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.
