14 DAY TRIAL // Alaric Hunt entered a fictional crime novel competition and amazed the judges with his incredible work “Cuts Through Bone,” so realistic that the Private Eye Writers of America immediately wanted to contact him and congratulate him on his impressive work.
The literary guild promptly responded to the great novel and awarded Alaric the big prize of a $10,000 (€7,300) book advance.
When the judges called the number the writer left as a contact detail in order to tell him the good news, they were informed that the man in not available, because he is “in an institution...he is there indefinitely.” They learned that the writer was a convicted killer who wrote the book while behind bars, serving a life sentence.
The 44-year-old writer was sentenced, together with his brother, for the killing of Joyce Austin, a 23-year-old student who died in 1988 because of smoke inhalation. Alaric and his brother started the fire in order to distract people from the robbery they were doing in a nearby jewelry shop, according to Mirror.
The two brothers, now both incarcerated, started the fire with a can of petrol to shift attention from their felony but ended up killing a man in the process. Alaric was convicted when he was nineteen and doesn't have any chances of getting out of jail too soon.
In prison, Hunt started working in the library and discovered he had a big interest in literature, especially in the work of Ernest Hemingway. While working in the maximum security facility, he saw an advert about a crime novel contest and decided to give writing a chance.
He began writing his own novel called “Cuts Through Bone” during his breaks from prison duties, and it took him almost nine months to finish. The book is about a man wrongfully convicted of his girlfriend's murder and impressed readers with its fresh voice and character realism.
The action is set in New York City, where Hunt has never been, but learned about while watching television series like Law and Order. Even if some people argued that the killer is tried to profit from his crime and use it as a publicity stunt, the publisher was more than interested in making his book a bestseller.