Review
"A gripping, insightful debut from a veteran radio personality and gifted wordsmith." -Sean Costello, author of Here After "Scott Overton is a storyteller of boundless skill. Dead Air first intrigues readers by drawing them into a side of radio broadcasting most people have never seen, which is interesting enough, but then begins to craftily unravel an intriguing and suspenseful set of circumstances, further drawing readers in and holding them, breathless, to the last page. Overton's ...a writer to watch." -Mark Leslie, author of Haunted Hamilton and I, Death
From the Author
An Excerpt from a Top Shelf Magazine interview:
Q: How did you go from being a morning radio host to an author? Why the sudden change?
I enjoyed working in radio, but it was just a way of getting a steady paycheque. Being an author was always my first choice. I've been driven to write since I was a kid, and I did write whenever my radio career allowed the time (not often). So, when the radio station I worked for was sold, I was paid off and took the opportunity to pursue writing seriously. I've been writing full-time for eight or nine years.
Q: Tell us about your debut novel, Dead Air.
Following the old adage "write what you know", Dead Air is a mystery-thriller about a morning radio host whose life and career are already on shaky grounds when he finds a death threat in his workplace. He has no idea why someone would want to kill him, or who it is, but it's real. So, he's an ordinary guy in an unthinkable situation. The novel also has a lot of inside information about the private radio industry, and it's set in my home city of Sudbury, Ontario, so it still sells very well there after 11 years.
Q: What other books have you written?
My first science fiction novel The Primus Labyrinth takes a nano-submersible through the bloodstream of a VIP close to the American president to thwart an extortion plot. Naïda tells the story of a man whose body is infiltrated by a symbiotic alien being that provides him with special abilities, but he fears he may have triggered an alien invasion. The Dispossession of Dylan Knox describes a woman's dilemma when she realizes that her high-school flame seems to have been displaced by multiple personalities with an explanation that beggars belief. And Augment Nation is a classic cautionary SF tale that explores a society twenty years from now when computerized brain augments become the must-have consumer item, and corporations and governments are eager to take full (and insidious) advantage. I've also put out a collection of SFF short stories called Beyond in a paperback format and several e-anthologies.
Q: How would you describe your writing style?
While all my writing involves strong themes, I'm not interested in hitting the reader over the head with my "message". Above all, the stories are engaging, exciting, and entertaining, and the characters are as real as I can make them. I don't believe that just because I'm writing "genre fiction" I have to sacrifice the qualities of good literary fiction, either. Whether you call it science fiction or speculative fiction, the best SF can hold its own among any forms of literature. My own writing is very approachable and relatable. The science is never too dense (but I try hard to make it credible). And from what readers tell me, it's a lot like Michael Crichton's work influenced by Robert J. Sawyer.
An Excerpt from a South Asian Press interview:
Q: What drove you to come up with your debut book?
I was a radio morning show host and there's a lot of interest in what radio people do, so I wanted to come up with a good story that showed the business from the inside, warts and all. My novel Dead Air is about the vulnerability of media people. A guy I'd worked with had a kindergarten-age daughter who was harassed on her way home from school, just because her dad was well-known. Listeners all feel like they know us—we're a part of their lives every day—and most of them are wonderful. But that also makes it very easy for us to unintentionally upset someone and if they have anger issues or violent tendencies, well, we're out in public a lot and easy targets, I suppose.
Q: Do you deem yourself a pantser or plotter?
I'm absolutely a plotter. I always want my novels to be about something—theme is very important to me. So, if you're going to take that approach, you have to plan everything out to support that theme. That doesn't mean I won't deviate from an outline. I go where the characters and their plight take me, and nothing is carved in stone until the book is published.
Q: Was becoming an author a conscious decision?
More than that, it was a lifelong ambition, the job I wanted more than any other. I always knew I would do it, one way or another, even if it wasn't what paid the bills. It used to take up all my leisure time. Now it's my full-time second job. And I don't ever intend to stop writing until something stops me.
From the Back Cover
It's a hard thing to accept that someone wants you dead. It forces you to decide if you have anything worth living for.
Long-time radio "morning man" Lee Garrett is bottoming out. The career he loved has turned sour, leaving behind a dwindling audience and the wreckage of his marriage. When he finds a death threat on his control console, he shrugs it off as a sick prank—until a series of minor harassments turns into a set of undeniable attempts on his life. The suspects are many—he's made enemies—and the police are strangely uncooperative. But when the deadliest assault yet claims an innocent victim, Garrett knows he has no choice—he has to find his persecutors and force a confrontation. The extraordinary outcome will test the limits of an ordinary man.
About the Author
A radio broadcaster for more than thirty years, Scott Overton described that world in his first novel, the mystery/thriller Dead Air, shortlisted for a Northern Lit Award in Ontario, Canada. Now he writes science fiction including his 2020 SF-thriller The Primus Labyrinth, the 2021 SF-adventure Naïda, 2022's SF-psychological thriller The Dispossession of Dylan Knox, the 2022 cautionary tale Augment Nation, and the exciting 2023 SF-adventure Indigent Earth. His short fiction has been published in numerous magazines and anthologies including On Spec magazine's 25th Anniversary anthology Casserole Diplomacy, and Tesseracts 16: Parnassus Unbound.
Drawing on university training in theatre arts as well as his radio career, he's also a freelance voice talent, including narrating audiobooks in his home studio on a lake in northern Ontario.
