I mentioned in my last post that there would be a new release announcement coming soon and here it is.
The Shantytown Robin Hoods is another story to come out of the 2017 July short story challenge, where the aim was to write a story per day during July 2017. Writing a new story every day means coming up with a lot of inspiration, so I occasionally use short cuts such as writing prompts, artwork, etc… The Shantytown Robin Hoods was inspired by a piece of art, namely this one by an artist known only as macfixed, whose Deviant Art account sadly seems to have been closed in the meantime.
Before I wrote the story, I looked at the image and the various people pictured and asked myself who they were and what they were doing in that place. Once I’d finished that little exercise, the story more or less wrote itself.
The result was a crime thriller set in a dystopian Cyberpunk future, where two very different crimes – a gang of street kids trying to rob the patrons of a club and an assassin about to shoot a mobster – intersect. The cover is a suitably gritty and Cyberpunky piece of art by the talented Thai artist Tithi Luadthong, whose work also graces the covers of the In Love and War series. Of course, the Cyberpunk category in the Amazon Kindle store seems to have been overrun by LitRPG books, since the subgenre doesn’t have its own subcategory, but I hope that there still is something of a market for what Cyberpunk used to be.
So far, The Shantytown Robin Hoods is a standalone story, though I may well revisit this setting and the characters – well, those left standing by the end of the story – again in the future.
And talking of the future, July is almost upon us and so it’s time to decide whether I will do another July short story challenge this year. On the one hand, I find the July short story challenge enormously rewarding and I have done the challenge three years in a row now. On the other hand, the extremely early onset of summer this year (we have basically had non-stop hot weather since early April and it isn’t even officially summer yet, so we may well have three more months of hot weather, if we’re very unlucky) has left my low on spoons, since my body doesn’t handle hot weather well. Not to mention that the current political situation in Germany and elsewhere is leaving me frustrated and angry, which also doesn’t help.
I’ve still got two weeks to decide what to do. I’ll probably give it a go, at least for a few days, to see how it goes.
But for now, enjoy the fruits of last year’s July short story challenge and check out:
The Shantytown Robin Hoods
Latisha, Moses and Tim are three street kids eking out a living in a dystopian future. Together, they are the Shantytown Robin Hoods, a street gang that steals from the rich and gives to – well, themselves.
“The Hole” is the hottest night club in Shantytown, where the rich and the famous can party among the less fortunate. But “The Hole” is also a favourite hangout for Latisha, Moses and Tim to find marks they can rob.
But then their latest job is derailed by a mobster with sticky fingers and a prize on his head, a teen pop sensation, a trigger-happy bodyguard and a red-haired assassin.
Soon bullets are flying in Shantytown and Latisha, Moses and Tim must keep their heads down to survive and steal another day…
More information.
Length: 2800 words
List price: 0.99 USD, EUR or GBP
Buy it at Amazon US, Amazon UK, Amazon Germany, Amazon France, Amazon Netherlands, Amazon Spain, Amazon Italy, Amazon Canada, Amazon Australia, Amazon Brazil, Amazon Japan, Amazon India, Amazon Mexico, Kobo, Barnes & Noble, Apple iTunes, Google Play, Scribd, Smashwords, Inktera, Playster, Thalia, Weltbild, Hugendubel, Buecher.de, DriveThruFiction, Casa del Libro, e-Sentral, 24symbols and XinXii.
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