ON THE ROCKS

It’s not your Grandpa’s Prohibition

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In 1990 the Soviet Union collapsed with a whimper.  But what if it hadn’t?  What if it had gone down in a panic, desperately lashing out; attacking western economic systems and ultimately sending nuclear warheads flying against China?  With it would come over two billion dead, a prolonged, devastating world-wide economic collapse, regional wars and the rise of religious fanaticism infiltrating national governments.  What if there was no digital revolution, no World Wide Web, no Global Economy?  There would just be darkness, fear, paranoia and oppression.

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Thirty years later in a very different 21st century, the fundamentalist American Salvation Party now governs the United States, and a new Prohibition is the law on the land.  The collapse of the intricate web of international trade brought to America a devastating economic collapse called The Big Crush. Generations that had never know poverty were now mired in it.  America turned inward, isolationist, discarding the gridlocked rabble of democracy for the clarity of a charismatic strongman speaking the Word of God, Thaddeus E. Tubwell, 

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Now two unlikely heroes emerge in the Pacific Northwest; Arthur Toynbee; a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian whose scathing book detailing America’s fall from grace has ostracized him from society now runs a bootlegging operation simply to bedevil a corrupt federal government that has deemed him an Enemy of the State.  Banner Lyme: a burned-out war hero turned mercenary pilot, who smuggles liquor over the Olympic Range in his combat-modified seaplane just for the freedom to fly and the thrill of the chase.  They are two men living on the edge of a decayed society, brought together by chance and thrust unwillingly into a world of international blackmail and intrigue.

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A powerful new nation has emerged from the collapse of the 20th century superpowers: Siblaska.  Born of Alaska’s secession and Siberia’s abandonment, Siblaska is becoming a major player on the world stage, and it needs these two men to score an espionage coupe against its southern rival, America.  Caught between these forces, Toynbee and Lyme are coerced into performing a dangerous rescue aboard Shangri-La, a floating speak-easy off the Washington state coast.  To succeed they must contend with a corrupt but powerful televangelist-turned-POTUS, a ruthless Japanese crime syndicate and a beautiful Siblaskan spy who may be there to help them...or betray them.

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STRAIGHT UP

Planes, Trains and Automobiles

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It has been a year since ex-patriot Americans Arthur Toynbee and Banner Lyme were coerced by the Siblaskan spy network into performing a rescue aboard the offshore speakeasy Shangri-La, and their success against the Reverend President Thaddeus Tubwell has thwarted his Machiavellian schemes, if only for a while.  The Japanese crime syndicate’s bootlegging operations in the Pacific Northwest have yet to fully recover, and the power struggle within the Siblaskan government has shaken out completely in their favor.

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Back in Sitka, Arthur and the beautiful spy Natalie Smirnova have settled into an idyllic routine as he returns to writing history and she comes to terms with the death of her young friend and protégé Nikki Oursland, the only member of their team that failed to get out of Shangri-La alive.  Meanwhile, Captain Lyme is in the wind, his whereabouts unknown, devastated at having lost Nikki with whom he had fallen in love at first sight.

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Then comes news out of the arid plains of Colorado:  Nikki Oursland is alive.

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Having survived the explosion that crippled Shangri-La, she languishes in a hellish penal farm as Tubwell’s prisoner and the bait in his fevered plan to punish Siblaska and exact revenge on the President’s hated enemy, Arthur Toynbee. 

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The team is reunited, but with no time to prepare, they launch a hastily conceived “straight up” rescue 1000 miles deep inside Tubwell’s domain.  Getting in was easy, getting out not so much.  With their extraction flight blocked they must improvise an overland escape across half a continent rife with poverty, fear and paranoia.  Worse yet there is a new underground political faction threatening Tubwell’s grip on power that is standing between the rescue team and safety, trapping them squarely in the middle of a budding civil war with no way out.

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Endangered by the forces pursuing them and those in their midst, Arthur, Natalie and Lyme will make new allies and face old enemies as they fight their way from the Rocky Mountains to their old Seattle stomping grounds on a rendezvous to another showdown with the Reverend President Thaddeus E. Tubwell.

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NO CHASER

Romance, Revolution & Revenge

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Arthur Toynbee, Banner Lyme and Natalie Smirnova have succeeded in rescuing Nikki Oursland from President Tubwell’s America…But it isn’t all his anymore.  A rogue faction has stolen the Pacific Northwest and proclaimed it Cascadia.  To reclaim it, Tubwell launches an invasion that fails badly, and a World War looms on the horizon as global powers begin to take sides.

            Despite their close bond, our heroes have drifted apart.  Arthur leaves Sitka and returns to America, settling above a saloon in Portland.  Lyme answers the call to arms and serves as a mercenary combat pilot, flying for the Americans. Natalie is promoted to SIO Assistant Director and feels trapped behind a desk. Nikki, against orders, returns to America on a personal mission and inadvertently starts a minor revolution.

            In Cascadia, royal governor Bob McKenzie, covertly backed by the British Crown, struggles both with the war against America and with his tenuous control of Cascadia’s own vicious militia that terrorizes the countryside.  In America, Tubwell is in crisis as well. As the war drags on, other regions grumble about independence, his political support is ebbing, and his hated enemy Arthur Toynbee has been lured into giving radio broadcasts that are gaining a wide national audience. 

Desperate measures may need to be taken…

In Siblaska, Alexi Romanov hosts a summit in Sitka to foster peace, but some of the attendees want anything but. Important personalities gather from across the globe to debate, argue, schmooze and cajole each other, unaware that a terrorist plot is being conducted under their very noses with consequences that could launch another Day of Fire.

  With the stakes high and the clock ticking, our heroes must band together to throw back one last shot, with no chaser, and face their final showdown with the Reverend President Thaddeus E. Tubwell.

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