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An Unabashedly Progressive Manifesto
Tristan 4 America follows a laid-off tech executive grieving the loss of his career and camaraderie, whose growing anger at American politics drives him toward an ambitious but highly impractical plan. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
This is a “write what you know”–style book, in the sense that, after that first pandemic summer, I retired from a Sales Operations job in Silicon Valley, and I have for some time been experiencing anger at the state of American politics, an anger that runs through my brain constantly. In fact, this exchange between Tristan, the protagonist, and his wife Cindy, from page 38 of the book, fits me perfectly:
“It’s the politics, honey,” he said. “The politics of the moment. It just fucking pisses me off so much. You’ve seen me when I get exercised about it.”
“Well, we haven’t lost any friends yet, but yeah, we’ve come pretty close.”
“Yeah, and for every one of those times I just sort of lose it, there are hours and hours of just running over all this shit in my addled brain. It’s driving me shithouse.”
Beyond this, on page 22, Tristan first becomes aware of the amounts of money even failed presidential candidates can pull in, a realization that gives him the idea to run himself. In that passage, the “latest Republican challenger, a former southern state governor” was rather transparently inspired by former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley. I distinctly recall when Haley announced her candidacy, with the revelation that she had, at the time of her announcement, already raised two million dollars for her campaign.
So the inspiration was literally what was happening in real-time as I was developing the story in my head. I had been working on a sequel to my first book, The Cyclone Release, and I was pretty stuck, partly because the 2024 campaign was in full swing and I was constantly getting distracted by the latest outrage. So I decided to put the sequel down and write Tristan 4 America instead. The Cyclone Release took me somewhere between 11 and 13 years to write. Tristan 4 America took me three.
Did you begin with the political satire, the characters, or the idea of someone searching for purpose after losing his career?
I’m not ashamed to admit that I created the character of Tristan to speak for me. In fact, in my pitch to publishers, I described the story as an “unabashedly progressive manifesto.” As such, I definitely started with the character of Tristan, after which the whole thing just became so damn much fun. Creating the characters of Shonda, Nance, and Laz just set the table for this great line of irreverent banter—the kind of thing that is really common in the kinds of high-performing Silicon Valley teams I was accustomed to working in during my career. So, as far as the satire is concerned, I was just having a blast doing the writing on this one. And as for the conflict of someone searching, late in life, for purpose, that was a natural conflict that just fit the story like a glove, and just happens to also be something many, many people struggle with, particularly late in life. I kind of have to pinch myself when I reflect on the writing of this book. I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to have that much fun writing a book again, and I think I came away with something intriguing and thought-provoking.
Tristan is both sympathetic and flawed. How did you balance his ambition, frustration, humor, and vulnerability?
Man, this is a great question to think about. I guess the only honest way to answer it would be to admit that I write fiction partly to engage my own fantasies. As a person, a writer, who would never have the stones to do what Tristan does, to stand in front of audiences, some of them innately hostile, and say the things he does—to say nothing of running for President of the United States—I am able to create that person and those scenarios in fiction. We novelists live vicariously through our characters, so I created a character who has a balance of qualities that I most decidedly do not have, but really wish I did. So the answer to the question of how I balanced those qualities in Tristan is that I did so by creating a person I personally would love to be. One of the first comments from one of my first readers was, “I’m not sure I like Tristan very much.” And I actually loved that because I never want any protagonist to be 100% lovable and sympathetic. I don’t want that because that’s not real. That’s not how humans work. We all have a dark side, and we’re all molded to some degree by the circumstances we find ourselves in. And first and foremost, I wanted Tristan to be real. I wanted readers to recognize him in themselves and the people around them, and I think all of his flaws and virtues accomplish that quite well.
What do you hope readers think about after finishing Tristan 4 America?
We live in ignorant times. Everything has been dumbed down so thoroughly that the unthinkable has now happened: we have managed to elect a complete narcissistic buffoon as the “leader of the free world.” And I think one of the results of that general tilt towards ignorance is that intelligent people are reticent to wield their intelligence in their everyday lives. I’ll admit that I personally suffer from this. There’s a fear of not being heard, or of embarrassing oneself by not getting the facts quite right, or of appearing insincere or inauthentic. And so, I hope readers will see in Tristan a person who has no compunctions, a person who is not just willing, but anxious, even inspired, to wield an intelligence that has been laying dormant throughout a rewarding, but somewhat superficial career in Silicon Valley. I of course want people to learn from the facts Tristan promotes in his diatribes, but more than that, I want them to be inspired to, as Shonda describes it early in the book, “bring the funk” just like he does. In fact, I’m hoping the book will change me, and that I’ll do a better job of bringing the funk in my own life—beyond that funk I’m bringing through Tristan’s voice, of course.
