Intrepid (Alien Buddha Press 2025)
Intrepid-
In late 19th century New York, Captain Blaz Ritter receives a second chance at life when spared from his cot in an opium den by the nurse that he would later marry. After reestablishing his career he is introduced to a mysterious document through an anthropologist colleague which tells of a place where men can live forever. Now, at the forefront of a polar expedition, he seeks to preserve himself in a remote region of the north which he believes holds the true fountain of youth. Through a diary of violent deaths and broken families, Blaz brings together a vision, vaporous as his opium delusions, in which he details his journey into the great white north in the liminal space between time and place, fact and fiction. When his expedition begins to fail he must decide one thing; is it better to live or live forever?
Inspired by Louis Ferdinand Celine, Rudyard Kipling, Tex Avery, and Mel Blanc, Intrepid is a romantically bleak literary narrative wrought with a mix of slapstick and sardonic humor, straddling the lines of the pensive and the absurd.