Drive meets Ghost in the Shell in the ruins of a collapsed world...

A Cold Day to Drown explores the dark side of a future society on the brink of a titanic shift. A couple hundred years from now, the seas have risen, governments have failed, and half the population has been wiped out by an engineered plague. Trapped in this bleak world, Talbot Liu is a fixer trying to find a missing girl among the chaotic fringes of a city owned by gangs and corporations.

Inspired by classics of modern noir cinema like Drive and Blade Runner, infused with the science fiction flavor of Ghost in the Shell and All Tomorrow’s Parties, and tainted with smidgen of end times paranoia, A Cold Day to Drown is a thriller for anyone who likes their stories packed with mystery, violence, and a wood chipper load of dark humor.

I’ve already posted the whole novel here on Inkshares. I’ve revised the book and done an editing pass, so while there may be a few typos remaining and the Inkshares editors might make minor suggestions, the story is essentially already done.

For more about the characters and world, read on... or you could just dive into the story by clicking on the Read tab!

Our protagonist is Talbot. Once an intelligence analyst for the federal government, he suffered a mental breakdown after overdosing on anxiety medication to push himself through viewing drone video from a city struck by Red Easter, an engineered plague which would go on to kill half of the global population. More than a decade later, much of America has collapsed into a lawless mire, with the exception of cities owned and managed by major corporations. Talbot now lives in one of those cities, where he helps his cousin Tamar run a brothel and fixes problems for people who are afraid to report their concerns to corporate security.

The story opens with Ethie calling in a favor for Talbot to find a missing foster child, so the city won’t investigate her for the disappearance. Talbot’s search for the child will carry him through the filthy underbelly of the city where the brutal crime lord Darby runs extortion rackets, out into the mire where George and her wife run a garbage mine staffed by children and drones, and into a complex web of corporate espionage surrounding weaponized androids and mind-uploading technology.

Assisting Talbot are an eclectic band of artists and criminals who live in a former nuclear fallout shelter: Schuster, an eccentric dealer of both art and weapons which push the boundaries of legality, the reclusive hacker Javier, and the indefinable nanotech engineer Salinas.

Telling you more would give away some of the best parts of the story, but if you want a peak behind the scenes of my writing process you can read my tweets about writing A Cold Day to Drown.

Feel free to reach out to me here on Inkshares or on Twitter if you have any questions about the novel. Thanks for considering A Cold Day to Drown for your next project to support!