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After the pandemic costs him his career-and his sense of purpose-Tristan Heller makes an unthinkable decision: he runs for president of the United States. Not to win, but to say what no one else will.
Backed by a scrappy crew of Silicon Valley outsiders, Tristan’s long-shot campaign cuts through the noise of the 2024 election with blunt, incendiary truth. What begins as a protest quickly gains traction-drawing in voters hungry for honesty…and attention from far more dangerous forces.
As his message spreads, so does the backlash.
Online fury spills into the real world. Money, misinformation, and power close ranks. And Tristan finds himself in a fight he never intended to start-against a system that doesn’t reward disruption, and the people who will do anything to silence it.
In a nation defined by division, speaking the truth can make you a target.
A sharp, provocative literary novel with the pulse of a political thriller, Tristan 4 America explores the fault lines of modern democracy-from campaign finance and disinformation to identity, power, and the high cost of dissent.
Tristan 4 America
Bruce Overby’s Tristan 4 America is a political satire with the bones of a campaign novel, the mouth of a Silicon Valley happy hour, and the nerves of a country that can’t stop vibrating. Tristan Heller is a laid-off tech executive who misses his team, misses being useful, and is furious enough about American politics to do something wildly impractical. When he hears how much money even doomed presidential candidates can raise, he decides to launch a campaign of his own. It starts as a scheme, sure, but Overby has more fun than that in mind. The campaign becomes a strange vessel for grief, vanity, civic anger, friendship, and the weird thrill of being listened to.
What makes the book work is the ensemble around Tristan. Shonda, Nance, Laz, Cletus, Sissy, Shay, and Cindy all bring their own rhythm to the story, and the dialogue often has the loose, needling warmth of people who’ve known each other long enough to be rude with affection. Early on, Shonda sums up their old tech life by saying, “This has been a magical run, guys,” and that feeling carries into the campaign, even when the whole enterprise is ethically wobbly and legally sweaty. The team’s chemistry gives the novel its comic charge. They argue, joke, scheme, drink, panic, and somehow keep building something that feels more real than Tristan intended.
The novel is also very much about money, media, and performance. Tristan’s campaign grows because he’s good in front of people, but also because modern attention rewards the blunt, the funny, and the slightly unhinged. Overby is sharp on how political messaging becomes content, how content becomes fundraising, and how outrage can turn into both a business model and a personality. The campaign’s “rapid response” gimmicks, social media machinery, podcast appearances, and donor spikes all feel specific and lived-in. It’s funny, but the humor lands because the mechanisms feel recognizable.
As the book widens, it brings in darker material through Howie, right-wing trolls, the Patriots of the Pacific, and the Pilots of Progress. That thread gives the novel a more dangerous edge, turning what begins as a satirical campaign caper into a story about political violence and the fantasy of power. Overby doesn’t treat the militia material as a separate genre detour. It grows out of the same world of resentment, online bravado, and broken civic trust that Tristan is trying, clumsily and sometimes selfishly, to talk about. By the end, when Tristan admits, “I’m thinking it’s a goddamn good thing I never actually became president,” the joke carries a real shiver.
Tristan 4 America is a lively, profane, surprisingly earnest novel about a man who backs into a public voice and then has to live with what that voice stirs up. It’s at its best when it lets its characters talk, spar, and talk some more, because that’s where the book’s politics feel most human. Tristan may begin with a cynical plan, but the story around him keeps finding pockets of sincerity inside the hustle. Overby has written a comic political novel about people trying to make sense of a country where every speech, post, donation, joke, and threat seems to arrive already plugged into the same overloaded circuit.
Pages: 226 | ISBN : 978-1972197080
Autocrat
Autocrat, by Jeff Nesbit, is a scalding political satire about Rex Vanner, a broke-but-blustering reality-TV mogul who runs for president as a bargaining stunt and discovers that grievance, spectacle, and shamelessness can become a governing philosophy. With the help of the coldly analytical Elias Thorne and a cast of zealots, billionaires, opportunists, and true believers, Rex turns public life into a ratings machine until the joke hardens into authoritarian rule.
I found the book both funny and queasy-making, which is exactly the pressure point it seems designed to hit. Nesbit writes in broad, acid colors: gold rooms, trembling aides, performative cruelty, political rallies that feel like bad comedy clubs with worse consequences. The satire isn’t subtle, but subtlety would almost feel dishonest here. The novel works because it understands the grotesque intimacy between entertainment and power, how a crowd can be trained to mistake humiliation for truth.
