Hello friend! My reading tastes don’t take me into technothrillers often and I am always excited to find new ones! In today’s post, I am collaborating with author Alex Austin and he is sharing about his book, End Man.

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Get to know the author: Alex Austin

Welcome Alex! Tell me and my readers a bit about yourself!

I was born in New Jersey and grew up on the Jersey Shore, where I spent much of my childhood underwater. My little town on the Raritan Bay, Union Beach, flooded every full moon, but the bay and creeks were my element. I spent many a day six feet beneath the surface trying to extract oxygen from water (Aquaman and I share the secret). After coming up for air, I did a tour in the U.S. Navy (on the water!). That done, I moved to California and attended UCLA, where I got a BA in history, but by then my interests had turned to less academic writing—both fiction and nonfiction. I’d always been an obsessive reader, first comic books, then short stories and novels, but I didn’t write much. In the service, I enjoyed penning letters to family, buddies, and girlfriends. I enjoyed riffing off my environment, the setting and people around me, using some detail I hoped would surprise or amuse my correspondents, perhaps make them laugh. I liked making stuff up. So, while I was reading Huizinga’s The Waning of the Middle Ages, I peddled satire to alternative weeklies. I also took a few creative writing classes and worked at legitimate short fiction. After many, many rejections, a little/literary magazine accepted a story. Hooked. 

What inspired you to write this book?

The idea for  End Man came from an online experience. I’d been trading pages with a fellow writer. We’d been in this relationship for months, and we thought the swapping beneficial. I emailed her some new chapters and asked her to send her material. She didn’t get back to me acknowledging my new chapters or sending hers. I sent several messages, which also got no response. In In her story, her main character was battling an incurable disease. Had she fictionalized her own ailment? Could she be in the hospital—or worse? I checked her Facebook and Goodreads, but I found nothing to explain her silence. As I reviewed more of her online haunts, I realized if she had succumbed to an illness, everything she had posted online would remain intact. She would still get likes; people would continue to comment on her posts, friend her, spam her. As if her life went on. How many internet users was this already true of? Was much of the online world occupied by ghosts? This seemed to be the stuff of a speculative novel. Ironically, I discovered she was “ghosting” me, a term that came into play while I was writing the novel. 

How long did it take you to write this book, from the first idea to the last edit?

Six to seven years. Hundreds of drafts. Thousands of coffees.

What makes your story unique?

Raphael Lennon has dromophobia, which is the fear of crossing streets. His dromophobia, however, is a rarefied form. It’s not all streets he’s afraid of crossing, but four particular streets in the Wilshire-Fairfax district of Los Angeles. Unfortunately, the four intersect to form a rectangle (about a square mile in area) around his home. Since childhood, he’s been trapped within this rectangle. Each of the four streets manifests itself to him as a particular threat: wind, fire, water, chasm. 

Who would enjoy reading your book? 

My publisher calls End Man a technothriller, but it’s also a Sci-Fi mystery with a lot of dry humor, much of it aimed at social media and our data-saturated culture. If you’re a person who sometimes wonders what our age is all about, where it’s going, and who is taking us there, you’ll enjoy End Man.

What’s something you hope readers would take away from it?

A scepticism about technology’s promise to give you a new, improved life.

Do you have a favourite quote or scene in the book that you find yourself going back to?

At the top of the list would be the scene in which Geo Maglio, the CEO of the Norval Corporation, reveals the company’s new product to his employees. An outraged Raphael tries to elicit the truth, but Maglio responds with shameless, euphemistic answers. Any material from that chapter would be a spoiler. Another favourite finds Raphael meeting with Jonathan Mirsky, a physicist and old friend of Jason Klaes, at Shorty’s Big Top Room, a strip club. Arranging the meeting on the phone, Raphael describes himself: 

“Six foot three without my Sketchers. One-hundred and fifty-four pounds with my Sketchers. Long, dark hair—clean. Blue beanie. White T-shirt and drift pants. Carrying a skateboard with Cult Centrifuge wheels.”

During the meeting, Raphael asks Mirsky if Klaes had enemies. Mirsky answers:

“Klaes had many rivals in the physics community. To the public, we’re an easygoing bunch—a chill crowd of eggheads—get close and you’ll see the Sturm und Drang, the rivalries and rifts. Scientists who think they didn’t get the prize or grant they should have gotten. Competing theories. A reputation ruined. Does cold fusion ring a bell? You ever see Pons and Fleischmann on the circuit again? There are rumors of a dude called the Quantum Hitman. Kills people for practicing junk science. If you’ve ever worked in academia, you’d know how heated it can get.”

