Against Demons: Summary/Intro
Spent a good swath of today doing the nitty-gritty of soliciting feedback on the first section of the novel. This involved buying $36+ of postage.
Currently calling it Against Demons. I’m 80% sold on keeping that title.
As part of that, I whipped up a spoiler-free written answer to what I always get asked. “What’s it about?” Might make for a nice back of the dust jacket summary, if those things still existed.
Will Strague is killing time. He goes through the motions of a well-constructed life, tuning his mood with a carefully calibrated diet and chemical intake. He drinks and dates and dresses carefully, showing to all a well-adjusted young man in the perpetual adolescence that is a standard model of modern city life.
But below the surface, he is a cipher. There is nothing there, all avenues of investigation dead-end. Forged addresses, fake IDs, calls that go to voicemail or are answered by paid confederates. In truth, he is not so much killing time as he is waiting for a sign. He is a sleeper with no one left to awake him. One who stays so long is a battle-ready crouch that he begins to grow moss.
The problem is, when you’re waiting for a sign, everything looks like a sign. Things start creeping in: events in the news, bits of overheard conversation, graffiti, error messages, and twists in games that seem more than just games. Things seem to be converging on a moment where action is required. Will gathers his resources and takes stock of the path that led him to here.
The 11 of you who have a copy so far… how close/useful is this description?
