Join Rudy Yuly and Empire Way at Machine House, Sept. 21, 2024

 

Come have a listen at the family-friendly Machine House Brewery in Hillman City.

 Adults, kids and pets welcome! Hope to see you there!

 

Sept. 21, 7-9 PM

No cover, tips welcome

Machine House Brewery

5718 Rainier Ave S Seattle

Book Reviews by Elizabeth A. White Reviews Rudy Yuly's Sparkle

Sparkle by Rudy Yuly

  Elizabeth A. White  

 

 

Feeling bad about lousy business was equivalent to wishing someone would get killed. The job was ghoulish enough as it was. – Joe Jones Death is in the news every day, and if people stop to give it a second thought they most likely think of the void left in the lives of the living, the emotional mess it creates when someone dies or is killed. Very few people, however, think about the nuts and bolts of death–the literal mess it makes.
Brothers Joe and Eddie Jones have not only thought about it, they’ve made it their business. Literally. Sparkle Cleaners, their Seattle-based janitorial service, specializes in crime scene cleanups. Theirs is a unique tag team, with Joe acting as the face of the business and Eddie the actual cleanup man. And anyone who’s ever used Sparkle Cleaners will tell you, no one can clean a crime scene like Eddie.
He’s so good, Sparkle Cleaners gets the inside line on jobs from members of the Seattle PD, including Detectives Louis and Bjorgesen. When they call Joe to schedule the cleanup of a triple murder–a husband, wife, and their six-year-old daughter–they couldn’t possibly have foreseen the chain of events that would unfold…or that it would get even more complicated when Sparkle was assigned to the cleanup of a seemingly unrelated massacre of six people at a club in Chinatown.
But what no one knows, not even Joe, is that Eddie’s gift goes far beyond being able to erase the physical signs of death. Due to a trauma the two suffered when they were young children, Eddie has retreated into his own little world, one which presents to everyone else as severe autism. But while people think Eddie is virtually uncommunicative, what they don’t realize is that he communicates with the dead. At every cleanup scene he encounters the spirit/ghost of the person who died, and only by his erasing the physical signs of their death are they able to move on to the next world.
Things get weird, even for Eddie, when at the scene of the triple homicide the young girl refuses to leave even after Eddie’s finished cleaning. Not only does she refuse to leave, she reveals to Eddie a piece of evidence the police missed, and makes him promise to “make the catch.” Eddie tries to ignore the situation, but when it happens again at the Chinatown club he knows he must act, and in doing so is forced to confront the very trauma from his past which bestowed his gift upon him.
Rudy Yuly has created something very special in Sparkle, a book which works on several different levels. First and foremost, this story is about relationships: brother to brother, partner to partner, man to woman, living to dead. It’s about what ties people to one another–be it love or loyalty or obligation–and what happens when events occur which stress those ties that bind. Joe wants to be a good brother, knows Eddie needs him, but still can’t help but resent him a little for putting Joe in a situation where he can’t lead a normal life because of Eddie’s condition. And though to the outside world it’s Joe who’s taking care of Eddie, endearingly, from Eddie’s perspective it’s very much the opposite:

It was tough on Eddie. He had to take care of Joe all the time, walking him through rituals he should be totally comfortable with. Joe couldn’t seem to get it, always trying to change stuff that needed to stay the same, like last night. When it really was time for something to change–like today–Joe would hang on to it with all his might.

Yuly exquisitely captures the frustration and awkwardness the brothers feel trying to deal with one another, as well as that which they both encounter while interacting with the women in their lives: Joe with a waitress at his favorite bar whom he’s desperately attracted to, Eddie with the worker at the local zoo who takes him on a tour every Saturday as part of his rigid routine. Having dealt mostly with only each other for decades, their social skills–though for very different reasons–are highly suspect, and painfully realistically portrayed by Yuly.
The book also unfurls two different mysteries over the course of the story, that of who killed the victims at the two cleanup sites, as well as what exactly happened to Joe and Eddie when they were kids that caused Eddie to retreat into his private world. Yuly doles out clues to the killer’s identity and motives, and flashbacks to that fateful day in the boys’ lives, at just the right pace, slowly and confidently weaving all the treads together to create a complete tapestry. Yuly even manages to throw in a little curve at the end, one which only adds to the book’s overall reflection on relationships and the impact death can have on the living.
Released independently last year, Sparkle may well have slipped past under your radar, but this offbeat, lovingly written work is one I highly recommend you pick up. I may have missed it in 2012, but Sparkle has declared itself ready to fight for a spot on my Top 10 of 2013 list, that’s for sure.
Sparkle is available at Amazon and Lulu.

Rudy Yuly is a writer, journalist and editor with over 20 years experience. He has authored fiction and nonfiction books including The World Business Desk Reference, published by Times Mirror/Irwin Professional, and Sparkle, a novel represented by AEI. He has worked as a ghostwriter, researcher and editor on a wide range of fiction and nonfiction projects including true crime author Gregg Olsen’s breakout 2003 New York Times bestseller Abandoned Prayers, and contributed to recent offerings by nonfiction author Michelle Gentille and novelist Joseph Cervasio. You can learn more about Rudy and his work by visiting his website.

