Authorpreneur Dashboard – Ronald Schmitt
Not With a Bang
Literature & Fiction
Not with a Bang is a novel about the invention of a new revolutionary weapon and how it completely destabilizes an already unstable near future America. In the satirical tradition of writers such as Charles Dickens, Kurt Vonnegut and Tom Wolfe, this novel features characters such as a vigilante appliance repairman, a Vietnamese abducted bride and her abductor haunted by ghosts, a black youth gang practicing voodoo, Adolf Hitler’s son, lesbian mad scientists and even Arab terrorists. Drawing from the mythology and folklore of several cultures, just like America itself, it is a darkly humorous romp through our deepest fears of weapons proliferation and vengeance gone berserk.
Book Bubbles from Not With a Bang
The Nuptial Contest for Kieu's Hand
This excerpt from the novel Not with a Bang depicts the back story for one of the main characters. She is a beautiful Vietnamese woman who is eventually abducted by the evil Dang Yeak and brought to the US. She and Yeak are subsequently haunted by the ghosts of those Dang Yeak killed to abduct her. Her rescue by the main character Leo sets in motion many of the plot elements of the novel. The nuptial contest is common in folklore and the Kieu and Dang Yeak sub-plot incorporates many other images and ideas taken from Chinese and Indo-Chinese myths and legends, but set in contemporary times.
