KINETICS
Nathaniel Koszer
GENRE: SciFi
BLURB:
After stoking rebellions across the globe, six super-powered LO-ECs dealt a massive blow to the military by disabling their worldwide communication tower. But in doing so, they suffered grave injuries, and Spidre, the world leader, will not let them rest. As he desperately clings to power, there is only one course of action for the LO-ECs: hide and heal, then finally bring the fight to Spidre’s front door.
Breaching Spidre’s force field will require splitting up and launching simultaneous surprise attacks all over the world. And in some of these places, the military is the least of the LO-ECs’ concerns. They’ll also face legions of robots controlled by an eccentric oligarch, guerilla outfits led by their own super-powered LO-ECs, and the ever-present threat of being discovered and bombed into dust by a world leader with nothing left to lose.
If their power is enough to survive all of this, the reward for the LO-ECs is a confrontation with Spidre at his compound, complete with all of the secrets and plans he has amassed for the last twenty years.
Purchase KINETICS on Amazon
Excerpt:
“We’ve got to leave now!” Naren yelled to Edgar and Symon as he landed and set Sera down. She was shaky, but able to stand on her own. Symon and Edgar were walking onto the field from a tunnel in the southeast corner of the stadium. Both of them had their hands wrapped around the grips of their elcycles, powerful electric motorcycles powered by their LO-EC energy. Walking with them was Eric, the person who had taken up the role of leading the rebellion in Pittsburgh.
“You’re leaving!? After what just happened!?” Eric screamed.
“That happened because we’re here!” Symon snapped back. “We need to get out of this city, and do it loudly enough that everyone knows we’re gone.”
“Sera told me the plan before she took off. Together we programmed the coordinates for her garden in New Orleans,” Edgar said.
“We aren’t going to New Orleans,” Naren replied. Sera’s head snapped up to look at him, then as she realized the issue, her head sank.
“Isn’t it the closest place that we have a safe hideout?” Edgar asked. “They just tried to bomb us here. If we get spotted entering New Orleans, the same thing will happen. It’d be the same no matter where we go. If there are peacekeepers there, then it isn’t safe now.”
“So where do we go?” Sera asked, her eyes filled with tears.
“Why are you all standing around?! We have to get to Symon’s hideout!” Nadine screamed as she and Victor set their feet on the ground. She was happy and relieved to know she could now carry him with little effort. The last time she had tried, it was almost a disaster.
The plan clicked into place in everyone’s head. They had spent weeks at Symon’s hideout, an old house in an abandoned city called San Diego. It was now their best chance at hiding out without risking the lives of others.
“Eric, we’re going to blast right through the peacekeeper’s front line, make sure they know we’ve left the city. Go up into the lookout and signal to us if you see any targets we can hit,” Naren directed.
“Victor, you’ll be at the front. When we get the signal from Eric up high, you mow the road,” Naren said. Victor nodded.
“Edgar, you’ll be on an elcycle in the middle, with Sera riding in front of you,” Naren continued. “If anyone gets close, you know what to do. Symon, you’ll be in the back providing suppressive fire to our rear as we escape. Nadine and I will be up high and go wherever we’re needed.”
When Naren concluded his directions, everyone moved with haste. Edgar and Symon re-programmed the elcycles to go to San Diego and put them into position at the north of the field. Symon reached into one of the cargo bags on the elcycle and pulled out the retrofitted peacekeeper armor part that he’d had since the first major battle in Chicago. He slid his arm into the piece of armor and when it connected with the microtransformer in his hand, the mounted machine gun whirred to life, ready to fire once again. Naren helped Sera onto the other elcycle. Edgar hopped on behind her, and they were ready to go.
Interview with Nathaniel Koszer
What is your favorite part of the book?
I can’t talk about it outright as it would be a major spoiler, but there is something set up in the little details of Latency, my first book and Kinetics’ prequel, that has a massive payoff in this story. It is so satisfying for me to read even though it lived in my head for decades before it was printed.
Does your book have a lesson? Moral?
I didn’t necessarily write this story with a moral in mind, but the lesson it contains are those we have all heard before: Discrimination is awful, making political choices motivated by fear leads only to despair, and violence begets violence.
Are your characters based off real people or did they all come entirely from your imagination?
This is a tough question to answer. These characters have been in my imagination in some form or another since I was around seven years old. Back then, they were just superheroes with their own unique powers, heavily inspired by the X-men, Power Rangers, and other similar media. The characters didn’t have names, backstories, or personalities till much later, and surely a lot of those details came from my lived experiences and interactions with others. None of the characters draw inspiration from one single individual though.
Of all the characters you have created, which is your favorite and why?
It’s silly, but Edgar has always had a special place in my heart. Among all the different powers that my characters have, it is only his, creating blades of energy from between his fingers, that I imagined myself having. My earliest drafts had him as the main character, and while changing the story to focus on others was the right call, I still can’t help but love that brave idiot.
What character in your book are you least likely to get along with?
In Kinetics, the six main characters all separate from one another to complete tasks simultaneously around the world before reuniting to mount a final assault on the main headquarters of the world government. During his solo adventure, one of the main characters named Victor has an extended interaction with Maximillion Bennington the Fourteenth, and ultra wealthy elite who has his own agenda for the protagonists. I haven’t had many interactions with the ultrawealthy of the world, but the few I have had have been quite awkward. There are a lot of unspoken rules and etiquette and what-not that I am just not well-versed in. I assume the same would happen with Max.
What would the main character in your book have to say about you?
While there are six main characters in Kinetics, I would argue that the book tends to focus on Victor the most. Victor lived on his own hiding in the woods for twenty years before finally uniting with the other protagonists. There is a lot of the world he doesn’t fully understand from innocent ignorance, so I imagine my life as a civil servant by day and author by night would be confusing.
Do you want each book to stand on its own, or are you trying to build a body of work with connections between each book?
Kinetics is a direct sequel to my debut novel Latency, which came out in March 2024. The plots of each are very closely tied together. In fact, when I first decided to write them, I imagined it being one novel and only split it when I realized it was going to be too long for a single book. I will say that thanks to a brilliant back and forth with my editor, Kinetics stands on it’s own well enough that if someone picked it up, they wouldn’t be confused, but it really is intended to be read after Latency.
AUTHOR Bio and Links:
Nate grew up in Brooklyn NY, but now calls the Bronx home along with his wife and their sons. Nate grew up on all things sci-fi. Partly due to his chronic illness, Nate always had a special place in his heart for the X-Men, and especially the invulnerable Wolverine. This was heavy inspiration for his first novel, Latency a superhero sci-fi story which released March 5, 2024. His second novel, Kinetics, will release on March 4, 2025.
Connect with Nathaniel Koszer
.png)
5 comments:
Thank you so much for featuring KINETICS and Nathaniel Koszer today.
Sounds like an interesting story.
Sounds like a good read.
Great interview. This looks really good.
looks like a fun one
Post a Comment