Another exchange:

“You’re one uptight dude,” said Mirsky. “What do you do for fun, aside from your skateboard?”

Raphael threw his shoulders forward. “I paint.”

“Ah, an artist. Plain or fancy?”

“Neo-Depressionism,” said Raphael. 

Mirsky smirked. “I like you, kid.”

There are several scenes in which Raphael attempts to cross his borders. I think the passage below captures Raphael’s psychological dilemma:

Parked in front of the building on Wilshire was a violet-colored Whale limousine, one of the new retros. The chauffeur held open the door, beckoning Raphael to join Maglio and Maisie, who peered out at Raphael from the seat.

Raphael’s legs went rubbery.

Sitting in the car meant crossing his boundary. Getting above Wilshire. He couldn’t do it. Be diplomatic. Descend to the sidewalk, approach, and propose an alternative. 

He forced himself toward the open door.

Someone whispered in his ear: wind. The word echoed inside his head and grew louder with each repetition. The thunderous word escaped from his mouth and hurled itself upon him as a violent blast from the boulevard. Wil-shire! it roared. It swept before it leaves, papers, and plastic cups. Sand carried from a distant beach pelted his face and arms. The trees screamed, and the queen palms bent their crowns to the sidewalk. Soon, a dozen would uproot and fly into him, slam the hell out of him.

Raphael dropped the skateboard and clapped his ears to quiet the roar.

“What are you doing, Raphael? Come on. Get in.”

Maglio’s voice was a whisper under the gale. Raphael took a wider stance, as if finding his ground in an earthquake.

“I … can’t,” said Raphael with a painful gasp.

Maglio and Maisie exchanged puzzled glances. The chauffeur scratched his head. Raphael backed up a yard and then two. The wind died. The queen palms straightened. The leaves and wrappers settled. Calm had slipped back, and once again the boulevard was the boulevard. The museum’s brilliant lights reflected off the glossy Whale. Raphael held up the skateboard and found his voice.

“I’ll skateboard there and meet you.”

What is something you have learned on your author’s journey so far?

Several beta readers of End Man suggested a change that required me to delete a major character and 100 pages of text. I resisted: every page would have to be rewritten. The novel will fall apart. Perhaps I could just trim back the character. Every half-move made the story more awkward. I eliminated the character and cut the pages. You may think such massive changes would kill a novel, but it may be the only way to save it. 

What’s the best piece of advice you have received related to writing?

A piece of advice twice removed. A friend asked James Joyce what he had been doing all day. Joyce responded, “Trying to write two sentences.” The friend nodded. “Ah, can’t find the words?” “No. I’ve got the words. I can’t find the right order.” Effective writing is in the details, right down to the word order.

The following is a partial list of people who have supported me along the way. Thanks, guys!

Paul Attmere, Chris Barnett, Frans Berend, A.W. Cardiff, Bob Clampett, Rob Cohen, Kelly Colby and the staff of Cursed Dragon Ship, Lyle Cross, Paul Du Preez, Priya Doraswamy,Cassie Dutton, Steve Erickson, Frans Evenhuis, Eric Estrin, Penelope Else, Miriam Fristensky, Michela Gianello, Sammi Goldberg, Emily Grandy, Brent Higgins, Nada Holland, Jerry Lazar, Cody James, Lennie Jenson, John Johns, Nathan Jones, Cynthia Knuts, Carrie Krause, Terri Lewis, Richard Litt, Monique Lobosco, Danita Mayer, Clark McCann, Mac McCaskill, Michael McGinty, Marco Ocram, Pattiejean McTernan, Kein Ouzunupi, Herman Padilla, Dusty Phillips, Nathan Price, Lydia Redwine, Natalie Ross, Christine Roth, Terry Stroud, Clinton Tedja, Nicole Teske, Kim Watt, Jessie Wolf, Marith Zoli.
First name crew: Alex M, Alex S, Brenda, Cenna, Chris, Dylan, Eileen, Emily, Gary, Gavin, Heather, Masumi 

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Book Excerpt from
End Man

Chapter 4

Raphael glanced from the woman sitting on the curb to the vanishing airliner. Dollar, the name he had given the woman—she’d ignored his requests for her true name—was just rambling, as she always did. 

She wiped her nose with her fist, lowered her head, and viewed her outstretched legs as if only recently acquired. Appearing out of the darkness, a coyote ambled down the sidewalk, eyeing the humans fearlessly. Driven from the hills by development, the animals foraged the streets. It paused at a fire hydrant and lifted its leg. Dollar regarded the animal and tapped a few keys on her laptop.

