So, with a rather unexciting click of my mouse, Rock Gods of Acht: a music meltdown was officially published today at 6:11pm. Woo-hoo!
It won’t appear on amazon.com or other online booksellers for another 6-8 weeks, so I can’t really do anything to promote it just yet - though if you want a copy, you can purchase one now at http://www.lulu.com/content/2230290 for the low low price of $14.95. (I get a better royalty through Lulu – the publisher….)
Many thanks to Chris Chaput for designing the cover, and to my old writing group who sat through this book page by page, line by line, word by word for several years.
Following is the press release (written by Chesley Hicks) that I’ll send out once the book is available through amazon and other online booksellers….
for immediate release: contact:
August 24, 2008 RockGodsofAcht (at) yahoo.com
Rock Gods of Acht: a music meltdown
Surrealist exposé on the downfall of the corporate music industry out now!
New York, NY, August 2008 - Author Diane Hatz releases Rock Gods of Acht: a music meltdown, her eye-witness-through-a-galactic-prism tale of rock’n’roll devastation and redemption.
The nineties: the era ushered in by grunge and escorted out by the MiniDisc. These were the reigning glory days of the corporate record industry—music before the masses’ access to the Internet. It was Rome before the fall.
Rock Gods of Acht tells the spiraling tale from inside the industry, with surreal dimensions that author Diane Hatz describes as “the only way to capture the insanity of that era.”
The novel takes place in the monolithic halls of Acht Records, an industry behemoth recently bought out by the Yakadans, an imperialist alien race eager to test its new technology—clonebotting—and to hatch (literally) a superstar performer called Big. Thwarted Acht secretary Alex is trying to get out of her dead-end position, while her maniacal boss Langferd explodes blood vessels all around her. At the top, Vinny DiMachio, Deity and Ruling Dictator of the company, plots how he can become the richest, most powerful man in his universe, sealing his Caesar-like fall.
These and Rock Gods of Acht’s riot of other all-too-real characters weave in and out of each other’s lives, coming together for the huge finale—the breakout live performance of Big at the famed Salvadori Ballroom, a show that ends up nothing short of explosive.
Hatz can tell the tale, because she was there. “When I first became involved with music, there was an electric, vibrant energy that fueled my passion for working in the industry,” she says of the era. “But then I went to a major label as it was absorbed by a large faceless corporation and watched the life get sucked out of the company, the music, and its employees. It’s no mystery why most corporate music has no soul.”
Rock Gods of Acht reveals that success can be more than we bargained for—or less than we imagined. It’s also a loving ode to rock’n’roll. With equal measures science fiction, eye-witness account, and soul-searching revelation, the book serves absurdist delight, hard-knock realism, and mad laughs in generous, balanced proportion.
Copies can be purchased at http://www.lulu.com/content/2230290
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