Need Your Help with the New Book Title

Toothless

So I had started my liquid diet on Friday morning, and kept it up throughout the weekend, finally caving to my wife’s demands that I eat ‘something.’ I’d been consuming at least as many calories in liquid form as I would if I’d been eating solids. Protein drinks, soy milk, rice milk, coffee, broth, veggie purees, juices, not to mention olive oil, red wine vinegar and apple cider vinegar… and a little beer. I was feeling great… but she wanted us all to go out and ‘eat,’ and it’s weird ordering a smoothie when everyone else is having salmon or pasta.
In any case, I enjoyed the three days of eating nothing and giving my system a chance to mellow. I’ll certainly do it again, maybe once a month or so. As proof that I was consuming enough, I weighed myself before and after… I did lose a pound, but that could fall within the normal daily range of gaining and losing. I don’t count it.
In other news, and more pertinent to this blog–I finished the first draft of my first Young Adult novel, “The Seven Useless Abilities of Hector.” This is the working title, but I’ll probably keep it. So who’s Hector, you may be dying to know? Soon I’ll be posting an excerpt from the first chapter, which will explain all about him…
In the meantime, have changed the title of “The Crimson Web of War” to–”Veteran of Screaming Vengeance.” Yes, there’s an homage in there to the Judas Priest album… In the book, Operation Screaming Vengeance is the continuation of Operation Enduring Freedom…
Here’s the latest pitch:
Over the next generation, the disparate factions of the global jihadist movement unify. Seattle’s Space Needle is brought down in a commonplace, high profile attack—another day in an impoverished America at War.
After a brief hiatus to lick their wounds, the U.S. Armed Forces have massively re-engaged in the Near East under Operation Screaming Vengeance…this time featuring road-capable stealth aircraft and a fledgling high-tech branch—the Cyber Corps. This is the backdrop of “Veteran of Screaming Vengeance,” a distinctive 81,000-word cross-genre novel of black humor.
Sergeant Preston Redmark plays the idiosyncratic protagonist struggling to reveal the conspiracy behind his paralyzing disablement. A survivor of enigmatic accidents and a failed suicide bombing in Afghanistan, Redmark battles skewed perceptions from PTSD and a good deal of substance abuse. His jaded life is plagued with police harassment and pop-ins from extremist cult members, while his fevered brain worries over Wendy, his sultry ex who may’ve played a part in the attempts on his life, and Jeremy, his vanished confidante. Purposefully overdosing on his memory recovery prescription, Redmark embarks on a solipsistic journey through his haunted past and encounters an unexpected enemy skulking there–Fast Eddie, a Shakespeare-obsessed alter ego hell-bent on shoving Preston off a mental cliff into an ocean of nightmares and murderous thoughts.
Melding elements of SF and literary prose in homage to the insightful style of Philip K. Dick, my goal’s been to create a book with broad appeal, something unique and thought-provoking. Ripe with veiled (and obvious) modern-life critiques and subtle religious and cultural contrasts, the causal messages contained within the prose undercut the cavalier tone of the existentialist narrator; the text strives to be more than it seems.
Cheers for now,
Mc
www.catesbury.com