M. F. JONES
Writer
Works in Progress
These books are complete and will be published in the next two years. For more information, please be in touch via the Contacts page.
UNHOLY SPIRIT, a feminist horror novel for the #MeToo era, is about two women fighting demonic possession: Bernadette O'Quinn, 20, haunting the mansion where her married lover hid her dead body in 1926; and, in 1968, Sister Gisela (Gigi) Krauss, 33, a nun in the convent school that now occupies the mansion. Gigi fears that her own rage against men, the result of a traumatic sexual assault in her teens, has roused the vengeful demon inhabiting Bernadette's spirit, causing the deaths of three male visitors to the school. When Father Trovato, an elderly Italian exorcist, is brought in to rid the convent of its diabolical presence, Gigi assists him in the ritual, which becomes a battle to save not only Bernadette’s soul but Gigi’s as well, as the demon tries to lure her into its power.
INVENTED LIVES, a novel, is the story of an unbalanced friendship that tips into disaster. Reggie Stallworth, 27, has come home to western Massachusetts to recover after losing her mother, lover and job. She meets the dazzling Clarissa Dawson, 35, at an animal shelter, where Clarissa matches Reggie up with Rufus, a shy Lab mix who becomes her canine soulmate. Clarissa urges Reggie to get out of herself, which leads her to a new love with Aidan Lynch, an Irishman with a lilting voice and a way with dogs. But gradually the women’s relationship becomes strained by Clarissa’s jealousy of Aidan and by Reggie’s realization that Clarissa lies compulsively. The crisis comes when Reggie discovers Clarissa’s most shocking deception and confronts her with it. Clarissa strikes back: first she claims to have had sex with Aidan, mentioning something she could only know if she'd seen him naked. Then she disappears, taking Rufus with her.
ASK THE ANIMALS: How Shelter Dogs Helped Me Make Peace with Life's Biggest Questions is a memoir of my transformative experience volunteering in an overstressed, underfunded urban animal shelter. The title comes from the verse in the Book of Job that begins: "Ask the animals, and they will teach you." The memoir’s major theme is how the shelter dogs helped me find my purpose in life, and how they gave me a model for becoming a better human being: in the way they live in the present, without fretting about the future or regretting the past; in their readiness to love, regardless of achievements, worldly position, attractiveness; in their ever-new enthusiasm for the basic gifts of life; and in their ability, even after cruelty and abuse, to forgive and trust again.