What genre are you most comfortable writing? I eat, breathe, and sleep cyberpunk. I’m an anime, RPG junkie. Cyberpunk is second nature to me. Cyberpunk also stands apart from science fiction in that it deals with the struggle of maintaining one’s humanity in a post-technological world. That’s what really interests me–not where we are going, but what are we becoming?
What do you consider the most challenging about writing a novel, or about writing in general? Writing a blurb is extremely difficult–how do you crush a 120,000 word plot into 250 words or less? Also, I’m not fond of inserting chapter breaks. Chapters are the very last thing I add to my novels.
Have you developed a specific writing style? To paraphrase Freud, civilization demands repression and therefore neurosis. It is part of my own personal therapy to write about the invisible, powerful, visceral locations in the mind. I want to discuss the shadow side, subjects generally too uncomfortable, too painful, too personal to openly discuss. These are the places I aim to visit in my work, and ideally, whoever has the guts to read about it will finish the book feeling slightly less neurotic. Confronting the shadow side has a therapeutic quality.
Have you ever had writer’s block? If so, what do you do about it? I force myself to keep writing. These are brutal, grueling days in which I engage a staring contest with my laptop. Sometimes it takes about fourteen hours, but I find the words and win. If I feed the procrastination monster, he gains strength quickly.
Can you share a little of your current work with us? Sexy, micro-chipped supersoldier, Lukian Valentin, must escape the Glorious Empire Daitya to preserve his crumbling sanity. Beaten to a pulp by trigger-happy superiors, drugged into a daze by perverse scientists, and brainwashed into oblivion by a man who believes the mechanization of the human race will deliver ultimate salvation, haunting nightmares of electrodes suggest to Lukian that something is amiss.
A serendipitous encounter with an enemy nation’s double agent facilitates his escape–but no amount of deadly martial arts or ammo can prepare him for the trek through collapsing urban sprawl to freedom.
How did you come up with the title? Kain is a brainwashed assassin created by the Empire Daitya. I chose the name for its Biblical reference, from the story of Cain and Abel. It tickles me pink to use names that have a mythological or archetypal significance. I like to Hansel and Gretel my way through a novel, leaving a trail of little crumbs of meaning for the reader to follow. It’s a pathology, and I blame my sun sign (Scorpio).
Counting days is irrelevant in the life of a well-to-do man, unless he counts the days passed in total service to the Empire. Salute. Submit. Shut up and scan the wrist. Therapists armed with batons and brass knuckles guide the derelict along a well-beaten path to Glory.
When human experiment Lukian Valentin escapes the Empire to save his crumbling sanity–through a grimescape of fissured highways, collapsing factories, putrescent sewers–he realizes the fight isn’t only for his life, it’s for his mind. Torturous flashbacks from a murky past spur him on a quest for freedom, while the Empire’s elite retrievers remain at his heels, determined to bring him home for repair.
Lukian needs one doctor to remove the implanted chips from his body, and another to serve him a tall glass of answers. Lukian attempts a psychedelic salvage of his partitioned mind, gleaning fragments of the painful truth about his identity.
A scorching, clothes-ripping rendezvous with a mysterious woman offers Lukian a glimpse of his humanity, and respite from his nightmarish past. It also provides the Empire the perfect weakness to exploit for his recapture.
To rise to the challenge of protecting his new life, his freedom of thought, and his one shot at love, Lukian must reach deep into his mind to find his true identity. To defeat the Empire, he requires the deadly power of his former self–a power that threatens to consume him.
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Genre – Sci-Fi/Steamy Romance
Rating – R (18+)
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