You’re terrified. If anyone asked you if you were terrified you laugh it off and try to take the shake out of your knees and the wobble out of your voice, but you’re terrified. The carbine in your hands gives you strength though. It gives you credence and it gives you umph and a couple of table spoons of rock and roll so you step out from behind the corner and sight it down the alley and drop those zombie scum one at a time, the rounds booming apocalyptically in the silent night air. You drop the spent magazine and slap a fresh one in, slap the bolt release and bring the fresh round home as the army at the end of the lane amasses, teeming and angry. Smell the rot, taste the cordite, feel the fear. Then, your neighbor steps out from behind the Chevy he was washing and asks you if you’re okay and you lower the broomstick and say: “Just checking to make sure this broomstick is straight.”
And he nods because he’s been watching you pretend to shoot zombies back here long enough to know that’s bullshit, but not long enough to know that you’re not a crazy person and that calling you on it won’t mean a broomstick thumping. You take the broomstick back into the garage and go back to whatever chore you were working on before your mind wandered off to lala land. For me, this is a daily struggle. The dilemma becomes: How do I live a productive life when every trip through the grocery store becomes a “what would I do if…” scenario. I’ve found that, generally speaking, you can either medicate, or meditate.
The chemical side of the equation involves throwing a muzzle on your brain. Some blinders and a riding crop and it’ll trot along to your heart’s content. Won’t be an adventure, but you’ll clear all the hurdles and get a wave of golf claps for your troubles.
On the other side you throw a blanket over its back grab a handful of mane and pray to God it doesn’t stomp you when it throws you to the dirt. I prefer the second one.
For me, writing is a way of putting a crowd outside the stables when I jump on. The stories are up there. Always up there. They play on a loop like shadows, flickering inconsequentially over the duller parts of my day, keeping me engaged, not in the world, but in mine. My characters are always there with me. Making decisions with me throughout the day, walking beside me and in my skin. A car accident outside my place and as I run out to see if everything is okay I think, “I wonder if this would bring Parks back to Afghanistan.” Or, “ would Etch be out there doing triage right now?” or “ would Harkin even look out the window?” It makes me able to apply my characters to the real world. To make them three-dimensional.
Sebastian Parks is drowning in a flood of his own creation. Dishonorably discharged from the Army, he’s wracked with night terrors and an anger that he can’t abate. Unemployable and uninterested in anything resembling a normal job, Parks makes his living in fugitive apprehension, finding wanted felons on Facebook and thumping them into custody with his ex-military buddies John Harkin and Eric “Etch” Echevarria. When the body of a teenage Muslim boy is found in front of a downtown Denver nightclub Parks, Harkin and Etch are called on to do what they do best: Find bad men and make them pay.
First-time author Kellen Burden serves up edgy humor, brutal action and characters you can’t get enough of. Flash Bang will keep you turning pages until the end.
Received “Honorable Mention at Los Angeles Book Festival 2014″
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Genre – Thriller, Mystery
Rating – R
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