Three Days in April
BY Edward AshtonHarper collins2015Query Letter
Over the course of Three Days in April, Anders Jensen learns some important life lessons:
Cyborgs are cheapskates. If one offers you a ton of money for what seems like a simple consulting gig, run.
Data thieves make bad roommates. If you live with one, keep your family photos in a storage locker at the bus depot.
The guy at the donut shop gives everyone thirteen donuts when they order a dozen. He doesn’t really like you.
If you find yourself in a love triangle with a barista who might also be a ninja, and a short-tempered Neanderthal -- go with the cave lady.
In a world divided between the genetically engineered elite and the Homo sap masses, Anders is an anomaly: heavily modified, but still living in a rented room next to a crack house. All he wants is to finally land a tenure-track faculty position, and maybe meet a nice chimera -- but when a nightmare plague rips through Hagerstown, he finds himself dodging kinetic energy weapons, rioting Homo saps, and a donut store clerk who’s not as polite as he seems, all while trying to avoid his new girlfriend’s government assassin ex. As Baltimore descends into chaos, Anders has three days to discover what really happened to the people of Hagerstown, before simmering tensions between the engineered and the un-modified erupt into open warfare.
Three Days in April is my first novel, and is complete at 89,000 words. I am currently hard at work on my second. My publication history includes the novella September Dogs (underwritten by a grant from the Loyola Council for the Arts) and over a dozen short stories, which have appeared in venues including InterText, The Lowell Review, The Brownstone Quarterly, and Louisiana Literature. I have also authored numerous scientific articles, as well as four graduate-level medical texts.