Excerpt from Jack of Spades by Joyce Carol Oates, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

(Was this a condescending remark from a literary legend, tantamount to brushing away an annoying fly, or just a goodnatured rejoinder from a fellow writer? As Andrew J. Rush is himself a good-natured individual, I chose to believe the latter.)

As a thank-you, I sent several signed paperback copies of my best-known novels to Stephen King, at his home address in Bangor, Maine. Inscribed on the title page of the most recent was the jest—

Not a stalker, Steve—
Just a fellow-writer!
With much admiration—

ANDREW J. RUSH

"Andy"
Mill Brook House
Harbourton, New Jersey

Of course I did not expect to receive a reply from such a busy person, and indeed I never did.

The parallels between Stephen King and Andrew J. Rush! Though I am sure they are only coincidental.

Not unlike Stephen King, who is said to have speculated that his extraordinary career might have been an accident of some kind, I have sometimes harbored doubts about my talent as a writer; I have felt guilt, that more talented individuals have had less luck than I've had, and might be justified in resenting me. About my devotion to my craft, my zeal and willingness to work, I have fewer doubts, for the simple truth is that I love to write, and am restless when I am not able to work at my desk at least ten hours a day. But sometimes when I wake, startled, in the night, for a moment not knowing where I am, or who is sleeping beside me, it seems to be utterly astonishing that I am a published writer at all—let alone the generally admired and well-to-do author of twenty-eight mystery-suspense novels.

These novels, published under my legal name, known to all— Andrew J. Rush.

There is another, curious similarity between Stephen King and me: as Stephen King experimented with a fictitious alter ego some years ago, namely Richard Bachman, so too I began to experiment with a fictitious alter ego in the late 1990s, when my career as Andrew J. Rush seemed to have stabilized, and did not require quite so much of my anxious energies as it had at the start. Thus, Jack of Spades was born, out of my restlessness with the success of Andrew J. Rush.

Initially, I'd thought that I might write one, possibly two novels as the cruder, more visceral, more frankly horrific "Jack of Spades"—but then, ideas for a third, a fourth, eventually a fifth pseudonym novel came to me, often at odd hours of the night. Waking, to discover that I am grinding my back teeth—or, rather, my back teeth are grinding of their own accord—and shortly thereafter, an idea for a new "Jack of Spades" novel comes to me, not unlike the way in which a message or an icon arrives on your computer screen out of nowhere.

While Andrew J. Rush has a Manhattan literary agent, a Manhattan publisher and editor, and a Hollywood agent, with whom he has long been associated, so too "Jack of Spades" has a (less distinguished) Manhattan literary agent, a (less distinguished) Manhattan publisher and editor, and a (virtually unknown) Hollywood agent, with whom he has been associated for a shorter period of time; but while "Andy Rush" is known to his literary associates, as to his neighbors and friends in Harbourton, New Jersey, no one has ever met "Jack of Spades" whose noir thrillers are transmitted electronically and whose contracts are negotiated in a similar impersonal fashion. Dust jacket photos of Andrew J. Rush show an affably smiling, crinkly-eyed man with a receding hairline against a background of book-crammed bookshelves, who more resembles a high school teacher than a bestselling mystery writer; no photos of "Jack of Spades" exist at all, it seems, and where you would expect to see an author photograph on the back cover of his books, there is startling (black) blankness.

Excerpted from Jack of Spades by Joyce Carol Oates. Copyright © 2015 by Joyce Carol Oates. Excerpted by permission of Mysterious Press. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.