199Topia

Eli thought going home might help him figure things out. At twenty-two, life feels like it’s passing him by. Old friends have stable jobs and families and he’s run out of couches to surf. But a lucky scratch-off bought him a bus ticket back to his small Texas town.

Instead, Eli steps into nowhere. The streets are empty. The air is thick with silence. Doors lead to places and times they shouldn’t. The gas station radio plays a Top 40 hit from a decade ago, now stretched and reverberating through the muted stillness. The local bus station has a Time Magazine on the rack. Its cover? The Twin Towers, engulfed in smoke and fire fresh as if printed yesterday.

Lost dancers bedecked in glow necklaces sway beneath black lights in a neon mall rave. Unseen behemoths lurk in the parking garages’ shadows to feed on despair and hopelessness. The specter of a drill sergeant principal roams the school hallways at night.

There is no past. There is no future. There is only 199Topia—a decayed, looping dream of a world that no longer exists, yet refuses to fade. Trapped in a retentive liminal nightmare, Eli searches for a way forward before he fades with it.

An existentialist suspense story soaked in vaporwave nostalgia, urbex and quarter-life dread, 199Topia is about being stranded in the liminal space between “stuckness,” and the uncanny return home.

How to Buy:

199Topia is available on both the Kindle Store and as part of your existing Kindle Unlimited subscription. If you like physical copies, the 5" x 8" paperback will be available in the coming days.

Ebook Version:

After the 90-day exclusivity on Kindle Select, the e-book will be widely available on your e-reader of choice (Kobo, Apple Books, etc). If you like DRM-free, don't worry. You can purchase the epub on itch.io and gumroad as soon as the exclusivity period finishes.

Paperback:

Coming soon to KDP and Lulu's bookstore services!

I'll have a link ready for it after it finishes KDP's approval process, so in the meantime, please sign up for e-mail updates on the book's status, and I'll gladly shout it from the rooftops it's ready.