Run for Your Life — John Argo

Author's Note (January 20180) Same novel, new title: Run For Your Life. It has more bite than the more subtle YANAPOP (name of a giant media conglomerate in Los Angeles: Young Adult New Adult Participating Older Persons). Don't sweat the details, please. It begins with the same deceptive, quiet (although slightly unnerving) pace as most John Argo stories. When the hammer comes down, you won't be ready - but that's the point about suspense. John Argo knows how to sock it to you. If you enjoyed Martin Scorsese's dark comedic film After Hours (with its all star cast), you'll love Run For Your Life. This is a yarn for readers of The Crying of Lot 49 or viewers of Back To The Future. This is the novel for you if you enjoyed Linda Fiorentino's tour-de-force in The Last Seduction, or Jack Lemmon and Sandy Dennis in 1970's Out-Of-Towners, or Bill Murray and Andie McDowell in 1993's Groundhog Day, or the National Lampoon series of Vacation films. Or think Jumanji, Pleasantville, and other imaginative romancy romps. What starts as a simple boy meets girl romance turns into a suspenseful, hair raising adventure of fantastic and frankly crazy proportions. It's a wild ride you won't want to miss. It's a lot of fun as the author takes your imagination out for a walk - on the wild side. Martin Brown, 21, is a U.C. Berkeley Lit major, home from San Francisco, and spending the summer with his parents and sister in laid-back San Diego. He's looking for a summer job. Based on a friend's suggestion, he drives to Los Angeles to interview for a writing position with global media giant corporation YANAPOP. YANAPOP creates games, films, books, and anything else involving entertainment, including mythologies about goddesses and superheroes. Now mind you: Los Angeles is just two leisurely hours by car from San Diego on coastal highway I-5. Martin drives to LA for his interview. He wins a career opportunity of galactic proportions, helped by a gorgeous young (21) production assistant named Chloe Setreal. Chloe guides him through his interviews and takes a special interest in the handsome young applicant. Martin and Chloe fall madly and instantly in love. Martin drives back to San Diego, two hours south. All he can think of is Chloe, seeking some excuse to go back and see her as soon as possible. Chloe is thinking the same, and a little bad luck offers her the opportunity to reach out to her dashing hero. No sooner has Martin arrived back home, than he receives a call from Chloe in LA. She has been in an accident, is immobile with her leg in a cast, and desperately longs for Martin to come hold her hand. Martin gallantly hops in his car and heads north, just as a tremendous Pacific Ocean storm begins to pelt San Diego. That's just the beginning of a hair-raising adventure, a nightmare of epic proportions, as courageous and undaunted Martin Brown strives to make it to Los Angeles (or Lost Alienopolis) at any cost. What should be a two-hour drive turns into an Odyssey lasting, well, a long long time... but dial in to learn all the details. If you read Homer's Odyssey, you will barely be prepared for Martin's dark adventure. Be amazed - the story stops at nothing. Like Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49, Run For Your Life is a bizarre, Saturnalian plunge into the underground - a wildly imaginative, streamlined doomsday machine that never stops for a second until the last desperate, manic breath. Martin becomes Odysseus in search of Chloe as he pursues the goddess of his dreams. He becomes Oedipa in pursuit of the nightmare secreted in the engine that drives Amerika - and the universe. Or whatever. Martin goes from a mild-mannered reporter to a comic book hero and an avenger in the mythological landscape of Southern California at its most ingenious extremes. Just when you think you have finally swum ashore, be prepared - the next phase in this air-conditioned nightmare will always quickly sweep you back out to sea.