“Water 95 percent, urea 2 percent, sodium .6 percent, chloride .6 percent, sulfate .18 percent …”

Her voice had an erratic cadence, an old-time cinema actress playing drunk. 

“Do you remember me?” asked Raphael.

“… Calcium .015 percent, magnesium .01 percent.” Her forehead wrinkled. “Trace amounts of protein and glucose.” She lifted her head, eyebrows uncoupling. “Remember you?” She scanned him and shook her head. With a grunt, she pulled her pink jacket closed. Crumbs and stains covered much of her clothing, and strands of stringy, unwashed hair now stuck to her wound. She was a small woman, bird thin and bent.

Raphael had encountered Dollar many times in the neighborhood, sitting on a curb or a low wall and always with her laptop. She’d be absent for a week or two, then reappear. Out of charity, he’d buy data from her, asking questions about nothing of consequence: 911 call records or AMBER Alerts or all words not containing the vowels a, e, i, o, u. She’d consult her laptop for a few minutes, and then rattle off the info. Her answers, often muttered and garbled, were difficult to follow, though he had no reason to try. Despite meeting him dozens of times, Dollar never remembered him, as if her memory was wiped clean after each encounter. 

“Did you fall? Is that how you got your cut?” He touched his own cheek. “Or did someone attack you?”

The woman averted her eyes and mumbled something unintelligible.

He slipped out his phone. “I’ll call the police.”

She shook her head, rubbed her fist in her open hand, and lifted her legs. She stared at her flip-flops and wiggled her toes. 

“No cops. I’ve got hypertext databases and mobile databases, spatial databases and temporal databases, probabilistic databases and embedded databases. What you want?”

Like those damaged people who lived out their lives on a square of sidewalk, she was in a prison too. He should buy some data, give her the money, and go; though she’d spend it on booze or something stronger. It was an off night when she wasn’t swilling or toking, and toxic synthetic marijuana was all over the place, not to mention printed opiates, faux fentanyl, and the unicorn pill (the world’s greatest high, but you only ride the unicorn once). Considering the shape she was in, it would be better to buy her food, which might cause further obligation. Guilt either way. Paint me. Paint me.

He sighed. “If you wait here, I’ll get you something to eat. A burrito?” 

Scrunching her face, Dollar stared at the keyboard. “Medical? Demographic? Transactional?”

“Yeah, well, I’m not looking for data right now.”

“Name,” she barked.

He pointed to himself. “Me?”

She glanced around at the nobody else in the area, as if mocking his confusion. 

“Yeah, I’m a little slow. Raphael Lennon.”

“Birthdate.”

“I don’t—”

“Birthdate,” she insisted.

Shrugging, he gave her the date. She hammered at her keyboard. 

“Pizza, maybe?” He tried again.

She ignored him.

She didn’t want his help. Let her be. “Listen, I’ll return in five minutes with food.” She tapped intently on the keys.

At the convenience store, he pulled a foil-wrapped chicken burrito from the warmer, grabbed a bottled water, and walked over to the sundries. Should he also get a first-aid kit? She wouldn’t be able to clean and cover the wound herself, which meant another responsibility. It was already past ten o’clock. He took a first-aid kit from the shelf, hefted it, and set it back. What was next? Finding her a home? A job application? 

A woman leaned on the checkout counter, addressing the clerk. Raphael had only a limited profile and a green-and-blue dragon’s tail braid tipped by an iron chastity ball by which to identify her, but for sure, it was Addy. A week had passed since he’d heard her sing at Karaoke, and her voice lingered in his memory. 

 “I’ve been here all evening, miss,” said the clerk, “and I haven’t seen anyone who matches that description.”

“No one else works here?” Addy asked.

Raphael shifted sideways, as if on the perimeter of a six-foot circle. A dozen times, he’d considered approaching Addy at the end of her set, but never found the courage. He wanted nothing more than to shake her hand and tell her how much he enjoyed her voice. His imagination could carry him no further. Fans surrounded her. One night, as he stood at the perimeter of her admirers, it seemed she’d met his eyes. The instant passed, and he attributed it to wishful thinking. 

Would she think him obnoxious—or worse—if he introduced himself now? 

“She’s about five feet, I’d say.” She brought her hand up to her ear. 

“I’m still sure,” said the clerk.

