Katja From The Punk Band is a short n*vel that I wrote in 2004-2005 that grew beyond the 25K that I had originally estimated at. It is a fast-moving industrial crime story with short, interweaving chapters dealing with multiple characters all at once.

KFTPB was accepted for publication by ChiZine Publications and is currently slated for an early 2010 release.  The initial hardcover edition was strictly limited to pre-order sales only however you can now pre-order a copy of the trade paperback from Amazon.com and others.

I started writing it shortly after completing the final draft of Pretty Little Things To Fill Up The Void and I wanted to write something that was much a much quicker and lighter read and I've always loved stories where multiple characters' storylines interweave and often collide with one another.  So I hooked onto a title that had been going around my mind for some time and started to flesh out the story but starting at the end.

I think starting working backwards with that first storyline and brought in another that took the story back further and then introduced another character.  This continued, with one part of the story moving forwards whereas other parts were providing flashbacks to fill in the gaps I had deliberately left until I was sitting on the floor with scraps of paper laid out all around me, arranging them and re-arranging them to see how they all fit together.

So we have:

• Katja, a no-nonsense guitar player from any punk band that will tolerate her long enough to not through her out after one gig, a tracheostomy tube in her throat providing her unique vocals.
• Januscz, her ex-boyfriend and drug dealer whom she has double-crossed.
• Nikolai - the useless fucking junky.
• Aleksakhina, Katja's parole officer, and his bed-ridden wife
• Vladimir Kohl, Januscz' employer
• The chemical lord Szerynkski
• Szerynski's rival, Dracyev and
• Ylena, the wife/lover of Dracyev

The story revolves around a drug vial that ends up in Katja's hands and which she hopes will act as her ticket off of the island that the KFTPB takes place on.  Every one of the main characters wants it as badly as she does and every one will do whatever they can and must to get it.

Fast-paced, written in short chapters and designed to drag the reader along in top gear, Katja From The Punk Band is currently due to be published by ChiZine Publications sometime in 2010.  Please contact me or them for more details or pre-order your copy from Amazon.com.

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