Tuesday, June 15, 2021

Virtual Book Tour: The Heavy Side by Ben Rogers #blogtour #technothriller #thriller #interview #rabtbooktours @RABTBookTours

 

 


Techno-thriller

Date Published: 11-16-2019



Silicon Valley Tech meets The Cocaine Trade.


Can you program yourself into a winner?

In the San Francisco Bay Area, tech innovation is King, and money is God.

Vik Singh watched his immigrant parents work their fingers to the bone chasing the American Dream. But standing at his father's funeral, he realizes one thing - hustling will get you nowhere. All you need to get rich is one big idea.

And when he meets Los, a small-time drug lord with visions of grandeur, Vik makes a plan worthy of Jobs and Zuckerberg:

Design a drug sale app.

After all, market disruption is everything.

From his comfortable cottage in Lake Tahoe, Vik writes the code that builds a cocaine empire. When his app attracts an infamous drug cartel leader, it seems like a natural expansion move. And for a while, life is Swiss bank accounts, luxe coke parties, and falling in love with Remi, a beautiful and ballsy woman with secrets of her own.

Then he discovers he is being watched.

The DEA is closing in, the cartel is getting suspicious, and he can trust no one. As things heat up, Vik discovers the real price of easy money.

And that price could be his life.


If you're a fan of Breaking Bad, Mr. Robot, and Dark Mirror, this is the book for you. Get your copy right now!




Interview

What is the hardest part of writing your books?
I’d say the stage between the spark of inspiration and the facing of the completely blank white page is the hardest—you’ve got a concept, but there’s no words down yet.  When I go for a run, that first mile is usually the hardest.  The body kind of rebels, there’s that itchy uncomfortable feeling on your skin as the sweating starts, the stomach churns, etc. That’s the first “mile” of writing.  Then you kind of hit a rhythm, and suddenly the miles start ticking off.

 

What songs are most played on your Ipod?

Lately it’s been a fair amount of Jason Isbell and Justin Townes Earl.

 

Do you have critique partners or beta readers?

Definitely.  My lovely wife reads everything first, always.  Then I change stuff after talking with her.  Then I have a couple of amazing readers-slash-best-pals (Adam Dedmon and Gabriel Urza) who give me a kind but constructive second audience.  These three are to be thanked for making most everything I’ve ever written much better.

 

What book are you reading now?

Somehow I’m reading three books: Michener’s “Alaska” (a behemoth I got for Christmas and have been enjoying, slowly); “The Content of Our Character,” by Shelby Steele; and a short story collection, “The Beauties: Essential Stories,” by Anton Chekhov, which I pulled off the shelf initially because of its small size (so I could take it backpacking).  

 

How did you start your writing career?

I suppose I started as most writers do, by first being a reader.  Enjoying stories, language.  Reading all I could.  Then, you know: writing little stories in dull pencil on one side of a gray piece of ruled, elementary-school paper.  Later, studying journalism.  Eventually, the lengths of the stories grew, and I tricked myself into thinking that spending five years writing the same story was a normal and enjoyable pursuit!

 

Tell us about your next release.

 

It’s my first short story collection, called “The Mayfly.  In it, there’s a rollicking road trip in the form of a scientific journal article, a Pushcart-nominated bike ride with a pro cyclist learning the cost of greatness, and a glimpse through resentful eyes at the Manhattan Project’s first-ever nuclear chain reaction. Anchoring the collection is “Man of Letters,” a series of letters penned by a young writer during his deadly visit home to Virginia City, Nevada, in 1869.  I can’t wait to see it out in the world!

 


About the Author

Ben Rogers is the author of the novels The Flamer and The Heavy Side. His work has been published in The Rumpus, PANK, McSweeney's Internet Tendency, The Portland Review, Arroyo Literary Review, The Nevada Review, and Wag's Revue, and has earned the Nevada Arts Council Fellowship and the Sierra Arts Foundation grant. He is also the lead author of Nanotechnology: Understanding Small Systems, the first-ever comprehensive textbook on nanotechnology, and Nanotechnology: The Whole Story, both of which earned the CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title Award from the American Library Association. He studied engineering and journalism in college and has worked as a business analyst, a newspaper reporter, a teacher, and a scientist at various labs, including Oak Ridge National Laboratory and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He is currently the Director of Engineering at NevadaNano. He lives in Reno with his family.


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