Raphael hugged the skateboard to his side. Why was he getting so flustered? His heart beat hummingbird fast. He tracked miscreant possums all day long, treaded knee deep through the carnal and sly. He knew how things worked, and yet he was thirteen years old, explaining to the freckle-faced girl in the second row why the Magic Mountain class trip was a no-go for him. If all must end in disappointment, why take the trouble? Against all odds, hope, that engaging fast talker, nudged him forward.

“She wears this pink jacket, unless the weather is terribly hot. She carries a laptop.”

It had to be Dollar.

Would it not be appreciated if he told Addy where he had seen Dollar and the good deed he was performing for her? Unless Addy would think he was just taking advantage of the overheard conversation to hit on her. Worse, that he was lying about seeing Dollar, and was planning to lure Addy into a dark alley or abandoned house or underground lair. But that would be paranoid, wouldn’t it? You’re the one who’s paranoid, Raphy. Now. Now! Hunching his shoulders to take an inch or two off his height, he put the tip of his sneaker into the circle. “I’m getting this for a woman in a pink jacket. Pink hair, too.”

Addy spun toward him. For an instant, she seemed to recognize him; no, not quite. “Did you say you’ve seen her?” she asked Raphael. 

“She has a laptop and sells data.”

Addy clapped her hands. “Oh, that’s her!”

“She’s two blocks down Fairfax and kind of messed up.”

“Drunk?”

“Excuse me,” interjected the clerk. “Are you buying those or not?”

“Oh yeah, yeah,” said Raphael. 

He set the burrito and water on the counter. He could use his finger debit, but fingerprints were vulnerable to print-swiping on older scanners, and the store’s appeared ancient. He dug a fifty out of his pocket instead. “I wouldn’t say drunk.”

“Stoned?” 

“She fell. Or maybe someone hit her. Nothing real bad, but—”

“Nothing real bad?” she snapped.

Raphael tugged on his beanie. “Well, I meant small cuts, scratches.”

“Oh, poor Pink.”

“Pink, you call her Pink?

“It’s not her real name, but I’ve always called her that.”

“Are you a relative?” asked Raphael.

“She’s my patient. The Corngold Center on Third Street.”

“The shelter?”

“Yes.” She revealed blue braces, thin as filigree. 

He’d never seen her wearing them onstage, nor would have thought she needed them. Her teeth were perfect. He’d always thought Addy pretty. Close up, she was gorgeous, beyond—stop. 

 “Need a bag, boss?” asked the clerk.

 “I’m cool, man,” said Raphael, but upon picking up the purchases thought better of it. “Ah, may as well.” He returned a dollar of change to the clerk. “Another quarter. Tax, boss.” Raphael paid up. Bag filled, he hefted it and faced Addy, uncertain what to say.

Luckily, she saved him from the decision. “I’ll go with you.” 

His phone vibrated with a text. Drawing it out, he studied the message. The screen showed a black-and-white photo of him talking to Addy taken from above. He glanced up at the security camera someone grabbed the shot from. When he looked at the phone, the screen was blank. What the hell?

“Something wrong?” asked Addy.

“No, nothing,” he replied. But it was wrong. What could have linked the devices? An error in the vast interconnected world of communication? The back of his neck bristled. Weird. 

“It makes me happy you were nice to her,” said Addy, stepping toward the exit. “Most people aren’t.”

“Oh, sure,” he said, as Addy pushed open the door and held it for him. He glanced back at the store’s camera, shook his head, put away his phone, and followed her through the exit. 

“Sometimes people are mean,” said Addy.

The Infinite Power Ball display in the store’s window flashed, splashing Addy’s face in radiant but unhuman colors, as if her face were Warhol’s silkscreened Marilyn. Damn, she looked like Marilyn too with her round face and snub nose. Never before had he noticed the similarities. But never before had he been this close. Jesus.

Addy sighed. “I guess we better get to Pink before she drifts away.” She set off across the parking area.

“I’ve seen you a hundred times at Karaoke,” he said, striding to catch up to her, feeling as if he were stepping into his own body as he matched her step. “You’re great.”

“Thanks. I’ve seen you there too. You sing the standards: ‘Creep’ and ‘Stressed Out’ and’”—she gave him a sidelong glance—“‘Boulevard of Broken Dreams,’ right?”

“Maybe once or twice.” She remembered him. They passed between two parked cars to reach the sidewalk. He stood on the board, moving along at Addy’s walking pace. “What do you do at that Corngold Center?”

“I’m a calmer on the night shift, kind of a comfort animal. When a patient gets overexcited, I talk to them softly or read. I let them peer into my big”—she grinned mischievously—“teal eyes.” 