What I appreciated most was the way the book treats autocracy not as a lightning strike but as a series of small permissions. People laugh, excuse, profit, rationalize, and soon the machinery is moving on its own. Rex is ridiculous, but the people around him are often more frightening because they are less ridiculous. Elias, Jared Caine, and Julian Silk give the novel its colder edge; they see Rex not as a leader but as a door left unlocked. That makes the book feel less like a parody of one man and more like an autopsy of a culture willing to be entertained into submission.
This book is for readers of political satire, dystopian fiction, authoritarian thrillers, and near-future satire, especially those who like their comedy barbed and their warnings delivered with a grin full of broken glass. Readers who enjoyed Sinclair Lewis’s It Can’t Happen Here will recognize the same dread, though Nesbit’s version is louder, more media-drunk, and built for the age of screens. Autocrat is a brutal carnival mirror held up to democracy, and the most disturbing thing about it is how familiar the reflection looks.
Pages: 289 | ASIN : B0GX313SRZ
The Illusion of Freedom
Day Drinkers follows a woman on a Caribbean island desperate to escape her dead-end job who takes a risk captaining a small sailing vessel for a corrupt music artist, sending her into a life-or-death situation. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
The inspiration for Day Drinkers came from the decade I spent living and working in the Caribbean as a travel writer, performer, and liveaboard sailor. I was fascinated by how easily escape and suffering coexist in so-called paradise. The novel is a meditation on the consequences of rejecting society’s rules in pursuit of the illusion of freedom, and on how we choose to either make sense of our past or run from it.
Was there anything from your own life that you put into the characters in your novel?
Absolutely. My books always emerge from lived experience. My debut, Zone Trip, was inspired by the fifteen years I spent with a secret artist society in San Francisco. For Day Drinkers, I drew from a decade of sailing, performing, and working as a travel writer in the Caribbean. I want my stories to feel authentic, so I live them. Most of the characters in Day Drinkers are composites of people I met in the islands, viewed through the lens of absurdism and satire.
Some events in the book were chillingly similar to real-life events. Did you take any inspiration from real life when developing this book?
Yes. Easter Cay, the island at the center of Day Drinkers, was loosely inspired by exclusive enclaves owned by billionaires and celebrities, most notably the infamous Little Saint James, formerly owned by Jeffrey Epstein. As a traveling circus artist, I was hired to perform at private parties for powerful people. This book reflects what happens when wealth and secrecy collide with poverty and desperation—something I witnessed firsthand. While Day Drinkers is a work of fiction, it asks very real questions about complicity, exploitation, and how paradise can become a prison for those who serve it.
What is the next book that you’re working on, and when can your fans expect it out?
My next literary thriller is titled Bufo. It explores the use of spirit medicine and its strange aftermath. In this story, DMT entities begin to manifest as characters. Commercially, it’s in the same vein as Nine Perfect Strangers—but more positive and surreal. From a literary perspective, a major influence is William Burroughs’s Queer, with its raw, unsettling exploration of altered consciousness and outsider desire. Bufo is expected in 2027.
Author Links: Goodreads | X (Twitter) | Facebook | Website | YouTube | Medium | Instagram | Spotify | Amazon
🏝️ Invited to a party on a forbidden pleasure island
🍹 Swept into the corrupt world of a country music legend
☠️ Flees to Cuba, hunted by drug and human traffickers
🥥 Inspired by the dark reality of Jeffrey Epstein’s world
🌊 Day Drinkers: Where the American Dream washes ashore
From her office window on St. Columba, Gemma gazes out at the mysterious pleasure island just beyond the reef. Owned by country music legend Cowboi Rivers, the exclusive retreat lures the world’s wealthy and powerful with promises of secrecy and illicit pleasures. Meanwhile, the locals keep their distance, wary of the wild parties and whispered rumors of drugs and disappearing girls.
Desperate to escape her dead-end job, Gemma seizes a risky opportunity to captain the sailing vessel Mariposa for Cowboi’s shadowy empire. She finds herself swept into a world of corrupt elites. When a cocaine pickup in the Dominican Republic spirals into a deadly double-cross, Gemma and her crew enlist the aid of a Vodou priestess, a hard-drinking mariner, and a rumba-loving boat boy to escape. With her enemies closing in, Gemma sails toward Cuba, facing a storm that threatens to sweep her away.
