Hiya guys and dolls! I've got a sci-fi adventure for you guys. Check out the guest post from the author, all about the best part of writing thrillers/crime novels! I actually live pretty close to this author geographically at the moment, and am excited to be able to support a local author!
Check it out!
Moral Panic
~Author: K.M. Ecke
~Released: March 16th, 2018
~Length: 250 Pages
~Genres: Adult Fiction, Sci-Fi
If anything can be hacked, nothing can be trusted.
Tanner Moore is at the top of his game in the high stakes world of big technology. As chief technology officer of Paragon, the largest corporation in the world, he is about to release the greatest convenience innovation in the history of commerce: drone delivery service to every inch of the globe.
But when an interview with journalist Amy Noral is secretly recorded and published by the clickbait media, Tanner’s fall from grace is swift and brutal.
Tanner is fired, publicly condemned as a terrorist for comments he never made, and kidnapped by a mysterious vigilante group who use surveillance data to track and kill their enemies. Tanner must navigate their underground world full of violent zealots and mental manipulation to find his way to freedom, or see his drone technology used as the most advanced assassination tool ever devised.
Tanner is fired, publicly condemned as a terrorist for comments he never made, and kidnapped by a mysterious vigilante group who use surveillance data to track and kill their enemies. Tanner must navigate their underground world full of violent zealots and mental manipulation to find his way to freedom, or see his drone technology used as the most advanced assassination tool ever devised.
***
Moral Panic explores the collision of the most extreme elements of politics, ideology and technological media manipulation. It navigates through a maze of modern surveillance with a skeptical eye on the data-driven world we live in, to bring an awareness of the possibility of such a story coming true in the real world.
Hailing from the original birthplace of the atomic bomb, Los Alamos, NM, K.M. Ecke is an organic, free-range, preservative-free, philosopher-poet using universal truth to battle cultural insanity. Ecke, which is German for ‘corner’, is the child of a physicist and musician and grew up at the corner of creativity and logic. After ten years of existential exploration and creative experimentation, he releases his debut novel Moral Panic, along with an album of lyrically-focused songs, Change of Mind via his independent creative collective The Dream Flow.
Ecke strives to deliver a strong story with inherent value to his readers. The author is well-versed in writing, including essays, songs and poetry, the last of which the author finds the most efficient form of expression, and thus, the best way to improve his writing practice.
Initially intending for law school, a business law class changed his direction, and Ecke chose to pursue writing, soul-searching and creative projects. After several years of odd jobs learning about different pieces of the world, he began his own private music teaching business and attended Colorado Film School for a year and a half to study filmmaking. After 18-months in his program, he veered to his own path and established Dream Flow Media, the home to all of his creative endeavors; publishing, music and all additional branches of the many-faceted visionary. Along with his own creations, he strives to bring other artists into the fold to develop a creative collective for a variety of multimedia projects.
Ecke also works as a filmmaker for local non-profits and bands, and hopes one day to see Moral Panic on the big screen. The author lives in Denver, Colorado and hosts a storytelling micro-podcast Myths, Metaphors, and Morality. For more info, visit the author online at TheDreamFlow.com.
~ Connect with Ecke Online ~
What do you find to be the best part of writing in the crime fiction/thriller genre, and is it as exciting to write as it is to read?
The best part about writing a darknet cyber crime technological thriller, is the
problem-solving moment of discovery.
Imagine this, you’re at the end of a long eight-hour slog through another revision
pass of your book. That morning, you discovered there’s a massive plot-hole you hadn’t considered.
It’s staring you in the face, laughing at you with its devilish semi-colons and
closing parentheses ;)
You want to destroy your computer. You want to put an end to this story which
has tortured you with its irritating complexity. Why didn’t I write that f#$*ing children’s book instead? You think to yourself, doubting every decision in life which brought you to this moment, because you know this story can only be saved with a full rewrite of several chapters you spent weeks crafting.
You walk around your neighborhood pacing, muttering to yourself strange
imaginations of the characters you’ve created, searching for the logical explanation for their character motivation. Children pass you on the street throwing halloween candy at your face. The hard kind, the stale stuff they left on the counter for months. Women look away in horror as you stare into the depths of the serial killer you’re trying to understand.
Out of nowhere, you’re kidnapped and robbed at gun point and then berated
mercilessly for having no money to steal.
The kidnappers drop you off in an alley downtown, and as the halloween candy
melts from your face and you’re crying in a puddle of your own tears, a kindly homeless woman comes up to you and whispers something in your ear.
“Get a real job, you chump!” She says right before she whistles to her pack of
rabid street dogs who chase you down the alleyway, biting at the heels of your shoes and your dwindling pride.
You jump the fence into a deserted warehouse, taking shelter amongst a group of
immigrant refugees fighting for their lives. The police come by to sweep the area, mistaking you for an escaped convict wanted by the FBI.
They forego the refugees, hit you with a Taser, and drag you to jail. The
kidnappers took your wallet, leaving you without any identification to prove your
innocence, so the cops throw you in solitary confinement for a week.
As you sit there in your cell, counting the tiles on the wall to stave off the
boredom, you take a piece of cheese from the sparse dinner shoved through the slat in your jail door, and you start writing incoherent prophesies of dystopian nonsense.
As your cheese-pen dwindles to a crumb, the guards arrive at your cell door to let
you out. When they see the cheese graffiti on the wall, they cross the room to beat you into a pulp with their nightsticks, and as the sound of your cracking bones reverberates around the cell, you suddenly understand your main character’s suffering.
You have a glimpse of inspiration, and the solution finally presents itself. You
barely feel your bones breaking as you smirk with satisfaction at the cleverness of your twist. The shock immaculate. The satisfaction sublime. The audience’s favorite character dead on the floor.
You sit in the lobby of the police department until the mayor personally arrives to
apologize for the misunderstanding, offering you a settlement check which will fund your next novel. Still mired in the stupor of brain damage caused by the night stick beatings, you stand up and rip the check up dramatically, thinking it’s a citation for publicly sympathizing with the homeless.
You walk out, head held high, armed with the solution to your plot-hole, as looks
of absurd confusion cover the faces of the mayor and her police squad.
Is writing a thriller novel exciting? You’re goddamn right it is.
-K.M. Ecke
