In this frat-gothic novel of East coast decadence, law student Dorian Gray lives a charmed life among the young, rich, and aimless. He just has to get through the emptiness of the day, then he can crawl from bar to bar and pick up any girl he likes with a clockwork smile. His roommates, Trip and Wes, make good gaming buddies, but Wes is kind of creepy and Dorian is starting to hate everything about Trip and his perfect hair and teeth. He’s even nice… what kind of asshole is nice?

Then Dorian’s buddy Baz asks if he’ll model for the main character of a new first-person shooter he’s designing. Dorian poses with a baseball bat while a philosophy professor, Dr. Wotton, looks on with a little too much interest. Whatever the old guy says about self-perception and hedonism in the selfie age, Dorian figures his face is gonna be famous and that kicks ass.

A week later, Dorian catches a fist to the mouth in a bar fight without a twinge of pain, and Baz calls the trickle of red dripping out of the avatar’s mouth a ‘glitch’. A perfectly-rendered glitch.

Then the alpha testing starts… and Dorian wakes up with blood on the end of his bat.

In The Avatar of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde’s acclaimed novel is uploaded into the 21st century to explore the darkness behind the power to create an image of your ideal self, then put hands to a controller and watch that image destroy.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Like all of the authors on Inkshares, getting a book published is my dream. I have a lot of ideas for modern updates of gothic novels, so if this one takes off it could lead to a whole series. If you’re interested in the concept, give me a chance and pre-order!

Thanks!