You might be saying to yourself, “Jackson, what’s your novel about?” Let me take a few minutes to tell you more about this MG Scifi thriller I call Mesh.
So far I’ve only published short stories, but I want to do more. It’s great to pull off a 6-12K word tale, but what about an epic novel? Can I do it? Will people enjoy it? Writing a full-length novel has been on my bucket list since I was 12. Now, several decades later, I want to give it a shot. Here’s what Mesh is about and I hope it’s something you’ll enjoy:
Every kid thinks school is evil, but it happens to be true for eighth-grader Roman Diaz. He just uncovered some terrible secrets about his closet-supervillain principal Doctor Gray that literally spell out deception, world domination, and murder. With minutes left of freedom, Roman puts his life in the hands of a ragged science project called the MESH. Stay free here, or be bound forever.
How did it come to to this? At first, Roman thought coming to Miramar Technical High School was a great idea. Escape the suburban suckhole for a free ride into the hottest technical boarding school in the country? Sure, why not? No geeky middle-schooler could turn down new friends, hot tech, and non-stop prank wars. Roman bands together with the Snow Foxes: an elite group of nerds assigned to a special secret project. If Project November wins at the upcoming Titan Conference, Roman and his friends are in on the ground floor of a billion-dollar startup; set for life before he can even drive!
Then the truth comes out: If Project November wins at Titan Conference, it will connect everyone with a cybernetic neurolink into a system controlled by Doctor Gray. ‘Total world domination, total control, forever,’ Roman’s mentor tells him. The only thing standing between a supervillain with his killer robots and an evil plan is one small kid and a plucky band of retrotech rebels.
MESH is a complete 77K word MG SF thriller I would describe as ‘Ready Player One’ by Ernest Cline meets ‘Truly Devious’ by Maureen Johnson that will appeal to readers of SEVENTH GRADE VS. THE GALAXY by Joshua S. Levy, FUZZY MUD by Louis Sachar, and FRANK EINSTEIN AND THE ANTIMATTER MOTOR by by Jon Scieszka
Mesh is a celebration of many different stories, people and ideas that I’ve collected over the years. Parsing ideas down into a readable story is an interesting challenge, and I’m finding it to be personally rewarding.
My dreams is to tell authentic, relevant, exciting stories like the ones I used to read as a kid.as a scifi MG thriller, Mesh is something I’m really proud of. I’ve successfully combined hard science with bleeding-edge tech and lightning-fast action. I’m still in search of an agent – here’s Mesh’s landing page if you’re in the publishing world and you want to know more.
