April Fool’s and Viral Pranks Rule - my novel’s coming soon

I’ll be straight up with you this April Fool’s Day, I love a good prank.

I’m not saying that I dupe my co-workers or friends. That ceases being cute at a certain age and strays into jerk territory. I love viral pranks, the endless reel of YouTube slapstick featuring such classics as shackling the sleeping drunk, the shove into the pool, and the paintball gun ambush.

While enjoying all this hilarity I wonder, what is possessing these kids (and immature adults) to universally declare themselves assholes by starting in these prank videos? Would any decent employer hire them after this?

The thing is, it doesn’t matter. Not to them. Posting their pranks online is their validation. All the clicks, likes, retweets and comments fill the void that seeks acceptance. When I was a kid, I did stupid things to get attention in class because I didn't know how to socialize like a normal person. This was before everyone had an outlet to reach billions of eyeballs.

That leads me to my new book, which - and this is no joke - is coming out soon. Famous After Death will be released by Silver Leaf Books by June 1.

What happens when a viral prank goes too far? In Famous After Death, three Miami teenagers hang a blowup doll off an overpass hoping to film cars slamming into it. They didn’t think a police office would fall for their trap with disastrous results. The opportunity to post the video online is too tantalizing for them to pass up.

Famous After Death explores what motives the teenagers to seek viral fame with increasingly violent pranks. The difference between these teens and most online pranksters is they are clever enough to stay off camera and post anonymously.

You can see the Famous After Death page at Silver Leaf Books now. The cover isn’t quite finalized, but the image you see there is the one I’m going with, thanks to El Cesana.

I’m shifting into publicity mode, so stay tuned for some articles, events and, just maybe, another offering on YouTube. I’ll try not to hurt anyone.

Mute jumps off the page as artistic audio

Book trailers, ah yes, they have been done before. It would have been fun to see some actors try to play out a scene in Mute, but that’s not what I’m really offering to readers. You can’t download a Mute movie, so I’m not going to tease people with one. I wanted to make a video that showcased what is available: A dramatic novel. So I enlisted the help of some friends.

And now, here is the “artistic audio” presentation of Chapter 24 from Mute.

(If that didn't play for you, just see it on YouTube.)

This started when Celia Coulombe, who formerly worked at the Business Journal with me, told me how much she loved audio books and wanted to be a reader. So I sent her one of my favorite chapters and asked her to give it a shot. Celia did a tremendous job.

I realized that it would be hard for me to post the audio online by itself, but I could make it into a video. First, I enlisted the help of El Cesana, who took the cover photo for Mute. She told me I could select some photos from her gallery. What a treasure trove indeed.

I’ll have more to say about El Ces later, as this Australian photographer has an amazing story.

The presentation needed a depth of emotion that could only be captured by amazing artwork, and Hilda Vazquez certainly provided that. The Fort Lauderdale artist (and Business Journal graphic artist) let me use some images from her Facebook fan page.

I also used FreeDigitalPhotos.net to grab some stock photos, such as the fire, the gun and the binoculars. 

There you have it. Four creative souls collaborated to give everyone a sample of what Mute’s all about. If you want to read the rest of the story, you know where to go.

Lifting the curtain on my next novel - Famous After Death

I did it! I completed the first draft of my next novel, Famous After Death.

I still have Mute coming out in 2012 with Silver Leaf Books. I will take that baby through the editing process with my publisher and then we’ll announce the launch date. I haven’t been sitting on my hands all this time. I’ve been writing another intense story.

Famous After Death is a white knuckle thriller that takes murder viral. The storyline has been gathering inside my head for years as I imagined how the trouble I saw kids get into growing up would play out with this recent development of instant online videos. 

The theme can best be summed up by a 2010 column in the Miami Herald by Leonard Pitts. In describing bullying and prank videos posted on YouTube, he said: “There is always some video going around whose calculated effect is nothing more or less than humiliation on a global scale. Technology, it seems, has unleashed an ugliness in us.”  

In Famous After Death, three Miami-Dade teenagers take out their angst over their troubled family lives by setting up a roadside prank for an online video only to see a police officer drive to his death because of their trick. Chris Crawford, a high school dropout whose father ran off to start a modeling agency, and Kelso Stokes, an underachieving skater and son of a famous motocross rider, pressure Jorge Casanegra to post the video online anonymously. Given that his only friends are the horror movie action figures in his room, Jorge chooses to seek notoriety through murder videos to impress his new pals and attract a gothic girl he has a crush on. With an overwhelming number of hits on their video, the teens press on with more viral murders. But they aren’t doing it alone. Jorge solicits help from “Sir Black Market,” who runs a bootleg software website. Soon enough, Jorge’s mentor insists that they strike back at the police officers that are investigating them.

Clyde Deauville pursues online sexual predators with the vigor of his Born Again Christian faith as a “cyber cop” for the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. He helps Miami-Dade detective Olga “OC” Cohen track the viral killers after her ex-fiancé becomes their first victim. With each new murder, OC becomes more vengeful and self-destructive while Clyde grows increasingly frustrated that the online audience is reveling in the bloodshed. When the teens realize that Clyde and OC are closing in, things turn personal.

In the end, someone will be famous for the wrong reasons. 

This novel won’t see the light of day until it’s thoroughly edited. I’m going to let it sit for a while – let the fruit ripen on the vine – and then dig in with an open mind. At some point, I might post part of it on Authonomy and request feedback from the generous readers/authors on there. 

I hope you don’t mind the wait. Trust me; this one will be well worth it.