Literary Las Vegas: Joyce Vought-Klopp Gilbert
Downtown Las Vegas resident Joyce Vought-Klopp Gilbert, who writes under the pen name C.J. Comstock, was inspired to write during the decades she spent in prison. The author wasn’t an inmate; she was a corrections officer in Pennsylvania, first at a women’s prison and then at Graterford Prison, the fourth-largest men’s prison in the country, where she worked as a training sergeant. One inmate inspired her to take up poetry, and a second encouraged her efforts in fiction.
Her first book, "Pack A Pretty Pistol," follows protagonist Casey Andrews behind bars where she makes friends in a fight to stay alive. Her second, "Crime Curves: Foxfire," is a part-James Bond, part-Charlie’s Angels secret agent adventure that sends three female agents, one actually a man in drag, on a quest to save a captured ally.
Now retired from corrections, Vought-Klopp Gilbert is focusing all her efforts on writing, her grandchildren and pursuing her bucket list with her husband, David.
Excerpt from "Crime Curves: Foxfire"
A shadow seemed to pass over the woman’s face, leaving behind a menacing hardness that transformed her beauty into sheer ugliness. Her almond-shaped eyes compressed into slits of piercing blackness.
"For the last time, Finley, where is Tyler?"
Those eyes were reaching for his very soul, penetrating like ebony daggers. He felt his fortitude dissipating. Damn, why can’t I be stronger?
Her finger stabbed at the cut over his eye. Pain shot through him and the oozing started a fresh path down over his eyelid.
"Where is he, Finley?"
"Please, I … I don’t know," he moaned and then closed his eyes, cursing his weakness and wishing the torture was over with.
"Let’s not play the martyr with me. Why do you think we chose you, Finley? We know you have no courage."
"Then you also know that I would have told you where Tyler was being kept … except I can’t tell you —- when I don’t know where he is."
