Overview

""2012 was over, and good riddance. It had kicked my ass, and I was glad it was done. 2013 wasn't off to a particularly auspicious start, but I felt certain things would get better. I certainly couldn't see how they could get any worse."" Damen Warner is ready for a fresh start. After spiraling into alcoholic depression as the result of his grandmother's death he plans to start the new year right. Thanks to his newfound notoriety as an internet sensation, Damen and his band, OBNXS, return to the studio to record their next album. But as his professional career takes off, Damen quickly discovers that every action has an equal and opposite reaction. Forced to balance his professional aspirations against his deepening relationship with his girlfriend Melody and her five-year-old daughter, Damen quickly finds himself tangled in a web of controversy and chaos that threatens everything he loves. As he fights to keep his band, his relationship, and his sanity from unravelling, Damen struggles to confront his attitudes toward family and fatherhood, and to grow up-or die trying.

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Reviews

""Gebien concludes her trilogy about the journey of a washed-up rock star in this novel. Damen Warner, the frontman for the band OBNXS, is back in his final story about trying to make it as a rock star. Throughout the novel, numerous obstacles are put in Damen's way: his grandmother's will, a custody battle, pit bulls, viral videos, and more. He has fallen into a deep alcoholic depression: Damen ""looked like ten pounds of shit in a five-pound bag. Thirty years old. Too tall, too thin, too angry, too mean."" Damen's relationships with his girlfriend, Melody, and her daughter, Vico, are in trouble: Melody's ex, the ""Baby Daddy,"" wants custody of their daughter, and Damen ends up in the middle of the conflict. Additionally, Melody is meeting with her former clients from a strip club for extra money, which makes Damen uncomfortable. Then Damen runs into Evangeline, a girl he met on the road, a social media-savvy evangelical Christian willing to help the band with their image-for a fee. She arranges protests against OBNXS to gin up publicity, generating sufficient interest to allow the band to continue working on their album. Though Damen finds it easy to create the image that the internet demands, he drifts further away from who he is as an artist (""As much as I wanted to believe my career was rallying due to the overwhelming magnetism of my musical genius, the truth was most of my notoriety now came from videos of me doing stupid shit on the internet, including such hit singles as ""Arrested Naked"" (feat. TSA), ""That Guy Who Kicked Over A Piano,"" and ""Strip Club Riot""). The author is able to evoke raw emotions with a depth of sincerity (and a bit of embarrassment) through her cast of quirky characters. Damen has moments of tenderness with Vico balanced by his characteristic raw, raunchy humor and distinct voice. The narrative is paced well, moving quickly from one episode to the next. Gebien's vivid descriptions transport readers into each scene and expose Damen's naked feelings-as he struggles with the urge to drink one night, he leaves Melody in bed and goes to the kitchen, where he sees that ""the abandoned chilis still lay on the cutting board like small, shriveled, scorched hearts. [He] knew how they felt."" These moments of revelation help make Damen an empathetic character. The sequences in which the band collaborates and riffs are strengths of the novel, allowing the reader to see more of Damen's artistic process. Describing the album the band is working to complete, Damen notes that the ""range of new sounds we planned to include was a lot wider than any of our previous work, slaloming wildly from hard rock and metal to dark country to absurd pop to achingly earnest to melodic impressionism."" Or, as Mungo Gordon, the band's producer, sums it up, ""chaotic,"" a word that could also describe the feel of the novel-though it's chaotic in a purposeful way, like OBNXS' music. An engrossing rock novel about a complicated antihero."" Kirkus Reviews

"""Gebien concludes her trilogy about the journey of a washed-up rock star in this novel. Damen Warner, the frontman for the band OBNXS, is back in his final story about trying to make it as a rock star. Throughout the novel, numerous obstacles are put in Damen's way: his grandmother's will, a custody battle, pit bulls, viral videos, and more. He has fallen into a deep alcoholic depression: Damen ""looked like ten pounds of shit in a five-pound bag. Thirty years old. Too tall, too thin, too angry, too mean."" Damen's relationships with his girlfriend, Melody, and her daughter, Vico, are in trouble: Melody's ex, the ""Baby Daddy,"" wants custody of their daughter, and Damen ends up in the middle of the conflict. Additionally, Melody is meeting with her former clients from a strip club for extra money, which makes Damen uncomfortable. Then Damen runs into Evangeline, a girl he met on the road, a social media-savvy evangelical Christian willing to help the band with their image-for a fee. She arranges protests against OBNXS to gin up publicity, generating sufficient interest to allow the band to continue working on their album. Though Damen finds it easy to create the image that the internet demands, he drifts further away from who he is as an artist (""As much as I wanted to believe my career was rallying due to the overwhelming magnetism of my musical genius, the truth was most of my notoriety now came from videos of me doing stupid shit on the internet, including such hit singles as ""Arrested Naked"" (feat. TSA), ""That Guy Who Kicked Over A Piano,"" and ""Strip Club Riot""). The author is able to evoke raw emotions with a depth of sincerity (and a bit of embarrassment) through her cast of quirky characters. Damen has moments of tenderness with Vico balanced by his characteristic raw, raunchy humor and distinct voice. The narrative is paced well, moving quickly from one episode to the next. Gebien's vivid descriptions transport readers into each scene and expose Damen's naked feelings-as he struggles with the urge to drink one night, he leaves Melody in bed and goes to the kitchen, where he sees that ""the abandoned chilis still lay on the cutting board like small, shriveled, scorched hearts. [He] knew how they felt."" These moments of revelation help make Damen an empathetic character. The sequences in which the band collaborates and riffs are strengths of the novel, allowing the reader to see more of Damen's artistic process. Describing the album the band is working to complete, Damen notes that the ""range of new sounds we planned to include was a lot wider than any of our previous work, slaloming wildly from hard rock and metal to dark country to absurd pop to achingly earnest to melodic impressionism."" Or, as Mungo Gordon, the band's producer, sums it up, ""chaotic,"" a word that could also describe the feel of the novel-though it's chaotic in a purposeful way, like OBNXS' music. An engrossing rock novel about a complicated antihero."" Kirkus Reviews"

Author Information

Gwydhar Gebien is a writer, an artist and a filmmaker; originally from Chicago now transplanted in Los Angeles in pursuit of a career in film production. An eldritch creature of introverted disposition, Gwydhar can occasionally be coaxed out into the open with music, snacks, or a single-malt whisky.

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