Banana Bikes

"Jesus Christ, Willy, who'd have thought that it would all end up like this," he said, shaking his head in disbelief. "All I wanted to do was make a difference. All I wanted to do was make the world a better place." He reached his hand out and stroked Willy's cool yellow frame. In the distance, he could hear the sound of sirens shrieking, ripping through the midday heat like a dull knife.

"Hey, Chuck, are you ready?" someone called from down the hall. "They're here for you."

"Ah," Chuck sighed, looking down at his bike. "Yeah, I guess so." He patted the bike's seat one last time. "See ya, Willy," he said, then left the room.

The hallway to the main lobby was longer than he remembered. It seemed to stretch on forever. When his startup, Banana Bikes, had received its first injection of capital, he'd moved the company from his grandma's garage into this beautiful building right in the heart of Downtown. He'd loved everything about this building, especially this long hallway that led from the lobby to his office, overlooking the bay on one side and the city on the other. The hallway was lined with glass so that he could look out and see the city buzzing with bright yellow Banana Bikes. He used to spend hours peering out these windows. Seeing all those Banana Bikes zipping down the streets had filled him with a sense of pride. The company he had started was changing the world - getting cars off the streets and getting people exercising. Who could have imagined things would turn out the way they did.

When he finally emerged from the tunnel into the bright yellow lobby, he was hit with a wall of light and sound. Reporters lobbed questions, hecklers lobbed insults, and hundreds of cameras flashed epileptically from every direction. The mob pressed in around him, the smell of their fear hot and pungent. He pushed his way through the crowd until he was able to get to the small stage that had been set up near the elevators at the back of the lobby.

Once he was on the stage, the room fell suddenly silent. The silence was thick and heavy. He felt like his legs were going to buckle under the weight of it.

"Ah," he stammered, pulling the mic toward his face. "I'm... I'm Chuck Kowalczyk... I'm the CEO of Banana Bikes." He looked out over the sea of faces, not sure what to say next.

"Are you taking responsibility for the outbreak?" a voice called out.

"Make him pay for what he's done!" another shrieked.

"Ah..." Chuck stuttered, "well, the thing is... yes, I know it's bad..." He tugged nervously at his shirt collar. "Bad" was an understatement. It was a full-blown pandemic out there, and it was all because of his company, it was all because of his dream; it was all because of him.

"You did this!" someone barked. Chuck looked out into the crowd where a large photograph of a young man with a thick black beard was being waved about wildly. "Look at him!" the voice continued. "This is my son! You killed him, you bastard!"

"Ah... No, it's not like that," Chuck pleaded. "We didn't know it would happen like this." He had been warned, but nobody had taken those warnings seriously. How could a bike-sharing program spread disease so effectively? Nobody could have seen this coming, not on the scale that it had happened.

"What about Bert Aron?" someone demanded. "Hadn't he warned the Banana Bikes Board of the dangers?"

"Ah..." Chuck grimaced. "Well, it wasn't like that." A bead of sweat trickled down Chuck's forehead and dripped into his eye. He wiped it away, but it wouldn't stop stinging. That sonofabitch Bert had warned them, but they had thought he was a crackpot. Who could have imagined a new strain of hepatitis would take up a symbiotic relationship with his harmless yellow bikes and spread so rapidly among the burgeoning hipster population of the city.

"Aron was on record!" another voice called out.

"You did this!" someone screamed.

"You're responsible!" another voice bellowed.

"The blood is on your hands!"

The cries echoed in Chuck's brain. All he had wanted to do was make the world a better place. All he had wanted to do was spread a little joy. He looked out over the crowd. Order had broken down completely. They were pushing forward, inch by inch, pressing against the stage. Chuck looked down at the writhing mass of angry people. There were no police. No security. Those sectors had been hit particularly hard by HepX. There was nobody to hold back the crowd.

Chuck looked back over his shoulder and saw, leaning up against the elevator, one of his bright yellow Banana Bikes. If he could just get to that bike, maybe he could make a break for it, maybe he could outrun the crowd. He turned to run toward the bike, but before he could take a step, an iron grip locked around his ankle and he fell flat on his face. He rolled over to kick at whoever was holding him, but it was no use. The angry crowd dragged him off the stage and ripped him apart.

Best Review of All Time

As a not-so-well-known writer, I feel like I'm always begging for reviews. But after today, I think I can hang up my hat because I have received the single best review of all time.

