Date Published: 11-16-2019
Silicon Valley Tech meets The Cocaine Trade.
Can you program yourself into a winner?
In the San Francisco Bay Area, tech innovation is King, and money is God.
Vik Singh watched his immigrant parents work their fingers to the bone chasing the American Dream. But standing at his father's funeral, he realizes one thing - hustling will get you nowhere. All you need to get rich is one big idea.
And when he meets Los, a small-time drug lord with visions of grandeur, Vik makes a plan worthy of Jobs and Zuckerberg:
Design a drug sale app.
After all, market disruption is everything.
From his comfortable cottage in Lake Tahoe, Vik writes the code that builds a cocaine empire. When his app attracts an infamous drug cartel leader, it seems like a natural expansion move. And for a while, life is Swiss bank accounts, luxe coke parties, and falling in love with Remi, a beautiful and ballsy woman with secrets of her own.
Then he discovers he is being watched.
The DEA is closing in, the cartel is getting suspicious, and he can trust no one. As things heat up, Vik discovers the real price of easy money.
And that price could be his life.
If you're a fan of Breaking Bad, Mr. Robot, and Dark Mirror, this is the book for you. Get your copy right now!
First off—thanks for having me!
Is There a Message in Your Novel That You Want Readers to Grasp?
I wouldn’t call it a message, necessarily—more
of an appreciation, maybe, for the art and craft of writing code (software),
and how it can be analogous to other forms of writing.
Is there anything you find particularly challenging in your writing?
Some readers complain
that, at least initially, they have a hard time with the utter lack of
quotation marks. J But, most times, most people tell me they get
used to it after a few pages.
Or, maybe you’re asking about the challenge of
writing itself? In which case, I’ll say
that it’s challenging to write without using quotation marks. J
How many books have you written and which is your favorite?
I have written 4 novels (2 published so
far), a collection of short stories, a textbook and a general audience non-fiction
book, so I guess that’s seven. You don’t
ask a parent to pick a favorite child!
If You had the chance to cast your main character from
I’d cast Dev Patel. He looks like Vik, my Indian-American
protagonist, first of all, but he also has a great sense of drama and humor,
and comes off as highly intelligent. I’ve
been binge-watching Aaron Sorkin’s brilliant show on HBO, The Newsroom, and Dev
is in that, and he’s wonderful.
When did you begin writing?
Well, writing: grade school, like
everyone else. But really writing writing, that kicked off toward
the end of high school, when I was about 17.
That’s when I decided to take it seriously.
How long did it take to complete your first book?
About 3 years. Novels tend to take me 3-5 years.
Did you have an author who inspired you to become a writer?
If I had to pick one, it
would be two. J There’s Robert Laxalt and
Walter Van Tilburg Clark. Both of whom
wrote from, and occasionally about, my hometown of Reno, Nevada. Specifically, Clark’s City of Trembling
Leaves—the foreword of which is written by Laxalt—is about a boy growing up in
Reno. It’s absolutely beautiful. And when I read it in high school, I was blown
away and inspired to find out that a book like that could actually be about the
kinds of things Little Ol’ Me did, and set in the kind of place Little Ol’ Me
lived! In Laxalt’s foreword, he describes meeting his Clark, and the dozen or
so titles of books Clark wrote on a napkin for Laxalt to read if he wanted to
become a better writer. When I was about
17, I took it upon myself to read those books too (see prior answer about
taking writing seriously).
What is your favorite part of the writing process?
Probably the re-writing process! Writing—that first draft, that act of just
getting something out, working from
whole cloth, filling blank pages—is wonderful in its own way. I think of it the way I once heard Hugh Grant
describe acting (and how I think about running): something along the lines of:
I don’t like acting; I like having acted. So…the rewriting process is when you finally
have some clay in a rough shape in front of you, and you can look for the shape
of your story in it, and you can remold and reshape it and take away what isn’t
the story and amplify the things that are, and it’s fun!
Describe your latest book in 4 words.
For The Heavy Side, I’d
say, maybe: coding, writing, California, Mexico.
Can you share a little bit about your current work or what is in the
future for your writing?
Love
to! Here’s a synopsis about my
forthcoming short story collection, The Mayfly:
The life of
a mayfly is that of a man, writ small. So, too, the short story.
Fans of the form will
relish the inventive and humorous specimens on display in Rogers’ first
collection, The Mayfly, highlighting
a decade of published work as well as new stories. There’s a rollicking road
trip in the form of a scientific journal article, a Pushcart-nominated bike
ride with a pro cyclist learning the cost of greatness, and a glimpse through
resentful eyes at the Manhattan Project’s first-ever nuclear chain reaction.
Anchoring the collection is Man of
Letters, a series of letters penned by a young writer during his deadly
visit home to Virginia City, Nevada, in 1869.
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