that may have started the First World War when the Austrian archduke Franz Ferdinand and his archduchess ventured unwisely to Sarajevo and got shot on St Vitus’ Day 1914.
Emmett Dorn wrote a book which survived as part manuscript and part typescript, pompously titled An Emerging History of the Balkan States at the Start of the Twentieth Century. Mary thought a more accurate title would have been Foreign Women I Liaised With, and Their Relatives who Wanted to Dismember Me Until I Shot Their Faces Off. Mary thought it began promisingly, with the words The Balkan peninsula is named after the Turkish word for honey, which is bal, and the Turkish word for blood, which is kan, but how I figure it is the way its people seem intent on destroying one another and the civilised world, it should have been called Kankan. Unable to resist a tale worth telling, the book revealed that Emmett soon eschewed the politics and concentrated on the can-can in music halls, the chasing of women, and in turn the chasing of Emmett by various husbands, fathers, brothers and enraged villagers. The book finished with a pessimistic note to the effect that a guy couldn’t do anything anymore without the entire world getting on his back about it. In service to the privileged position of being Emmett’s book’s only reader, Mary kidded herself that she believed a single word of it.
Despite his qualifications, nobody saw him as fit to head the Dorn family. He was too arrogant for diplomacy and did not see the need to explain himself to anybody. For a man with such a lot of explaining to do, this was a genuine flaw.
Emmett’s gift for improvisation deserted him when he followed another man not seen fit for anything. By the time Emmett ran into the Turkish general Enver Pasha, Enver was wanted by European powers for the genocide of Armenians in Asia Minor. His own people also wanted to talk sternly and excitedly to him about his careless loss of the entire Ottoman Empire. The last anybody heard of Emmett Dorn was that he accompanied Enver and his ragtag army in a suicidal assault on a Soviet force in Bukhara, Central Asia. Everybody assumed Emmett’s luck ran out right then along with Enver’s though there were rumors, even when Mary’s dad was young, that he had lived on somehow, some place, keeping a low profile. The idea of Emmett Dorn keeping a low anything made Mary laugh, though a part of her wished he had survived and, his face as old as time, walked up to the house and pulled on the bell to ask for a glass of something in exchange for a tall tale. Mary would have welcomed him in though she would have kept her Makarov pistol close, and made sure she saw him off the premises before it got dark.
This short excerpt was published under the same title in Commuter Lit magazine, November 2020.
Emmett Dorn wrote a book which survived as part manuscript and part typescript, pompously titled An Emerging History of the Balkan States at the Start of the Twentieth Century. Mary thought a more accurate title would have been Foreign Women I Liaised With, and Their Relatives who Wanted to Dismember Me Until I Shot Their Faces Off. Mary thought it began promisingly, with the words The Balkan peninsula is named after the Turkish word for honey, which is bal, and the Turkish word for blood, which is kan, but how I figure it is the way its people seem intent on destroying one another and the civilised world, it should have been called Kankan. Unable to resist a tale worth telling, the book revealed that Emmett soon eschewed the politics and concentrated on the can-can in music halls, the chasing of women, and in turn the chasing of Emmett by various husbands, fathers, brothers and enraged villagers. The book finished with a pessimistic note to the effect that a guy couldn’t do anything anymore without the entire world getting on his back about it. In service to the privileged position of being Emmett’s book’s only reader, Mary kidded herself that she believed a single word of it.
Despite his qualifications, nobody saw him as fit to head the Dorn family. He was too arrogant for diplomacy and did not see the need to explain himself to anybody. For a man with such a lot of explaining to do, this was a genuine flaw.
Emmett’s gift for improvisation deserted him when he followed another man not seen fit for anything. By the time Emmett ran into the Turkish general Enver Pasha, Enver was wanted by European powers for the genocide of Armenians in Asia Minor. His own people also wanted to talk sternly and excitedly to him about his careless loss of the entire Ottoman Empire. The last anybody heard of Emmett Dorn was that he accompanied Enver and his ragtag army in a suicidal assault on a Soviet force in Bukhara, Central Asia. Everybody assumed Emmett’s luck ran out right then along with Enver’s though there were rumors, even when Mary’s dad was young, that he had lived on somehow, some place, keeping a low profile. The idea of Emmett Dorn keeping a low anything made Mary laugh, though a part of her wished he had survived and, his face as old as time, walked up to the house and pulled on the bell to ask for a glass of something in exchange for a tall tale. Mary would have welcomed him in though she would have kept her Makarov pistol close, and made sure she saw him off the premises before it got dark.
This short excerpt was published under the same title in Commuter Lit magazine, November 2020.