New Publication: Blister City, Ride Until Dawn

 

        I’m proud to announce that I’m branching out into fiction. Here is the blurb of my new book, releasing September 19^th:

Ride through a city where the only stars are neon, and survival is the only dream left.

In the brutal sprawl of Blister City, Kid is a motorcycle thief posing as a courier, carving narrow escapes between glowing billboards and gang-ruled streets. Fast, skilled, and invisible, he survives by never getting attached. Until a stolen glimpse of greenery cracks his armor.

When he's hired to escort a pregnant girl to a high-security hospital, it seems like a rare honest payday. Until she looks up at him with pleading eyes full of something this city no longer has a name for. Then she runs.

Now, with the city closing in and choices shrinking fast, Kid must decide if he's just another gear in the machine or something more. Maybe even someone who could save her.

Gritty, fast-paced, and quietly powerful, Blister City: Ride Until Dawn is a cyberpunk novella about burnout, pain, and the fragile spark of hope when all the lights go out.

        The genesis for the story came from the news. A couple of future parents insisted that their surrogate abort their baby. I thought that was rather dystopic, so the story of a girl who runs and the rider that helps them was born.

        I needed a strong motivation for the driver. So, I remember one of those slide shows that passes as news stories. It showed a single tree, surrounded by about 4x4 feet of grass, which was in turn surrounded by a fence. I thought about what it would mean to a person to live a despondent life and suddenly see a garden. That was the “inciting event” for the main character. I couldn’t find the picture but this link is close enough.

        I laid the groundwork for his temperament by looking at another dystopic picture, the concept of “cage apartments.” These are in places like Hong Kong where housing is so expensive people rent cages, stacked on top of one another and barely bigger than a dog kennel.

        On the way back from seeing that green, the main character has a moment like that in Tale of Two Cities. In book 2, chapter 5, Syndey Carton, feeling sad and weighed down with unfulfilled promise, looks out over the city and imagines a better life. It was so beautiful that every time I read it I put the book down and weep. So my character has a similar moment that establishes the effect of that grass and primes him to help.

Waste forces within him, and a desert all around, this man stood still on his way across a silent terrace, and saw for a moment, lying in the wilderness before him, a mirage of honorable ambition, self-denial, and perseverance. In the fair city of this vision, there were airy galleries from which the loves and graces looked upon him, gardens in which the fruits of life hung ripening, waters of Hope that sparkled in his sight. A moment, and it was gone. Climbing to a high chamber in a well of houses, he threw himself down in his clothes on a neglected bed, and its pillow was wet with wasted tears.

        Finally, I don’t mess around with fluff or waste your time. I thought about making the change more gradual. Like the Mandalorian, our main character drops off his cargo, agonizes, and eventually decides to steal the child.  But if everyone knows that will happen anyway, why wait? I’ve already showed the Kid’s is primed to help, so I make it happen. You'll find this book gritty and fast paced. 

        The final ingredient was the movie Apocalypto. Fundamentally, it’s a chase movie. I don’t spend much time on side characters or superfluous fluff. I get the main characters running and I keep the chase going. I don’t let up. But I still find moments of character development. I’ll admit at one point I wrote them into a corner, both literally as a writer, and figuratively for the characters. But I thought it through and found an excellent way for them to get themselves out of it.

        I think the story is great, both at that moment and overall. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoy writing it. It’s extremely difficult for books to gain attention. I hope you’ll take a moment and at least share the link to this article or go to the book’s landing page and share it. It will help me a great deal.

        One final note: I’m considering a push to strengthen my online presence. So, you might see more posts here, covering material that you’ve probably read already. I’ve got 15 years of blogging experience, so I think it’s time to draw upon that and use better strategies to highlight my writing. Be on the lookout for that material starting later this week or next.

        Thanks for reading!