When Roberta M. Roy wrote her prize winning work of Inspirational Fiction, Jolt: a rural noir, it was with two views. The first was to confirm for the reader that there is life even after terrorism involving measures as extreme as arson, dirty bombs and a nuclear melt down. Oddly Roy did this in the post 9/ll era in an effort to calm the reader’s darkest fears for persons outside of the thirty mile radius of any real or possible nuclear power plant meltdown.
With Too Close, however, it is Roy’s intent treat the situation of survivors within the thirty mile radius. Two of the characters from Jolt: a rural noir emerge as the main ones in Too Close. One struggles with radiation sickness while the second suffers minimal Traumatic Brain Injury(mTBI). mTBI is an almost signature Iraq sequelae among returning military personnel who suffer it as the result of having experienced one or more than one IED explosions over the course of their deployments.
The question for ALVA, however, remains one of how to entice people to read about these topics. The approach ALVA encouraged Roy to take was to tell a memorable story. Borrowing from the tradition of Jane Austen with her Netherfield Park and the village of Lambton or William Faulkner with his Yoknapatawpha County and its just as imaginary Yoknapatawpha River, Roy set her stories in an imaginary part of the Northern USA. Whereas Austen references her settings to real places that only suggest a relative location, Faulkner and Roy include carefully drawn maps. For Faulkner it provided the terrain for five great novels. Roy’s plan is to write just two. Whether they will ever be judged great however, remains to be seen.
Roy’s novels, Jolt: a rural noir and its sequel, Too Close, are set several adjacent counties in the imaginary states of East Cordaban, West Cordaban, Mariana, and New Carlton. Jolt: a rural noir is the story of persons outside the thirty mile radius of the nuclear meltdown and terrorist dirty bombs. Too Close is the story of two of the characters from Jolt: a rural noir who were within the thirty mile radius of, as Roy calls it, The Event.
Jolt: a rural noir is available in book and eBook forms from http://alvapressinc.com while Too Close is yet in the writing phase and not anticipated to be released in this year.
Alva the Indie, Remembering
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