Hi and welcome to the cover reveal of Beautiful Shining People!
On this final day of #Orentober, it is my absolute honour to host the official reveal of Michael Grothaus’ new novel! Michael Grothaus is the author of Epiphany Jones, my bookish epiphany of 2020, the book that broke me but I adored it nevertheless. I have been hoping for a new book from Michael ever since, so I couldn’t be more excited for Beautiful Shining People!
I’ve been told it’s speculative, without being dystopian, with a bit of a scifi / futuristic angle and that sounds right up my street, I honestly can’t wait!
Let’s start with a look at the blurb:
A damaged young man meets an enigmatic waitress in a Tokyo café, and they embark on a journey that will change everything … an emotive speculative literary novel set in a near-future Japan. It’s our world, but decades into the future … an ordinary world, where cars drive themselves, drones glide across the sky, and robots work in burger shops. There are two superpowers and a digital Cold War, but all conflicts are safely oceans away. People get up, work, and have dinner. Everything is as it should be… Except for seventeen-year-old John, a tech prodigy from a damaged family, who hides a deeply personal secret. But everything starts to change for him when he enters a tiny café on a cold Tokyo night. A café run by a disgraced sumo wrestler, where a peculiar dog with a spherical head lives, alongside its owner, enigmatic waitress Neotnia…
But Neotnia hides a secret of her own – a secret that will turn John’s unhappy life upside down. A secret that will take them from the neon streets of Tokyo to Hiroshima’s tragic past to the snowy mountains of Nagano.
A secret that reveals that this world is anything ordinary – and it’s about to change forever…
Surely you need some more info about the author before you see the cover!
Michael Grothaus is a novelist, journalist and author of non-fiction. His writing has appeared in Fast Company, VICE, The Guardian, Litro Magazine, The Irish Times, Screen, Quartz and others. His debut novel, Epiphany Jones, a story about sex trafficking among the Hollywood elite, was longlisted for the CWA John Creasey (New Blood) Dagger and named one of the 25 ‘Most Irresistible Hollywood Novels’ by Entertainment Weekly. His first non-fiction book, Trust No One: Inside the World of Deepfakes was published by Hodder & Stoughton in 2021. The book examines the human impact that artificially generated video will have on individuals and society in the years to come. Beautiful Shining People is speculative literary fiction set in Tokyo.
How about a publication date?
Beautiful Shining People will be out on 16 March 2023.
Right, that’s all the practical stuff out of the way!
After everything I told you, now it’s time to show you, isn’t it!
You ready?
You sure?
Well okay then!
Tadaaaaaaaaaaa:
Isn’t it stunning?! I hope you are as excited as I am!