Superhero!
About the novel:
Genre: edgy literary fiction
Style: Chuck Palahniuk meets Stan Lee with a dash of Michael Moore and an irreverent reverence for fellow Hoosier, Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
Synopsis: What if being a super hero is not at all what you expected? That's what Sid Fischer is discovering.
There are no super villains like the Green Goblin or Doctor Octopus in the real world and even common street crime is hard to find in his newly-gentrified Chicago neighborhood.
Sid has been obsessed with comic book super heroes his entire life. Unlike most kids, he spent his whole life preparing to be one. He's mastered several styles of martial arts, gymnastics, and cryptology. He is adept at almost every non-lethal martial arts weapon. Now he just needs to find some crime to fight.
His pacifist parents have always been concerned about his obsession (Sid's given name is Siddhartha), but they tried to instill their values in him even as he rejected them. After he graduated from the small southern Indiana college where they both teach, Sid moved to Chicago and gave up almost all contact with them.
When his parents are killed in an apparent terrorist attack he finally sees the chance to put his talents to work and somehow prove that he was right and they were wrong about his chosen vocation.
As he gets closer to the shocking truth, he finds that nothing is as it originally seemed. Contrary to what the news is reporting the brains behind the attack are in a U.S. corporate board room and not a mountaintop terrorist compound.
And Sid is discovering that there are plenty of super villains to fight. They just don't wear colorful costumes and they can't be brought to justice by beating them up. Now he has to adjust his training to fight the real world's super villains -- this new training looks an awful lot like what his parents always strived to do.
About the author: J. Christopher Rahe is a 39-year-old adoptive father of three young children. He lives on a small sustainable farm in northern Indiana and works full time as marketing director for a non-profit, community-owned hospital. Before his current job he worked for a psychiatric hospital, a commercial printer, an ad agency, a Japanese-owned manufacturing company, an all-female Catholic liberal arts college, a small town newspaper and the Indiana State Medical Association. He also had temp jobs too numerous to list.
Check back for a sample chapter soon.