What If You Found a Flying Saucer, but Nobody Was in It?
HILO, Hawaii, Jan. 14, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Hawai'i resident Alan McNarie's newly released second novel, The Soul Keys, is a satiric fantasy that runs a bit on the wild side. It answers such burning questions as: What if you found a flying saucer, but nobody was in it? Why are all butterflies insane? How could a talking armadillo end up in your bathtub? Why would the Oakland Bay Bridge consider becoming a dragon? And, of course, what are the three keys to unlock the soul and end the world?
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"The Soul Keys began with a little challenge I sent to some writer friends," McNarie says. "I asked them, 'Suppose a flying saucer was discovered, but its occupants were missing. What happens next?'"
McNarie's own answer to that question opens with the novel's main character, Sander Keynes, discovering an armadillo in his bathtub in Springfield, Missouri—and then finding out that it can talk—and that it has no idea of how it had gotten there. The reader soon learns that earlier that day, Sander and his girlfriend, Jenny, had discovered the empty flying saucer while canoeing on an Ozark River. The saucer and the armadillo, whose name is Dick, seem somehow to be linked, but before Sander and Dick can figure out how, the UFO is seized by the U.S. government and whisked away to a secret research base on Mauna Kea. Sander, Jenny and Dick set out on a mad cross-country odyssey in pursuit of the saucer—and pursued, in turn, by the FBI, CIA, the Centers for Disease Control, the media, Jenny's homicidal ex-husband, industrial and government spies, flying saucer cultists, mad scientists (well, pretty disgruntled ones, anyway) and someone with a French accent. But mixed in with the insanity are some hard looks at real issues such as domestic violence, the military-industrial complex, national insecurity and the nature of reality itself.
McNarie had just done a first draft of the book when the World Trade Center bombings occurred. He soon found that some of the insane-sounding scenarios and attitudes portrayed in his work of fiction had become eerily plausible.
"If I'd published it then, it would have been prophetic," he says ruefully. "Now, it's only satiric."
McNarie's manuscript made the rounds of publishers for several years, periodically getting revised between stays at various editors' desks. At one point, it was actually accepted by a new publishing company, but the partners in the company broke up before the book came out. Finally, Hawai'i-based Larry Czerwonka Co. picked up the novel.
McNarie's approach to publicizing the novel has been a bit off-beat, as well. He's opened a Facebook page for The Soul Keys where Dick the Armadillo posts comments on contemporary events and issues.
"Like most nonprimates, I'm color-blind," Dick writes in one recent entry, "so when you primates talk about colors, it's very confusing. Do whole states really turn red or blue after each election? Can you tell whether people are Republicans or Democrats by their red or blue skins?
Get the book at: http://thesoulkeysnovel.com/
Media Contact: Alan McNarie, 808-985-7014
SOURCE The Larry Czerwonka Company
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