The Vertical Man

Product Description Thaddeus Nickels just lost his job. He has misplaced his wife. The bank is about to foreclose on his house, and his steroidpumping neighbor wants to kill him. The author of a moderately successful science fiction series, Thaddeus is in San Francisco to put some distance between himself and his problems. Hes the reluctant keynote speaker at a scifi convention packed with lovedstarved, pimplyfaced geeks. Enter Timothy Lance, a mysterious genius with an intriguing business proposition: he wants to buy the rights to a book about trading God on the stock market that Nickels hasnt written yet. What follows is a 24hour roller coaster ride through the damp streets of San Francisco. The cast of characters includes Joey, an overzealous fan; Lloyd, a homicidal maniac with cableaccess dreams; Sophia, a seductive barflycumFederal agent; Rome, Thaddeus doomed father; and Timothy Lance, the entrepreneurking of a geneticallyperfected human race, who wants Thaddeus to write the New, New Testament. Review An intriguing brainwarper of a novel that not only entertains, but fascinates. Joe R. Lansdale, author of Edgar Award Winner The BottomsAn intriguing brainwarper of a novel that not only entertains, but fascinates. Joe R. Lansdale author of Edgar Award Winner, The BottomsMatthew Dalton... cuts a ripe slice of life out of a world not yet strip mined by tradition. Chuck ProphetThe Vertical Man looks at your brain, sees a cocktail, and proceeds to suck it... into its own skewed ... reality. Jeremy Gluck, author of Skull vs. Necrotrivia and lead singer of The Barracudas About the Author MATTHEW D. DALTON is a California native, born and raised in the south and educated in the north. A graduate of St. Marys College of Moraga, he holds a Masters in Creative Writing from the University of San Francisco. The manager of three bookstores in the San Francisco Bay Area, he lives with his wife and son in Oakland. Excerpt. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. Chapter One [Excerpt] Forget what they say about San Francisco summers. Its the winters thatll kill you. No matter how hard you try, you cant get warm in the middle of a San Francisco winter. The cold sinks into your bones like a rusty knife through a frozen pound of ground round, and your spine carries the inescapable chill long into April and May. So when the heat hit me as I stepped out of the rainy San Francisco winter afternoon into the lobby of the South Pacific Royal Hotel, filled with potted palms and hothouse hibiscus, I felt as if Id stepped through time and geography, into a colonial Polynesian nightmare. Overhead set into an ornately crowned ceiling, wooden paddle fans rotated in unison. A complicated system of turnofthecentury pulleys and leather belts was strung between the fans like giant rubber bands. Small, like an Egyptian beetle on Pharaohs wall, was how I felt dragging my sorry ass out of the rain and into the lobby. The windows and doors all oversized floortoceiling jobs. The walls painted a musty pink. The doorways, windowsills, and floorboards painted the whiter white of a nonsmoking good Republicans teeth.