Control Versus Agency
Rhea’s Game follows two teenagers who are trapped inside a televised survival system where obedience is rewarded, resistance is punished, and humiliation is broadcast as entertainment. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
The idea grew out of watching how entertainment, social media, and economic pressure increasingly blur together. I wanted to explore what happens when survival itself becomes content—when people are rewarded for compliance and punished publicly for resistance. The game format let me push that to its logical extreme and ask what choice really means inside a system designed to control outcomes.
Do you see the system in the book as exaggerated fiction—or an extension of real structures we already live with?
It’s an extension. The world in Rhea’s Game is heightened, but the mechanics are familiar: surveillance, performative success, and invisible rules that favor those already in power. The story just removes the polite language and shows the machinery underneath.
What were some themes that were important for you to explore in this book?
Control versus agency. Identity under pressure. How systems convince people to participate in their own confinement. I was also interested in quiet resistance—the small, human choices that don’t look heroic but still matter when everything else is stacked against you.
What is the next book you’re working on, and when can fans expect it?
I’m currently working on Book 2 of Rhea’s Game, alongside the sequel to Memoirs of a Serial Killer. I also have My Twelve-Year-Old Wife launching in just a few days. New releases are planned throughout 2026 as I continue expanding these interconnected psychological thriller worlds.
Author Links: GoodReads | Facebook | Website | Amazon
Previously published as Chloroform Wars — Runner-Up (Wild Card), Paris Book Festival. Revised edition with two additional chapters.
They don’t execute rebels anymore — they broadcast them.
The cameras never blink. The audience never looks away.
In a near-future America, teenagers are forced into televised survival competitions where obedience is rewarded and resistance is punished publicly. Winning doesn’t mean freedom. It means staying useful to the audience. Losing doesn’t mean death — it means humiliation, punishment, and erasure, all in front of millions.
Rhea Schwartz has spent her whole life being ignored. Now the system has finally noticed her — and it wants her broken for entertainment.
Ryker Vale signed up for the program for one reason: money. He never expected to become trapped inside a machine built to control people through spectacle.
Matched against each other and broadcast nationwide, Rhea and Ryker face a brutal choice: play the roles they’re assigned… or turn the show into a rebellion the whole country can’t ignore.
Dark, brutal, and uncomfortably plausible, Rhea’s Game is a dystopian psychological survival thriller about power, surveillance, and what happens when suffering becomes entertainment.
Perfect for fans of The Hunger Games, Battle Royale, and Black Mirror.
Posted on February 7, 2026, in Interviews and tagged author, book, book recommendations, book review, book reviews, book shelf, bookblogger, books, books to read, Dan Uselton, ebook, fiction, goodreads, indie author, kindle, kobo, literature, nook, novel, psychological thriller, read, reader, reading, Rhea's Game, story, suspense, thriller, writer, writing. Bookmark the permalink. Leave a comment.
Leave a comment
Comments 0