McLarals Releases THE SOUL DICK

Got Weltschmerz? Author Em. L. Smith says it is hitting the country hard and her new book tackles the pandemic head on.

"If you're disillusioned with every single institution in America except the military," Smith says, "you might have Weltschmerz.

"Weltschmerz," according to Smith, "basically, is the depression we feel when bamboozlers, fanatics, manipulators, trolls, bigots, demagogues, fear-mongers, liars and prigs threaten to take over the world, and there's nothing, we think, we can do about it." So she wrote a book.

Set in Seattle, Washington, this humorous probe into serious angst introduces Private Investigator Mason Burr. A mysterious, unorthodox figure, Burr claims he can debug personalities in twenty-four hours-anxiety, frustration, mid-life crises.

And then he meets Jerry Zobec, the most challenging client of his career. Jerry has had it, with politics, with religion, with healthcare, with cable companies, with any decent future in a world crazier than he is. His anxiety, unfortunately, is ruining his relationship with Amy, who wants to understand but doesn't know how to deal with it.

With his life in a tailspin, Jerry has one option left, a guy with a parachute who calls himself, The Soul Dick.

With such a serious subject, why did Smith choose a humorous fiction format? "We live in a time when trust has collapsed in almost every institution in the country. There is systemic fraud almost everywhere we look. The best way to hang it all out to dry is with humor. Otherwise, we can't handle the overload. We have only to look at what's happening in politics today to know America is mad as hell and it has all come home to roost. We are upset about so many things, we can't keep track of them all. Like the frog in cold water, we have finally realized we're up to our eyebrows in boiling Weltschmerz."

Smith has been writing humor "for decades" but this is her first novel. "An American Romance" is the first in a planned "Soul Dick" series, scheduled for release April 7. Paperback and ebook editions will be available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

Smith can be reached through The Soul Dick dot com website, or McLarals dot com.

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