Urbantasm
Book 1 - The Dying City
by Connor Coyne
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Pub Date Sep 25 2018 | Archive Date Nov 19 2018
Darcie Rowan PR | Gothic Funk Press
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Description
Urbantasm is a magical teen noir serial novel inspired by the author’s experiences growing up in and around Flint, Michigan.
Thirteen-year-old John Bridge’s plans include hooking up with an eighth-grade girl and becoming one of the most popular kids at Radcliffe Junior High, but when he steals a pair of strange blue sunglasses from a homeless person, it drops him into the middle of a gang war overwhelming the once-great Rust Belt town of Akawe.
John doesn’t understand why the sunglasses are such a big deal, but everything, it seems, is on the table. Perhaps he accidentally offended the Chalks, a white supremacist gang trying to expand across the city. Maybe the feud involves his friend Selby, whose father died under mysterious circumstances. It could even have something to do with O-Sugar, a homegrown drug with the seeming ability to distort space. On the night before school began, a group of teenagers took O-Sugar and leapt to their deaths from an abandoned hospital.
John struggles to untangle these mysteries while adjusting to his new school, even as his parents confront looming unemployment and as his city fractures and burns.
A Note From the Publisher
In 1995, I was seventeen and an 11th grader at Flushing High School in a suburb of Flint, Michigan. Most of my friends went to the Flint public schools and Powers Catholic high school, and I was always startled by the gap between those of us who benefited from basically stable homes and those who had to fend for themselves. This was at a time when General Motors was cutting thousands of local jobs each year, when the crack epidemic had segued into a heroin epidemic, and Flint posted the most dire crime and poverty stats in the nation. As a result, while some of my friends were applying to colleges and laying the groundwork for their careers, others were just looking for an escape from houses where they were abused, or working on the sly to help cover food and the mortgage, or praying that they wouldn’t be outed to their families. It was wrenching to witness.
That December, I happened to pick up an abridged translation of Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables, in which the virtuous fugitive Jean Valjean struggles with his conscience for justice amid the turmoil of 19th century France. Reading this book was a transformative experience for me. Not only was the novel suspenseful and evocative, with a huge cast of colorful characters, but it also portrayed the world as a place infused with a kind of personal supernatural energy. Figurative ghosts that were more powerful than literal ghosts, because of the strength of the human minds from which they sprang.
I quickly concluded that the things I was witnessing in my own life were every bit as worthy of a sprawling epic, infused with its own illuminatory power. So I sat down and started to write that epic. I called it Urbantasm.
Twenty-two years later, Urbantasm is finished. With the talents and financial support of some of my oldest friends, this story will be told in four books over the course of the next four years. The first volume will be titled Urbantasm: The Dying City,
Advance Praise
“The
first volume of Connor Coyne’s epic novel Urbantasm
imbues a neglected part of America with an azure luminescence. Portrayed with
sensitive and romantic candor, this tale’s young protagonists are never
despairing but perpetually haunted. Coyne understands that to survive is to be
wounded, and Urbantasm illuminates the
shadows of a nation that has always exploited the defenseless and the
forgotten.”
— Jeffery Renard Allen, author of Song
of the Shank
“Urbantasm: The Dying City
is a novel of wonder and horror — but I don’t mean that in any traditional
sense. Though preternatural elements impinge on the story here and there, what
really fuels both the wonder and the horror is Connor Coyne’s uncanny portrayal
of early teenhood, when every dimly understood new vista promised ecstasy
untold, and every wrong move or unintentional difference could mean social
death — or worse. This is a tough, tender, and unsettling rumination on coming
of age in a dying industrial city, and I’m both eager and terrified to see what
happens next.”
— William Shunn, author of The Accidental
Terrorist
“While I
appreciate the universal chords in Urbantasm, it is the
delivery, the writing style, that engaged me. The writing propels this story.
So do the characters as they reveal themselves through the writing. Coyne’s
fluid prose is the perfect vehicle to carry an epic allegory. The wordsmith in
me particularly enjoyed the stylistic change-ups he would throw.”
— Robert R. Thomas, East Village Magazine
“Incandescent
prose illuminates the darkest underground passages of a town ruined by an auto
company, where gangstah drugs turn everything dreamy, mysterious, and deadly.
And you can’t look away, sentence by gorgeous sentence, from the drama caught
writhing and screaming, squinting its eyes against the light.”
— Tantra Bensko, Author of Glossolalia: Psychological Suspense
“Connor is a
great writer. His ability to create amazing characters in a richly painted
fictional background is something to be truly admired… This is a coming of age
tale, crime story, thriller, suspense novel and a use of fiction to condemn and
glorify urban decay and corruption… From a pure storytelling perspective, this
is a fantastic read. Realistic characters in real peril and dealing with
real-life situations… Then a bizarre pair of sunglasses is found and things get
— weird. It’s breathtaking writing. I feel Urbantasm is destined to be a
classic.”
— Bryan Alaspa, Author of S.P.I.D.A.R.
“Urbantasm
is a coming of age story told with such specificity that it becomes universal.
A tale of first kisses,
contrived plans for new identities and the utter confusion that comes from
being thirteen years old.”
— M.L. Kennedy, Author of The Mosquito Song
“In Urbantasm,
Coyne presents his dying city as a place of warmth, humanity, and friendship,
as seen through the eyes of young people more wise and thoughtful than their
world is willing to admit.”
— Amanda Steinhoff, Author of Lily and the Golden Lute
_____________
Connor Coyne is a
novelist living and working in Flint, Michigan. His first novel, Hungry Rats has been hailed by Heartland prize-winner Jeffery
Renard Allen as "an emotional and aesthetic tour de force."
His second novel, Shattering Glass, has been praised by Gordon Young, author of Teardown: Memoir of a Vanishing City as "a hypnotic tale that is at once universal and otherworldly."
Connor represented Flint's 7th Ward as its
artist-in-residence for the National Endowment for the Arts' Our Town grant,
through which artists engaged ward residents to produce creative work in
service of the 2013 City of Flint Master Plan.
Connor's work has been published in Vox.com, Belt Magazine, Santa Clara Review, Moria Poetry Zine, East Village Magazine, Flint Broadside, Moomers Journal of Moomers
Studies, The Saturnine Detractor, and Qua. Connor lives in Flint's College Cultural Neighborhood (aka
the East Village), less than a mile from the house where he grew up.
Marketing Plan
National Publicity Tour with a budget of over $20,000
Advertising in Foreword Magazine, Publishers Weekly, Writer's Digest, Facebook
Multi-city tour for Library Readings, Bookstores, Book clubs (Chicago, NYC, Denver, Detroit, Austin and many others)
Radio Satellite Tour
Blogger, Facebook, Goodreads and Radio book giveaways
Regional Michigan book events, festival panels, publicity and blogger lunch
Available Editions
| EDITION | Paperback |
| ISBN | 9780989920230 |
| PRICE | $16.00 (USD) |
