Kill Me Now: A Novel

(Hardback)

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One of the Most Anticipated Small Press Books of 2018 (Big Other) "Timmy Reed writes like a whacked-out angel." -Amber Sparks, author of The Unfinished World and May We Shed These Human Bodies Miles Lover is an imaginative but insecure adolescent skateboarder with an unfortunate nickname, about to face his first semester of high school in the fall. In Kill Me Now, Miles exists in a liminal space-between junior high and high school, and between three houses- his mother's, his father's, and the now vacant house his family used to call home in a leafy, green neighborhood of north Baltimore. Miles struggles against his parents, his younger identical twin sisters, his probation officer, his old friends, his summer reading list, and his personal essay assignment (having to keep a journal). More than anything, though, he wrestles with himself and the fears that come with growing up. It's not until Miles begins a mutually beneficial friendship with a new elderly neighbor-whom his sisters spy on and suspect of murder-that he begins to find some understanding of lives different than his own, of the plain acceptance of true friends, and, maybe, just a little of himself in time to start a whole new year. When you're green, you grow, he learns. But when you're ripe, you rot. With tenderness and tenacity, Timmy Reed's prose-written in a confessional tone via Miles's journal-captures the anguish and grit of adolescence, and the potential of growing up.

Reviews

Praise for Kill Me Now

One of the Most Anticipated Small Press Books of 2018 (Big Other)

Reed convincingly writes a threedimensional teenager whose selfconsciousness, emotions, and hormones threaten to crush him. . . . A comingofage story capturing male adolescence in all its disgusting, irrational, and messy glory. Kirkus Reviews

What distinguishes the book is Miles voice: introspective, selfaware, wry, and honest . . . The result is a delightful comingofage story. Booklist

Reed captures all the hilarious grossness of being a teenage boy in this solid comingofage story. Publishers Weekly

What's most impressive about Reed's work is his attention to detail. From his elaborate descriptions of Baltimore neighborhoods to evocative scenes of Miles smoking weed with his eccentric old neighbor (whom his sisters suspect is a serial killer), Reed meticulously takes readers on a summerlong journey that is as viscerally awkward as our own teenage years. Baltimore Magazine

Timmy Reeds Kill Me Now captures the feeling of a teenage summer more thoroughly and successfully than many other novels in its genre . . . Reeds crowning achievement in Kill Me Now may be his ability to offer a threedimensional picture of Miless world. . . even though Miles isnt real and the journal is a novel, it still feels like youve come to know somebody a little better by the time you finish reading it. The Michigan Daily

Through evocative imagery, strong characterizations, and moments of true tenderness, Reed pieces together a portrait of Miles that resonates with the experience of adolescence. Atticus Review

Kill Me Now could be the story of Huckleberry Finn's trip to Hell...or no, just the seamier sides of Baltimorenot so much the mean streets of The Wire as the postapocalyptic working class neighborhoods of Matt Porterfield's Putty Hill. Miles Lover, a.k.a. Retard, is as crusty a kid as they come, with a taste for strains of trouble that would stagger an adult. But as much as he thinks of himself as a moron, his perceptions of the weird world he lives in are subtly and precisely nuanced, and his story, inside its scaly carapace, has a surprisingly tender heart.Madison Smartt Bell, author of Behind the Moon

Timmy Reed is one of the best. In Kill Me Now, he has created one of the great teenage narrators of our time. Like a modern version of Updikes Sammy, Miles Lover is part philosopher, part screw up, and part skateboarding prince of Baltimore. Hes wild and buzzing and will say almost anything. Including the truth. Scott McClanahan, author of The Sarah Book, Hill William, and Crapalachia

There was Mark Twains Huckleberry Finn, then J. D. Salingers Holden Caulfield, and now there is Timmy Reeds Miles Lover, the irrepressible narrator of Kill Me Now, which is itself a funny, compassionate, and twisted take on the comingofage novel.Michael Kimball, author of Us, Big Ray, and Dear Everybody

Kill Me Now is the answer to all the literary fiction that ever bored you . . . a guide book on how to cheat death, smoke bowls, tre flip in the pouring rain. Tough, honest, beautiful in only the way the unashamed ever are. Kill Me Now is an M80 in an open palm, fuse lit, world holding its breath. Bud Smith, author of Work and F 250

Timmy Reed writes like a whackedout angel. Miles Lover is the perfect everykid, overlooked and underestimated and so sharply observant it makes you wince a little. I loved this book. Amber Sparks, Author of The Unfinished World and May We Shed These Human Bodies

If George Saunders and Russell Edson had a baby, he'd probably grow up to write like Timmy Reed. Jessica Anya Blau, author of Drinking Closer to Home

Author Bio

Timmy Reed is a writer, teacher, and native of Baltimore, Maryland. He received his MFA from University of Baltimore. Reed is the author of the books IRL, Miraculous Fauna, and The Ghosts That Surrounded Them, and Kill Me Now. His short fiction has been featured in the Wigleaf Top 50 on multiple occasions and has appeared in Necessary Fiction and the Atticus Review among other publications. In 2015, he won the Baker Artist Awards Semmes G. Walsh Award. He teaches English at Stevenson University and Community College of Baltimore County and English as a Second Language at Morgan State University.