Book Tour: Seventeen by Mark Diehl

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What is my genre, really?

I believe I’m the first fiction writer to produce a truly Post-Objectivist work, but because I’m the first, there’s no subject heading for that.

I guess a lot of people would call it dystopian sci-fi, which works because it shares those characteristics with Orwell’s “1984,” but Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged” had many of the same elements and it isn’t called either. I looked up some of the books I feel have similar characteristics. They’re called adventure stories, sci-fi, psychological fiction, didactic fiction, political fiction, dystopias, and more. The subject headings run through most of the fiction world, from individualism and egoism, to objectivity, to totalitarianism. For “Seventeen” in particular, there are also issues like genetic engineering and corporatism that would apply.

As such, I think the “secret” of my “genre” is this: just write the story that fits the world you’re describing, and let the librarians worry about classifying it. If I’d tried to make the book fit neatly into a category, I would’ve limited my ability to tell the story as I felt it needed to be told.

Most of the world's seventeen billion people are unconscious, perpetually serving their employers as part of massive brain trusts. The ecosystem has collapsed, and corporations control all of the world's resources and governments. A bedraggled alcoholic known as the Prophet predicts nineteen year-old waitress Eadie will lead a revolution, but how can she prevail when hunted by a giant corporation and the Federal Angels it directs?

About the Author:

Mark D. Diehl writes novels about power dynamics and the way people and organizations influence each other. He believes that obedience and conformity are becoming humanity’s most important survival skills, and that we are thus evolving into a corporate species.

Diehl has: been homeless in Japan, practiced law with a major multinational firm in Chicago, studied in Singapore, fled South Korea as a fugitive, and been stranded in Hong Kong.

After spending most of his youth running around with hoods and thugs, he eventually earned his doctorate in law at the University of Iowa and did graduate work in creative writing at the University of Chicago. He currently lives and writes in Cape Elizabeth, Maine.

Author’s Website: http://www.markddiehl.com a Rafflecopter giveaway Secrets about your genre.