You can still get Crump for FREE on Kindle through 5/4. Go get a copy, be offended, and write me an amazing review.

Delete Facebook Now

Mark's finger hovered over the trackpad on his laptop, like some invisible force was holding him back from making the final click. His tongue flicked out, dragging dryly across his chapped lips. He blinked his bloodshot eyes shut as a fat bead of perspiration ran down his oily face.

"I can't do it," he whispered to himself. "I just... I can't do it."

At that moment the door to his bedroom creaked open. A flood of light poured into the room as Mark shifted his body awkwardly to cover the screen of his laptop.

"What are you doing in here," his wife asked him.

"Uh... ah, nothing!" Mark croaked. "I'm just, nothing."

"That doesn't sound suspicious at all," she said, taking a step into the room.

"No, don't!" Mark squeaked. "I'm looking at porn!"

"Don't be stupid," she laughed. "Let me see what you're doing."

"No!" Mark shrieked, leaping off the bed with his laptop. He made a quick line for the door, but she cut him off, catching him by his elbow. He tried desperately to wriggle from her iron grasp, but she was just too strong. As he struggled, Mark felt a decade's worth of angst and frustration suddenly burst within him and he dropped to the floor, sobbing uncontrollably.

"Aww, don't be sad," she said, running her thick fingers through his knotted crimson hair. "I didn't mean to bully you."

"It's just... it's just not fair," Mark whined. "I want them to like me. Why don't they like me?"

"What are you talking about?" she asked. "I like you. That's all that matters, isn't it?"

"But... but..." Mark stuttered. "But, I was... I was cool, right? I mean, they weren't just using me, I was genuinely cool, right?"

She kissed him on the forehead to hide her own contempt. "Yes, you were cool," she lied.

Mark felt his anxiety slowly ebb as she held him. At last, he sat up and looked into her dark eyes.

"I'm sorry," he told her. "I just wasn't ready. But now I am."

"Ready for what?" she asked.

He grabbed his laptop from the floor and turned it so that she could see the screen. "This," he said stoically.

"Oh, so that's what this was all about," she said as she looked at the screen.

"Yes," he told her. "I'm going to do it."

He put the computer on the floor between the two of them and then put his hand out so that his finger hovered just above the trackpad.

"Do it," she told him. "I know you can."

"I... I don't know," he managed to say through clenched teeth.

"You can do it, Mark," she told him. "You're the last person in the entire world that's still on it. There's no reason to keep it."

"I... I..." Mark muttered. A salty drop of sweat dripped in his eye as he struggled to press his finger down on the trackpad. He scrunched his eyes together, his hand quivering over the trackpad.

"Do it," she told him again. "Do it, Mark! Delete your Facebook account. Delete it. Delete Facebook. Delete Facebook now!"

Black Friday

If you're looking for some awesome deals this Black Friday, look no further. You can get FREE copies of Lumiuxx (book one of the Psalms of the Apocalypse series) and Shanghai Shuffle (book one of the Prisoners of War series) for FREE on Kindle from now through 11/26. Enjoy and happy Thanksgiving!

Postscript: Make sure to leave a review! All reviews are appreciated, but of course 5-star reviews are the best.

What to Read

As a relatively unknown and unread author, the plight of the emerging writer is one that I can relate to quite well. Because of this, I made the decision back in May to start focusing my scarce reading time on the work of independent, new, and relatively unknown writers. I'll be honest, much of the stereotypes about independently published authors is firmly based in reality, but I've also found some real hidden gems.

That said, my goal isn't really to find authors that I enjoy reading. What I'm aiming to do here is to read and then honestly rate books so that they can be represented on Amazon in a way that provides other readers with meaningful feedback on the book and the author with the chance to get an idea of what people really think about their work. I think that this is the sort of thing that all small time authors should be doing. Not only does it help our own writing, but it also helps out fellow authors. It is frustrating as fuck to have books out there that get consistent (albeit low) sales, but garner zero reviews. Reviews help drive sales and, perhaps more importantly, reviews help keep writers motivated to keep writing.

So, I'm issuing a call to action to all independent, aspiring, emerging, fledgling, amateur, semi-pro, self-published, unknown writers out there: go and read a book by another author that's in your same situation. Once you've read it, leave an honest review. If we all did this, we would all have a handful of reviews (or at least starred ratings), and I feel that the writing world would genuinely be a better place :D