Rudy Yuly's Sparkle is named one of the top five books of 2012 by Crime Fiction Lover!

// Features

DavidPrestidge: Top five books of 2012

By DavidPrestidge ⋅ December 5, 2012

It’s been a year when self-publishing and the rise of the digital book have made a huge impact on the range of crime fiction available to reviewers and the reading public. Anyone who has the stamina and bloody-mindedness to plan, plot and complete a book can now see it on screen, if not feel the pages with their fingertips. One of my choices came out as digitally self-published novel, but the top four made it into print, which suggests that, rightly or wrongly, the much-maligned traditional publishers don’t always get it wrong.

5 – Sparkle by Rudy Yuly
 
Joe Jones and his severely autistic brother Eddie – a pair echoing Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men – make up a firm who have the grisly task of cleaning up crime scenes. Joe’s whole life is based round keeping Eddie safe, while making a precarious living from his autistic brother’s bizarre and obsessive cleanliness. Joe is tired, permanently at his wit’s end, and his social life is a car-crash, but when Eddie discovers something at a murder scene which defies logical explanation and then becomes fixated by a gentle female zoo attendant, Joe’s tolerance is stretched to the limit. Sparkle‘s plot initially requires some suspension of disbelief, but as well as being a terrific whodunnit the book is an absorbingly written account of a condition which lies somewhere between an affliction and a gift. There is a real surprise at the end, which I certainly did not see coming.


Buy now on Amazon

Crime Fiction Lover 4 Star Review of Rudy Yuly's Sparkle

// eBook

Sparkle

By DavidPrestidge ⋅ 

Written by Rudy Yuly – In a luxurious house in the hills above Seattle, Assistant DA Silver, his wife and their six-year-old daughter Lucy are found brutally beaten to death. Detective George Louis and his partner Pinky Bjorgesen are assigned the case. Once the forensic team have done what they have to do, the house is turned over to the professional cleaners. Sparkle is a team of two brothers, Joe and Eddie Jones, who specialise in cleaning up the aftermath of violent death scenes. Joe is a misanthropic, chain-smoking baseball addict who runs the business, but it is Eddie who actually does the cleaning work. Eddie is deeply autistic and locked into his own strange world by childhood trauma. Joe is also a prisoner, but of a different kind. While he profits from Eddie’s uncanny ability to convert an abattoir of a murder scene back into a normal house, he is literally his brother’s keeper. No-one else can manage the repetitive rituals and piano-wire tensions of Eddie’s life.

While the hunt goes on for the killer of the Silver family, the brothers are called in again to clean up a seemingly unrelated multiple shooting in an illegal Chinese gambling house. In the Silver house, while Eddie went through his exhaustive and surreal cleaning ritual he was led to something tangible which may hold a clue to the killer’s identity. Once again, in the bloody aftermath of the Chinese shooting, he is shown something that the police have missed.

Rudy Yuly is a screenwriter and there is a clear sense of the visual in his clear and direct writing. We know within a sentence or two exactly what people look like and how they move and talk. Eddie sees things with almost microscopic clarity. His vision gives us a vivid picture, in particular of Jolie Walker, the beautiful zoo attendant who takes him for a weekly walk around the pens and enclosures. This book does not do comfort, and I physically wriggled with embarrassment at the poignant exchanges between tongue-tied Joe and his wary girlfriend LaVonne.

The author does a brilliant job of letting us see, hear and smell Eddie’s world through his own senses. Sparkle is disturbing and edgy, and there is a great deal of compassion extended to those who have to deal with Eddie’s shortcomings and strange gifts. We are taken on a high-risk course. It is one thing to introduce a supernatural element into a story through the perceptions of one person as this can be explained away by mood, confusion or the power of suggestion. It is another thing altogether to have a piece of physical evidence pass from the spirit world, via the live intermediary, into the hands of those who are conducting a murder investigation.

This is such a difficult book to categorise. Yes, there is criminality and yes, there is detection. But the bedrock here is a description of misunderstanding, loss, and inadequacy. Perfectly decent people blunder about trying to make sense of the incomprehensible. Bit by bit what really damaged the lives of these brothers is revealed. The original killer is finally unmasked, but the story is less about that than it is about the terrifying and bewildering world of autism. My only caveat about the story is the supernatural element. Readers who find it troublesome will find the book less satisfying than someone who simple accepts it and lets themselves be carried along with the narrative.

What People Are Saying About AEI Client Rudy Yuly's Novel Sparkle

Sparkle Comments



PURCHASE NOW!

Check Out Rudy Yuly's New Book Sparkle Out from Hill Brace Publishers!

