Friday, November 19, 2010

Adam DeCamp--Vatsy and Bruno: Dangerous Ink

Adam DeCamp is a student and aspiring writer. He runs a website, Chocolate Hammer, that’s host to a variety of gaming and fiction projects.

Vatsy and Bruno: Dangerous Ink is part dark comedy, part pulp pastiche. In a radio-era sci-fi dystopia, two mutants--the cat-thing Vatsy and the sapient chimp Bruno--grapple with poverty and prejudice as they pursue their respective goals. An aspiring journalist, Vatsy works day and night trying to get his expansive--and totally fabricated--articles published. Between him and success lie his appalling lack of talent, his weak grasp on reality, and his almost supernatural ability to make enemies in a city where contract violence is an enduring industry. Bruno's goals are a little simpler: all he wants is to keep himself and his associate alive in the face of oppressive police forces, lunatic bounty hunters, colorful assassins, and mad science gone worse.

*Q: What will e-readers like about your book?*

It’s a three-act novel containing—in no particular order—mutants, conspiracies, thugs with doctorates, quixotic vagrants, monologue-spouting bounty hunters, and double-barreled, sawn-off street journalism. Also, it’s budget-priced, costing less than fifty cents per hundred pages.

*Q: Why did you go indie? *

As a new author, I’m excited about the opportunities offered by the contemporary market. Even on the digital frontier, traditional publishing is based around the price of a dead-tree product, usually around seven to twenty dollars for new releases. That’s not exorbitant, but it is enough to discourage much gambling on the reader’s part. Problem is, as an unknown author—someone a publisher would be unlikely to furnish with an advertising blitz—gambling is kind of what I’m counting on. Self-publishing for only a dollar per copy won’t make me a millionaire, but it will encourage people to give my stuff a try. If they like it, I’ve gained a reader, and if they don’t like it, they haven’t lost much. It’s a win-win situation.

*Q: Who are your favorite authors in the genre?*
Vatsy and Bruno is a little tricky genre-wise—the best suggestion I’ve heard so far is Radiopunk—but as far as humor goes, I’m a fan of stuff in the Douglas Adams/Terry Pratchett vein of narrative comedy. I also like Jim Butcher’s ability to splice genres and bring a sense of reality to unreal situations.

Kindle: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0041VYK46

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