Randomville: Little Stalker

An independent and sarcastic novelist named Rebekah Kettle has a problem with men. More specifically, she has trouble holding a meaningful relationship with someone she actually likes. She has family issues as well, both past and present, which haunt her life. Her mind races a mile a minute in an amusing circle of thoughts with off topic questions to herself and she escapes confrontation with her life by fictionalizing and adding humor to her surroundings to make situations more comfortable. Rebekah likes to compare her life to that of Laura Ingalls Wilder from Little House on the Prairie, a television show that she avidly watches. Little Stalker is a hilarious romp through the mind of a thirty-something New York author's train of thought. Jennifer Belle, best selling author of Going Down and High Maintenance, has crafted a witty and laugh out loud third novel.

Rebekah's father happens to be a physician who, while completely disorganized, is thorough in his examinations. He can diagnose almost anything in just a few seconds, but he can't figure out how to answer the phone properly when his assistant unexpectedly quits working for him. He remembers the past differently than Rebekah does and brushes the misconceptions off as being a memory from his childhood, which makes Rebekah think that he's going senile. One day, her caretaker abandons an elderly woman named Mrs. Williams in Rebekah’s father’s office. Rebekah decides to walk the elderly, wheelchair-ridden woman back to her apartment, an action that leads to a deeply understanding friendship. Yet, Rebekah has ulterior motives in continuing to take care of Mrs. Williams when she learns that her favorite director, Arthur Weeman lives across the street and the view from Mrs. Williams’s apartment stares directly into his kitchen. Arthur Weeman is a director who Rebekah has obsessed with since childhood. She has seen all of his films on opening day ever since she was a young girl, and to Rebekah's surprise, his career is slowly dwindling from the limelight. Rebekah decides to write letters to Arthur as if she were a thirteen-year-old girl, in an attempt to let the director know her appreciation for his many works. She weaves bits of her past into her correspondence to Arthur Weeman in an almost therapeutic way. Her roundabout way of contacting Arthur Weeman leads her to watch her idol change before her eyes in ways that she never thought could happen. As she sees the personality shift in her favorite director, she herself is morphing due to a relationship that is actually working out for a change.

A dark family secret slowly reveals itself to Rebekah. Her pride swells and she realizes that she cannot hide herself in her fictional world anymore. Her relationships are jeopardized and her life as she knows it has been altered. She is torn with staying faithful to her new lover Isaac, who happens to be paparazzi for a local paper working under a woman named Ivy, whom she despises. Ivy is writing a new book and has pinned Rebekah into giving a blurb for the novel she has just finished. Rebekah is torn between compromising her new relationship with Isaac and selling out her favorite filmmaker. Little Stalker is filled with brilliant twists and turns all the way to the ironic end of the book.