The Patron Saint of Unattractive People
My novel, The Patron Saint of Unattractive People (published by Boxfire Press), is the story of a thirty-seven-year-old cyclops woman who is a barista at her family’s coffee shop and wears a sunglasses shade to conceal the single eye in the middle of her forehead. The coffee shop houses a relic, a fragment from the staff of Drogo, an eleventh-century Flemish saint and patron of coffee house keepers and unattractive people.
When the shop is threatened with closure and patrons are allowed to touch the relic for a fee, Drogo’s staff is credited with performing several healings. The cyclops woman’s parents suggest that she take off her shade, reveal her single eye, and continue the publicity. Terrified of exposure she leaves home to search for other cyclops people, yet worries she’ll only find the crotchety old men of Greek myth.
But Homer never imagined this kind of odyssey.
Click here to go to my blog for book updates and deleted scenes…
You can also read an interview with my cyclops protagonist on the Write In the Thick of Things blog. Thanks to Mark Todd and Kym Johnson Todd for being willing to chat with her when she wasn’t in a very good mood…
Artwork by Nathan Kubes