“Can I try it?” 

“Yes, you may.”

He pivoted on the skateboard. Riding backward, he met Addy’s eyes, which did seem green and blue at the same time. He wondered at the pigments to mix to get the effect on canvas. “I feel calmer than I’ve felt all day.” No, not calm. Alive, exhilarated.

“Anytime,” said Addy.

Fast enough, heart. “So, what do you read to your patients?”

“The classics. Dostoevsky and Dickens. George Eliot, I love George Eliot. Have you ever read Middlemarch?”

“No, I, umm, haven’t.”

“Virginia Woolf and Fitzgerald. Faulkner and Flaubert. Madame Bovary is decidedly the best novel in the history of the universe. There’s this scene where Emma, the main character—Emma Bovary, not to be confused with Jane Austen’s Emma—is at this fair.”

Addy glowed. She seemed to be not walking but floating, as if she were under a spell, or maybe he was the one under a spell. He could listen to her tell another’s tale all night long. 

“So, Rodolphe’s trying to seduce her, and in the background …”

They approached the block where he’d left Pink, passing the hydrant where the coyote had relieved itself, the smell still sharp. 

 “I don’t see her,” he said.

They poked about the area for a few minutes, bent over the bushes that lined the sidewalk. Across the street, music blared from the open door of Nevin O’Moore’s. 

“How often do you have to go out searching for Pink?”

Addy shrugged. “Oh, she has her antsy moods. Usually, all she does is work on her laptop and watch news in the community room. The mass shooting and then the airliner crashing into the hotel spooked her. Awful, wasn’t it?” Addy slipped behind one of the larger plants and bent, so that she disappeared but for the rustling of leaves.

“Hard to believe,” he said with a sudden and unexpected feeling of heaviness. Pink’s mime wasn’t random. The tragedy affected her too, though it couldn’t have anything to do with her inquiries of Raphael. “Will Pink be okay?”

Addy popped out from behind the bush. “Pink’s a survivor. She used to be a hotshot in the data business. She told me the company once. Great something? Anyway, she had a breakdown, and the streets took her.” Addy gazed at the sky. “She knows things too. She’s one of those people.”

“What do you mean?” asked Raphael

“Sometimes she studies her data as if she’s reading tea leaves and then says weird stuff.”

“Yeah?”

“Kind of uncanny stuff. Stuff about the future.” Addy frowned as if a bad thought had struck her. She exhaled. “Let’s check on Wilshire. Sometimes I find her by the museum or that strange building on the corner.”

Strange building. Raphael swallowed and arched his back as if to rid himself of a kick me note. “Night shift, huh?” 

“Well, every night except Thursday and Saturday.” She grinned. “Those are my weekend.”

They walked a half block in silence, then Addy said, “I seem different, don’t I?”

From other girls? “No, I mean, yes, a little different. Nice, I mean, different.”

She stopped on the sidewalk and drew back her lips, showing him her braces, which she nudged with her finger. “I mean, different from the last time you saw me. The braces.”

“Oh, the braces.”

“Demosthenes,” she said. “Do you know him?”

Demosthenes? “Umm, I think so …”

“He was an ancient Greek with a speech problem. I got the idea from him. About the braces, I mean. Demosthenes put pebbles in his mouth to learn to speak better. I wear braces so I can learn to sing better. They’re kind of expensive, but it’s for art. Do you think I’m silly?”

“Oh, no. Makes sense.” He wondered if it made any sense at all.

“If it works. I’m not sure it works.” She prodded at the braces with a finger.

“You sing great already.” 

Addy shook her head. “Even if I sang great, which I don’t, it wouldn’t be enough. I auditioned for ‘Sing or Die,’ and the judges advised I slit my throat.”

“That’s terrible!”

 “I’m kidding.” She tapped a tooth. “What’s your name?”

“RaphaelLennon.”

“Lennon, huh? You resemble Bowie. I mean the way he looked when he was young, like in the old film. The Man, um, The Man Who Fell to Earth.” He knew what she meant: skinny as hell, narrow nose, prominent cheekbones. Addy tilted her head sideways and inspected Raphael up and down. “A jaw line that could cut diamonds.”

Raphael shrugged. The legendary rock star was otherworldly handsome, while he was just otherworldly, yet he got the comparison all the time. He used to feel flattered, then complacent, and now it annoyed him. 

She rocked her head as she considered him. “Only a little more stretched out. So what do you do?”

“I work for Norval, data compilation.” 

