Shout-Out: Cancer Nation and The Hide by Laura Bynum

Laura Bynum, author of Veracity, an excellent dystipian novel which I reviewed a few years back, currently has two novel proposals up on Inkshares, The Nation and The Hide.  I'll explain more about Inkshares after the book synopses and videos.


The Nation

Cyrus and Melba Crowe have found and trademarked the cure for cancer. All they ask in exchange for putting it on the market is a benevolent dictatorship.

Leader of the Illuminaughty

Head of an underground group calling itself the Illuminaughty, Emeritus Locshaw is leading guerilla-style Meet & Greets with an unwilling public. The point of these armed visits, to divest citizens of their willful ignorance and teach them about the poisoned well from which so many of their products and services flow, The Crowe Corporation. Never out of costume, Emeritus is an enigma to the man who loves her, and a thorn in Cyrus Crowe’s side. Should her campaign against his empire and beloved mascot, the Travel Angel, ever find its way into the public domain, it just may sprout legs.

The Travel Angel

Eve Sontag plays the Crowe Corporation’s omnipresent mascot. A luminary with approval rating s second only to leaders in times of war, she’s treated as a holy relic by C-Corp’s adoring customers. Even so, the bad blood surrounding her forced entry into Cyrus Crowe’s service is beginning to boil over, and the secret she carries may just be the thing to set the country free.

The Hide

Synesthesia: a neurological phenomenon in which stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads, automatically, to a second sensory or cognitive pathway. Some theorize that synesthesia is the next step in human evolution.

Rhys Overland experiences the world differently than most people. She identifies numbers by color, experiences a strong odor when hearing certain words, and has an adverse effect on anything electronic when angry. Left at the door of a Virginia orphanage at age three and raised in no less than 24 foster homes, she’s spent the last two decades working off-the-radar jobs while making a slow journey to the muddy river that cuts the country’s belly in two. It is the place where she was cut out of her mother. A place in which she feels both at home, and never more vulnerable.

When someone from her mother’s past, someone who was present at her birth, arrives at the door, Rhys knows she won’t be home for long. She knows what she has to do: run.

Inkshares is a publisher based around pre-orders.  The idea is that authors must prove that there is interest in their novels by achieving a minimum number of pre-orders before they'll publish it (750 copies for ebook, 1000 copies for print).  Inkshares edits, designs and markets the book.  Physical books are then mailed (currently for free) to those who pre-ordered it, and are stocked in stores.

Cancer Nation and The Hide are currently available for pre-order for US $9.99 on the site.  The list price (what you'd pay after the book has been printed, assuming they get the necessary 1000+ pre-orders, will be US $14.99).  If the book is printed, pre-order readers also get the ebook copy included. There's a second option to be a 'super reader', which includes 3 copies of the book and your name in the back for $29.97.

The books have been entered in the Nerdist Collection Contest, which would give the books specific Nerdist branding when published if they win.