Midnight 99 is available digitally through Amazon for $2.99 on October 6. Thanks to NeoText Publishing, Monkeys Fighting Robots has an exclusive look at chapter 2 of Ashley Christine’s debut novella, a classic hard-boiled whodunnit. (Scroll to the bottom to read the book.)
“MIDNIGHT 99 is a reaction to my frequent existential angst of living on a planet that my species is slowly destroying,” – Christine.
“When I couldn’t find an answer as to why we humans are so out of sync with our environment, I made up my own—which is that giant Reptilian space Lizards are using humans to terraform planet Earth to an ideal Lizard temperature. They also created the patriarchy, wealth inequality and were producers of Eddie Murphy’s 1985 hit ‘Party All The Time.’” – Christine.
Also, as a genderqueer/non-binary woman and unabashed eccentric, I wanted to create a character that someone like me could relate to. Enter Tulsa Kalhoun, a chaos-baiting, genderfluid, bisexual dumpster fire of a human being. She’s the unholy spawn of Hunter S. Thompson, Grace Jones, and Tank Girl. She is loud, unapologetically herself, and always just a little bit horny. Like me, she’s queer and a weirdo—a queerdo. Which is a word I just made up. And trademarked.” – Christine.
About the book:
Meet Tulsa Kalhoun. Once upon a time she was a well-respected, pantsuit-wearing broadcast journalist— until an inconvenient supernatural awakening left her career and sanity in tatters. Now she stumbles through this world peddling a private pharmacy of perception-expanding herbal narcotics, made with plants you’ve never heard of from places not found on maps. But when Tulsa wakes up in a hotel bathroom on the eve of the secret unveiling of Earth as the ultimate Reptilian vacation destination, blacked out from a particularly indulgent vision quest bender, she knows that she’s supremely and epically screwed. Because a supposedly unkillable Lizard Overlord named Doug is dead on the toilet.
With no memory of what happened— and an ever more tenuous hold on the daily cocktail of alien pharmacologicals that barely keep her tethered to this plane of existence—Tulsa has to retrace her steps, searching for clues of how she got to her current predicament. She’ll have to wade through a swamp of daunting challenges and colorfully shady characters like the Illuminati, the Youthinati, debauched Reptilian tourists, kinky gray aliens who are way too into butt stuff, Neckties, Necronauts, off-brand soda, her super-hot half-human half-Lizard ex-girlfriend, and her own self-destructive tendencies.
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What did you think of Christine’s writing style? Comment below with your thoughts.