“I think I’ve heard of them. What’s your job?”

He swallowed the lump of uncertainty rising in his throat. “Me? I’m an End Man. Necrologist is the technical term.”

“End Man, huh? What do they do?”

“We, uh, work with the dead.” 

“A data compiling mortician?”

“It’s a little hard to explain.” She had already called the Norval building strange. Now he would be a strange man with a strange job in a strange building. 

“We find the dead, and then we sell them, sort of.”

“Explain.”

When he first interviewed for the job at Norval, he had asked Geovanni Maglio the same thing, and his explanation to Addy paraphrased that indelible conversation: 

“Addy, did you know that 8,000 people die each day in the United States?”

“No.” 

“Well, they do. In the past, the dead for all practical purposes would just vanish. Our CEO Geo Maglio had a vision” 

Addy nodded. 

“The right to be forgotten. Have you heard of it?”

“That’s one I missed in civics.”

“European Union idea. I’m going to quote Mr. Maglio.” Raphael took a breath and summoned up Maglio’s often uttered words. “‘The damned continentals argue that people have the right to cut their past off at its knees. Strike what they consider inaccurate or unflattering information from the record. Practically unworkable before the Internet and now impossible.’”

“It would be nice,” said Addy.

Raphael laughed. “That’s exactly what I said. Ready for his response?”

“I can’t wait.”

Raphael cleared his throat and lowered his voice to Maglio’s baritone. “‘Yes, and it would be nice if we could erase the entire history of mankind’s crimes. Why should we have to remember all the wars and inquisitions, and slaveries? Unfortunately, it’s throwing the baby out with the bathwater. We can’t not remember. A few European countries have made a half-ass effort at enforcement. A sham and an easy workaround. Still … well, let the Europeans sink into the quicksand of their socialist experiments. In the U.S. we have the First Amendment, lifetime sex-crime registries, and no damn abstract right for anything to be forgotten.’”

“You have a good memory for monologue,” said Addy.

“I’m boring you.”

“Oh, no, it’s fascinating, but …”

“I’ll speed it up. Paraphrase.”

“Please.”

Raphael rolled his shoulders and cleared his throat. “In a nutshell, Americans don’t want to forget, and Norval has stepped up to the plate.”

Addy sniffed. “It’s a baseball metaphor?”

“What’s America’s pastime?”

“Oh, yeah. Sorry, continue.”

“Our goal is to preserve the online remains of every dead citizen of the red, white, and blue. And provide the slickest transport to their info since Walt built his monorail.”

Addy’s lips twisted. “Before your time.”

“Yeah, that’s Maglio’s. Do you want to hear the rest of this?”

Addy drew a finger across her lips.

“Norval Portals will preserve it all. Data is good. More data is better. What isn’t data will be. If it won’t be, it’s data now. Our profit? Hundreds of millions of visitors will pay to visit their friends and loved ones, providing solid demographics for advertisers. We will package our data assets into numerous financial instruments: derivatives, options, futures, forwards. And the beauty is this: as the deceased pile up, our audience can only grow.”

Addy nodded. “I see a flaw.”

Raphael caught his breath. “Yes?”

“But those remains, doesn’t the next of kin—”

Raphael switched again to his Maglio impersonation. “‘Have rights? Contracts. Which is why speed is so important. The moment we verify a lead is offline, unquestionably dead, we speak with the rights holder—next of kin, what have you. We offer to take responsibility for their loved one’s online remains and to provide them an easy access portal to all that information, all those memories, all those secrets—and to the rights holder at no charge. Most jump at the offer. It’s like getting a free burial plot with no-cost maintenance.’

“So to sum it up, Addy, we’re making money off ghosts.”

“Dead Souls. I mean the book by Gogol, the Russian guy. In his book, the main character goes around acquiring dead people, dead serfs. At first, the landowners are happy to give the dead serfs away—kind of a tax write-off. Then they find out the main character, whatchamacallit—Chichikov, that’s his name, Chichikov acquires all these dead people to take out a bank loan on them. Collateral, you know? Not mentioning to the banks the serfs are dead.”

“Wow. I never heard.”

“You don’t read enough.”

“I should get your, uh, Dead Souls.”

“Are you strictly a non-vegetable reader?”

“Oh, no, I go both ways. Digital. Paper.”

“Great. If I find my old print copy, I’ll let you borrow it.”

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Interested?

Find End Man on Goodreads and Amazon.

Thank you for hanging out with us today. Connect with Alex on Goodreads, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and LibraryThing.

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