A Hallow Heart

ISBN 1-57343-071-4 (Paperback)
ISBN 1-57343-072-2 (Ebook)

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On a foggy December night Bill Zapalich and Eileen O’Hare are spirited to a trendy New Age resort in California’s Napa Valley. They soon find themselves up to their necks in a hot spring of incredible water, the clear spring relaxing their bodies while filling Bill’s mind with visions of a beautiful woman in Victorian dress—a spirit who wades into the water and literally takes him apart.

The water and the woman open Bill’s eyes to a world filled with suffering and give him the power to change it. But the power comes with a fearful price. The spring has made Zapalich into a powerful shaman and he’s thrown down a rabbit hole of myth, visions, and hallucinations.

The spring and the young Victorian have opened his eyes. Now, to save himself and his love for Eileen, Bill Zapalich has to finally open his heart.

What Readers Are Saying

“A Hallow Heart is about the transformation of an average guy into a person with supernatural powers; and how they exact a forbidding price when used. It was brilliant how this metamorphosis occurs within the context of a holiday weekend spent at a clothing-optional Napa Valley spa. Filled with eroticism and menace, earthy humor and rarefied musings, A Hallow Heart is told by a voice blessed with expansive intelligence and compassion.”Dan Ursini, first resident playwright for Steppenwolf Theater

“A difficult, painful birth of a new hero—and a love that surpasses all. What a journey! Don’t miss!” Kaye Wolf, author of Up, Please!

John Strysik

John Strysik was born in Joliet, Illinois and studied filmmaking at Columbia College in Chicago where he had the honor of being the first recipient of the William Friedkin Film Scholarship. After college he moved to Los Angeles and was hired as a staff director for George Romero's internationally acclaimed television series Tales From the Darkside. Strysik directed four seasons of Darkside, then returned to Chicago to co-write and direct his first feature, Uneasy Silence, a tragic love story set in the hard world of the homeless.

Strysik returned to Los Angeles to direct Laurel Entertainment's production of Monsters, a nationally syndicated anthology series, and Land of the Lost, an action/adventure series produced by Krofft Pictures for ABC Television. He also wrote and directed The Spirit Gallery, a supernatural thriller inspired by The Picture of Dorian Gray.

As a writer John Strysik has penned teleplays for Tales From the Darkside, Cyberkidz, Nightsearch and Dark Romances. He has adapted and directed award winning short films based on stories by Franz Kafka and H.P. Lovecraft and in 2002 Stuart Gordon and Full Moon Entertainment produced his original screenplay Deathbed.

He has written articles and short stories for Amazing Stories, Creative Screenwriting, Film Threat, Lovecraft Studies, PLOT and Mindmares, and has co-written a guide to the film adaptations of H.P. Lovecraft called The Lurker in the Lobby, currently in its second edition. A Hallow Heart is his first novel.