Project XX - Mickey J Corrigan

In 2012, a deranged grad student dressed as the Joker shot and killed dozens of movie goers at a Batman film opening in Colorado. Gun violence is so out of control in America that it has become a cruel joke.

Unlike most of Mickey Corrigan's novels, Project XX made itself known to her at that time, demanding to be written. Usually she researches, prepares, then writes. In this case, she wrote first, then did the research on gun violence, female violent crime, and school/mass shootings.

Males are almost always the perpetrators of mass shootings. But females are fully capable of shocking acts of violence and, in the US, military-style weapons are as easy to access as a new hairstyle.

Originally from Boston, Mickey J. Corrigan hides out in the lush ruins of South Florida to write pulp fiction, literary crime, and psychological thrillers. Her stories have been called "delightful pulp," "oh so compulsive," "dark and gritty," and "bizarre but believable." Songs of the Maniacs was published by Salt in 2014.

Charting Heller's derailing, beginning with her befriending Skitchen Sturter, AKA H8er, a panhandling girl in the Florida wetlands, Micky J Corrigan satirises the American obsession with violence and consumerism by upending familiar narratives about mass shootings and teenage female friendship. It is just as easy for these girls on the rampage to access military weapons as it is a new pair of Charlie skinny jeans. Project XX is a blackly comic tale with compelling central characters, and an enticing pulp tone.