New Fantasy for Review: Narcotic Nation by Scarlett Savage

Scarlett Savage will be touring May 6 – 31 with her fantasy, Narcotic Nation. We are looking for reviews, interviews, guest post spots, first chapter reveals, book spotlights with giveaways. Please mention how you want to host this author and which date would work for you when inquiring.

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Narcotic Nation

Narcotic Nation It’s present-day America, but in which all Narcotics were legalized fifteen years ago with the advent of the Freedman Bill (the formal name for the Legalization). While there is finally plenty of money to pay police, teachers, firemen, and other public workers, and no one in the country is without food, shelter, or insurance, the government now utilizes methods designed to keep usage within a safe parameter…violating many Constitutional rights in the process.

The country is torn by this decision. There are the Realists, who firmly feel that since drug use isn’t going away, that they should tax it, make it available, and put those trillions toward improving the country and its citizens. The Idealists are convinced we are allowing our baser instincts to be used for the good of the politicians, and are fiercely fighting for the bill to be overturned.

In the midst of all this, rock band Deus Ex Machina (latin for “God from the Machine”), having won an American Idol-type competition, executes its first world tour. Roped into participating by his lead singer girlfriend, Raven, bassist and aspiring politico Ashe Brecken is dismayed when his band actually wins on live television. But there’s a silver lining for him—he can use his newfound celebrity toward a purpose. Working hand in hand with Stay Straight, the organization dedicated to overturning the Legalization, his dedication borders on zealotry. What he doesn’t know is there is a saboteur in the band…someone that supports the Legalization and the help it offers to sick and hungry children. After a public humiliation completely discredits him in the eyes of Stay Straight and the entire country, As he deploys deadly designs to make his statement to the world. Turning to someone he’s long despised to assist him in this dangerous effort, this longtime band of friends find themselves keeping treacherous secrets from each other while they’re in the midst of changing not only the nation, but the whole world.

But at what cost?

554 pp.

You can visit the author’s website at www.scarlettsavage.com.

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Scarlett Savage

Scarlett Savage Scarlett began writing at the tender age of six after reading Laura Ingalls Wilder’s “Little House in the Big Woods.” Realizing that the words made pictures inside her mind, she resolved to start writing immediately. It took a few decades before she was any good at it, but by age twenty she won several awards in college that had only been given to graduate students (and male students) with “Jimmie Was Here,” “The Centerfieldsman,” and “Numbers,” the play that would go on to become “Not This Girl, Not This Day.” After leaving the University of Maine at Orono (the alma mater of her hero, Stephen King) she took a few years off, “because I realized all I ever wrote about was being in college, and being in theater; I needed to experience life to write about it all.”

Shortly after, she married and had her first child, Daphne Juliet Ellis, a ballet dancer, actress, and straight A student. Ms. Savage began concentrating more heavily on writing for the stage, and it was during this period that “Dear Daddy, Love Cassie” and “Chase a Killer, Catch a Killer, Run, Run, Run…” were written, as well as her first novel, Narcotic Nation.Her second novel, “The Madman’s Clay” soon followed. She moved to the art-rich area of Portsmouth, NH, where she had her second child, artist Jessica Juliet Savage (father, actor Chris Savage), and spent a decade honing her craft for the stage; during this time, she raised over a hundred thousand dollars with private donations for various sexual assault agencies with runs of “Dear Daddy, Love Cassie” and a number of donations for the Ronald MacDonald House with “My Sister Jake is Dying”; A sometime actress, she performed three tours of the comedy “Sylvia” and her own “Dear Daddy, Love Cassie” as well as leads in the films “Golyadkin” and “Tempers Cool.”

In 2005, she was the most produced original playwright from Boston to Bangor. 2008 saw the Girl Scouts hire her to write their dramatic presentation, and “I AM A GIRL!!” a play celebrating girls and their determination to change the world, was born. During this period, awards, grants and fellowships from all over the country were bestowed upon the writer. When Richard Rose, the head of NYC Shakespeare Society, caught her play, “Numbers” and determined to bring it to NYC, where it was a sell-out hit, outselling all of Theater Row during its run.

A chance meeting with a college crush lead her to move to LA, where she focused on transposing her plays “She F-ing Hates Me: A Love Story” and “Numbers” to the page. After a brief period of rest, Zombie Joe’s Underground Theater picked up three of her plays, as she transposed two of her plays for the screen. She currently plans to turn “I AM A GIRL!!” into an inspirational web series, and to continue to write plays that entertain and inspire for the stage.

She’s a triple Leo—that’s sun, moon, and rising—and if you can’t tell that by the sound of her roar, you can certainly tell it by her wild mane of hair.

“I’m a fierce person,” she admits. “I defend what’s important to me, and I’d rather be honest than win a lot of popularity contests.”

The daughter of a long-deceased army sargeant and a nursing student dropout, Scarlett distanced herself from most of her family, “for personal reasons, although I’m very much in touch with my sisters, and my precious nieces and nephews; and a few cousins. Other than that…you wouldn’t talk to them, either!!” She has been lucky, she relates gratefully, in that, “I found my family, rather than being born into it. The Joel Ellises, of Turner, Maine—my elder daughter’s paternal grandparents—are definitely family. They have never missed an opening night, they’ve read every word I’ve put in front of them, they’ve put up with me when I was being an ass—you know,” she smiles, “Family. Real Family.”

In love with the stage from an early age, Scarlett originally wanted to study acting until “I found out how much hard work it is,” she jokes; she gravitated to the other side of the auditioning table as she began producing and directing her own works. (She’s not above taking the occasional acting gig, as evidenced by her three national tours playing Sylvia the dog in “Sylvia” and as the title role in her own “Dear Daddy, Love Cassie).

But from age twenty onward, writing was her sole focus. Her legion of plays reflects that.

“I’ve always been focused on interpersonal communication,” she reflects. “We’re an odd people; we never say what we mean. The day I realized that, was the day that I became a good dialogue writer. And every single reviewer, whether they loved my work or hated it, has said, ‘That girl knows how people talk’. I’m very proud of that.”

Advice for young writers?

“Read. Not just novels—read history, read autobiographies, read Roman and Greek myths. Read everything you can get your hands on. Contact your heroes online—most of them have websites and are only too happy to give out a few tips. And most of all… OBSERVE. Find out what gets your heart pounding, and listen.”

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