Sparkle by Rudy Yuly

“A kaleidoscope of a thriller that’s at once smart, funny, touching and relentlessly paced. Rudy Yuly’s debut novel Sparkle does what only a great thriller can do—it defies you to stop turning the pages.”

- Gregg Olsen
New York Times bestselling author of Victim Six
(www.greggolsen.com)

"Atchity Entertainment International (AEI) is proud to introduce you to Rudy Yuly, with his debut thriller Sparkle, simply one of the best books we've ever come across. It's reminiscent of Rain Man as well as of Of Mice and Men.

Eccentric, lonely brothers Eddie and Joe Jones's fragile world is built around Sparkle Cleaners, their Seattle janitorial service with a single purpose: crime scene cleanups. Joe despises the grisly jobs, but sticks it out for the sake of his damaged, nonverbal brother Eddie, who finds his only small measure of peace in his uncanny ability to clean up blood.

Not even Joe knows that in Eddie's inner world, he's not just wiping away gore. His real, hidden gift is sensing and freeing the trapped souls of victims of violence. When murder strikes much too close to home, the brothers' house-of-cards world explodes, uncovering dark secrets and spiraling into territory where failure threatens death—and success promises a better life than either dared imagine.

Sparkle is a mesmerizing page turner--funny, heart warming, insightful, with an impressive array of original characters for us to love. It's one of those books you don't want to end!"

— Ken Atchity, AEI
Los Angeles, CA

Represented by Atchity Entertainment International: www.aeionline.com.
To contact the author, visit www.rudyyuly.com.

http://www.hillbrace.com/

FINALLY MEETING CLIENT RUDY YULY PESCATORE NY

AEI CLIENT FAITH AND HER MOTHER JUDE WITH WRITERS LIFELINE EDITOR RUDY YULY IN SEATTLE!

AEI CLIENT FAITH CONTINUES TO INSPIRE !

Two-Legged Dog Faith Walks Upright, Gives Hope To Disabled Army Vets


By SUE MANNING, Associated Press

LOS ANGELES - For several years, Jude Stringfellow and her Lab-chow mix have toured the country with a simple message: Faith walks.

Born without front legs to a junkyard dog around Christmas 2002, Faith the puppy was rejected and abused by her mother. She was rescued by Reuben Stringfellow, now an Army E-4 specialist, who had been asked to bury other puppies in the litter.

"Can we fix her? Stringfellow, then 17, asked his mom. "No, but maybe we can help her," she said.

So Reuben turned Faith over to his mother, English professor Jude Stringfellow. At first the family had to carry Faith to keep her off her chest and chin. But with peanut butter and practice, Faith learned to walk on her two hind legs.

Today Faith is a brisk, upright walker. When she runs, every so often she adds a hop or skip to her step, but she stumbles less often than most humans. She takes vitamins and joint supplements, and vets have declared her very healthy, Stringfellow said.

Since her first step on March 22, 2003, Faith has done the talk show circuit, gone on tour with Ozzy Osbourne and been named an honorary Army sergeant. Jude Stringfellow has become a motivational speaker and written two books. Next year, the two are moving from Ardmore, Okla., to Chicago where they plan to write a third called "Faith Walks."

They get more than 200 letters and e-mails a day, run a Web site and make dozens of appearances every year, including stops at veterans' hospitals across the country to cheer injured soldiers.
Story continues below

That mission is special for Stringfellow, whose son left Iraq in September and is stationed at Fort Wainwright in Alaska. He is scheduled to get out of the Army and head home on Jan. 1.

For many, Faith brings a powerful message about overcoming adversity. "Faith has shown me that different is beautiful, that it is not the body you are in but the soul that you have," Jill Salomon of Montreal, Canada, wrote on Faith's Web site.

Stringfellow will never forget a woman from New York who happened to see Faith on a street corner. She was depressed and had lost both legs to diabetes.

"She was in her wheelchair and saw us. She was crying. She had seen Faith on television. She just held her and said she wished she had that kind of courage." Stringfellow said. "She told us: 'I was on my way to pick up the gun.' She handed the pawn ticket to a police officer and said she didn't need it anymore."

That sense of hope is especially important for Faith's visits to Army bases. Last weekend she headed to Washington state, where she met with as many as 5,000 soldiers at McChord Air Force Base and Fort Lewis. Some of the soldiers were headed to war, some were coming back.

"She just walks around barking and laughing and excited to see them all," Jude Stringfellow said. "There is a lot of crying, pointing and surprise. From those who have lost friends or limbs, there can be silence. Some will shake my hand and thank me, some will pat her on the head. There is a lot of quiet, heartfelt, really deep emotion."

Faith never fails to bring a smile to a soldier's face, said Patrick Mcghee, general manager at Fort Lewis.

"To see the children interact with Faith is simply priceless," he said.

But Faith's most emotional reunion -- with Reuben Stringfellow, who rescued her 7 years ago this Christmas -- will have to wait for January. He's already gotten Faith a birthday present: a peanut butter cookie with her name on it.