Day Drinkers is a tantalizing medley of Saint X and Don’t Stop the Carnival, seasoned with a dash of The Rum Diary. Drawing from her ten years as a liveaboard sailor and Caribbean travel writer, Kitty Turner, an American Absurdism revivalist, delivers a gripping tale of identity and redemption through her unique talent for rollicking storytelling and deep philosophical inquiry.
Day Drinkers
Day Drinkers is a lush, sun-baked story about Gemma, a woman caught between worlds on the fictional Caribbean island of St. Columba. The book follows her tangled life among drifters, hustlers, and dreamers who drink through the heat and chase meaning in the wreckage of paradise. Gemma’s story begins with small talk under a tarp at Boon Dock Marine and unfolds into something much larger, her struggle with identity, survival, and the ghosts of her family’s past. Author Kitty Turner paints the island with heat and texture: the smell of rum, salt, and cheap perfume, the pulse of reggae, and the quiet ache of belonging. This is a story about the people who live in the margins of paradise, where beauty and corruption coexist and survival is an act of endurance.
What I loved most about Turner’s writing is how it feels it rolls over you, thick and heavy, then suddenly clears into moments of stillness. Her sentences swing between gritty and lyrical, giving the island a heartbeat that feels alive. Gemma isn’t an easy heroine, she’s messy, flawed, and stubborn, but she’s real. I found myself rooting for her even when I wanted to shake her. The dialogue feels sharp and natural, full of humor and island slang, and the author never softens the hard edges of poverty, addiction, or moral compromise. The story’s spirituality creeps in like humidity, subtle at first, then impossible to ignore. Turner threads mysticism through realism in a way that feels both grounded and haunting.
The island itself sometimes feels more vivid than the people who inhabit it, and a few side characters blur together. But the novel’s rhythm, its mix of danger, longing, and low-simmering dread, kept me hooked. I admired how Turner doesn’t try to redeem everyone. She just lets them be, in all their contradictions. The result is a book that feels lived-in, like a slow afternoon after too much sun and too little water.
Day Drinkers reads as if Donna Tartt spent a summer in the Caribbean with Taylor Jenkins Reid’s eye for glamour and ruin, spinning a story that smells of salt, sweat, and spilled rum. I’d recommend Day Drinkers to readers who love character-driven stories with atmosphere so thick you can taste it. If you’ve ever wanted a novel that feels like a hangover and a confession rolled into one, this one’s for you.
Pages: 358 | ASIN : B0FLF6MW68
The Sycamore Centennial Parade (Part I)
In The Sycamore Centennial Parade, Charles McGrail spins a nostalgic, often hilarious yarn about a trio of quirky small-town characters—Babylon “Milkman” Hurley, his brother-in-law Clark “Poodle” Canderankle, and the indomitable Jericho—who bumble their way into promoting their town’s centennial celebration. Set in 1978, Sycamore, the story draws from everyday absurdity to craft a heartwarming comedy of errors, rich with banter, unlikely schemes, and quiet reflections on identity, family, and small-town life. As Jericho rallies her lovable but unreliable crew to canvas local businesses for parade support, what unfolds is less a professional campaign and more a slow-moving circus, complete with tie mishaps, dietary debates, and diner drama.
I loved the writing style. It’s alive with personality. McGrail’s voice crackles with humor, clever turns of phrase, and old-school charm. The dialogue sings—snappy, smart, and so natural you forget you’re reading. His characters? They’re ridiculous in the best way. Lovable screw-ups with big hearts and bigger mouths. And while the plot hums at a leisurely pace, I never found myself bored. Every scene feels like a short sitcom episode—tight, colorful, and just a little chaotic. The author doesn’t chase big drama. He trusts in the small stuff: banter, nostalgia, clashing egos, and the slow burn of friendships tested and reaffirmed. It’s low-stakes storytelling with high emotional payoff.
The story is long, and sometimes the jokes stretch a beat too far or the scenes linger past their welcome. But oddly, I didn’t mind much. The indulgence feels earned. McGrail clearly adores his characters—especially Milk and Poodle—and that affection is infectious. Beneath all the antics is a surprisingly tender meditation on second chances and reinvention. These aren’t just goofballs; they’re men pushed out of their old lives and forced to find new ways to matter. Jericho, too, shines as the competent, quietly frustrated linchpin who holds it all together. If you’ve ever juggled family and ambition, you’ll see yourself in her.
The Sycamore Centennial Parade is a warm and entertaining love letter to community, misfits, and starting over. It’s a small-town tale with a big, goofy heart. I’d recommend it to fans of Richard Russo or Fannie Flagg, or anyone who loves a character-driven story with quick wit and genuine soul.
