Utopia PR

Aug 21, 2021

Utopia PR – Adam Bender 

 

A sci-fi satire about seeking work-life balance while doing public relations for an authoritarian president.

PR extraordinaire Blake Hamner (the n is silent) put off his honeymoon for his big break: joining a major political campaign for president. Now, the "Hammer" struggles to make time for his marriage as Crisis Communications Manager for Our Leader, who since taking power has become increasingly mad and totalitarian.

The Hammer starts to reconsider his career choices when one of Our Leader's savage steel hounds attacks the Comms team at a press conference. He'd love to talk about his erratic job with his wife, Triple-N news anchor Maria Worthington, but they have a rule: the broadcast journalist doesn't ask Blake for inside information about his work, and the spin doctor doesn't use their relationship as leverage on what Maria reports. They say you shouldn't keep things from each other in a marriage, but it's OK—the only secrets between Blake and Maria are professional.

When a revolutionary levels grave allegations against Our Leader—and accuses Blake of distributing disinformation and propaganda to cover it up—the PR rep who thought he could talk his way out of any crisis finds himself utterly trapped in a dystopian job.

SPSFC Year 

Subgenres: Dystopian, Humorous

Date first published:  February 22, 2021

On Kindle Unlimited: No

Book Links

Goodreads
Amazon

Author Information

Twitter: https://twitter.com/watchadam

Website: https://www.adambenderwrites.com/

Biography: Adam Bender is an award-winning journalist and author of speculative fiction that explores modern-day societal fears with a mix of action, romance and humor. Bender's latest novel is Utopia PR, a speculative satire about a public-relations specialist who struggles to find work-life balance while managing crisis after crisis for a dystopian American president. It won the 2021 IndieReader Discovery Award for Humor. Previously, Bender wrote The Wanderer and the New West, a near-future western about a rogue vigilante who seeks redemption in a lawless America that fully protects the rights of armed citizens to stand their ground. Named to Kirkus Reviews' Best Books of 2018, the novel also won gold for Dystopia in the 2018 Readers’ Favorite Awards and best Western Fiction in the 2018 National Indie Excellence Awards. Bender authored We, The Watched and Divided We Fall in a dystopian series about an amnesiac who struggles to conform in a surveillance society where the government keeps a Watched list of its own citizens. Also, Bender has published several short stories. In his day job as a journalist, Bender covers telecom and internet regulation for Communications Daily. He has won awards for his reporting from the Society of Professional Journalists, the Specialized Information Publishers Association, and the Society for Advancing Business Editing and Writing. Bender lives in Philadelphia with his wife Mallika and son Rishi. He’s usually a rather modest and amiable fellow.

Other information

Cover artist name: Bailey McGinn

Cover artist website: https://www.baileydesignsbooks.com/about/

Editor/Formatter’s name: Jim Spivey

Editor/Formatter’s website: http://working-vaykay.com/