Pages: 245 | ASIN : B0F2822P8C
Suffering and Joy
The Heartbreak of Time Travel follows a woman as she travels through time to the past and the future while caring for her husband, who is slowly losing his faculties due to dementia. What was the inspiration for the setup of this novel?
The story is considered a nonfiction novel or literary memoir. The inspiration arises from my husband’s ordeal with frontotemporal dementia (FTD). The events within are either actual events or “adorned” through time travel and sprinkles of fancy as literary devices.
What was the most challenging part of writing your “memoir,” and what was the most rewarding?
Writing a memoir is a person’s own written account of her life and is the retelling of an event or time that impacted the person in such a way that it stands out for her. The most difficult and challenging moments writing this story is how I wish I was writing about someone else’s story and not my own. Remembering how we got here causes me to reminisce into places that will never be and can never be. A future looks daunting because his life expectation is very short now. Thus, I make up a future through time travel into a better future for both of us.
Are there any emotions or memories from your own life that you put into your characters’ lives?
Writing this story is a compilation of both our stories at this point in our lives. It’s an account of the suffering and joy of living through hardship.
What is the next book that you’re working on, and when can your fans expect it?
I just got edits back from an agent friend who also does content editing. That story should be finished by the end of the year and then it’s off to the publishers. It’s a story about a man whose life was filled with amazing experiences and how each experience impacts the end of his life. I love this story. I’m so excited about seeing this one in readers’ hands. I only hope they love it as much as I do.
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Snuffy Cod (Wingate’s alter ego) is the sole caregiver for her dying husband… okay… stop. He does die but sometime in the future—a future she visits on and off through popovers to past and present. Snuffy’s visits occur in fits and starts via some perceived time travel portal. She embarks on these excursions several times throughout the day, hour, minute, second—sometimes simply during a thought. Nothing more. Nothing less. Is it escapism? Of course not. Don’t be silly. Pshaw! Meanwhile, her husband lays flat, unmoving in a hospital bed upstairs on an excruciatingly slow slide toward death—death by molasses slick. Or is he? If Snuffy Cod can remain in the past, even the present, might she be able to prevent a future and, thusly, his impending death?
THE HEARTBREAK OF TIME TRAVEL is a brutally honest deep dive into dementia, caregiving, grief, hope, and love.
The Heartbreak of Time Travel
The Heartbreak of Time Travel is a stirring and fragmented exploration of time, love, and the grit of caregiving. Wingate, through the character Snuffy Cod, navigates a memoir of a woman caring for her husband, who is slowly losing his faculties due to dementia. Each chapter peels back the layers of their relationship as she blends biting humor with raw confessions, touching on everything from the mundane rituals of caregiving to existential reflections on time, memory, and impending loss. It’s a contemplative journey that often leans into the absurd, embracing life’s messiness and fragility with a sense of irony and defiant grace.
Wingate’s writing is both immersive and jarring. She employs a conversational, almost stream-of-consciousness approach that pulls readers into Snuffy’s headspace. This approach initially feels chaotic, especially when Snuffy switches between the first and third person, but it mirrors her fractured reality and internal conflict. Her desperate wish for her husband’s peaceful passing is heartbreaking yet brimming with love. This rawness makes the book feel personal and relatable. There’s no filter, no sugarcoating, just Wingate’s unvarnished truths laid bare.
One of the most memorable aspects of the book is Wingate’s handling of time. She weaves past memories, present duties, and future dreams as if they’re interchangeable, which feels appropriate for a book centered on time travel. In one chapter, Snuffy imagines time reversing so she and her husband can relive their “first kiss,” sparking a fresh, almost whimsical hope amidst the grimness of daily routines. This blend of longing for the past and dread for the future emphasizes the book’s title; it’s the heartbreak of reliving what can never be again, despite her attempts to “zip to future” or “zip to past.”
The humor in this book is one of its strongest elements. Even in moments of frustration, Wingate finds comedic relief. This humor doesn’t detract from the emotional weight. Instead, it makes Snuffy’s pain and resilience feel even more real, grounding the narrative in the strange ways people cope.
The Heartbreak of Timetravel is a challenging yet rewarding read for anyone who’s faced caregiving, loss, or the relentless passage of time. Wingate’s unfiltered and witty approach brings authenticity to every page. I think it’s ideal for readers who appreciate memoirs that are as humorous as they are haunting, as reflective as they are raw.
Pages: 192 | ASIN : B0DD27DK6B
