Lucas Klauss

In an effort to further promote Everything You Need to Survive the Apocalypse, my debut young adult novel, I will be self-publishing a few YA novellas throughout the year. This particular novella, which I wrote a couple of years back, was originally an adult thriller set amid the high-stakes chaos of the 2008 financial crisis. After sending it to several hundred agents and getting no takers, I realized why: this book would work *way* better with teen characters. So, a few weekends ago, I finally sat down with it and thoroughly revised it. Now, finally, it is what is was supposed to be all along: a self-published YA novella.

Please enjoy this EXCLUSIVE free excerpt of The Short of It: A Financial Thriller (About and For Teenagers). Hope it whets your appetite for the full version, which is available for just $3.99 on lookitsabook.com!

Chapter 1

Brianna Kingley was going to smoke a cigar in her office, damnit. Even if it was her last official act as Vice President of Operations at Sauter Brothers Holdings, Inc., she was going to rip this stogie until it burned her totally teenage lungs. As the first adolescent female vice president of a major financial services firm, she was entitled to it, no matter what Nanny Bloomberg and his liberal pantywaist pals on the New York City Council said.

As she struck a match and lifted it to the cigar’s tightly rolled tip, she looked in the mirror. Even now at 17, she still had her looks. Teenage looks. Bright blond hair that was styled how all the wealthiest teenage girls styled it, with some sort of flip probably. A slim face that was not the face of a middle-aged man at all but the face of a pretty—some even described it in textual messages as “hawt”—teenage girl who, when she wasn’t going to high school and in love with Justin Bleeber like a normal Millennial, was running one of the nation’s foremost financial services companies.

Or what was one of the nation’s foremost financial services companies until about 10:31 that morning—the moment their short-sell bluff had been called by the Fed. More specifically, it had been called by Mason Kilgore, the teenage vice president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, who, when he wasn’t playing high school sports like soccer and Wii bowling, was the toughest teen in the whole banking regulation apparatus, which had way more teens in it than most people might assume.

Now her whole company—and maybe the whole country—was going under. And who was to blame? The girl, who was not an adult man named Brian, watching herself suck in a mouthful of smoke. And that cute, cute bastard, Mason. If only they could work it out over a couple of Mountain Dews.

And if only she had his private cell phone number, for his cell phone that he’d owned since he was thirteen because that’s how it is these days…

“Hey, teenager,” Mason said when she called, in a voice that would not be described as gravelly, like that of the older man who had previously been the Fed Vice Pres and then died suddenly. From a being-old attack.

“Hey, teenager, yourself.”

“Been a long time since we’ve done that thing we teenagers do instead of play golf. Be friends with benefits, I mean.”

“If you’ll remember, Mason, last time we were friends with benefits you embarrassed me pretty bad out there on the friendship with benefits place. Which I guess would be your parents’ basement.”

“Oh, I remember.”

They shared a hearty adolescent laugh at that.

“Listen,” Mason said, cutting to the teenage chase. “I know you’re in it, Bri. Knee-deep and rising. What do you say we meet at the teenage bar, where they only serve Mountain Dew and chicken fingers, and talk about how to save the world.”

Brianna let him hang on the line, savoring the little power she’d have left if this whole cray-cray scheme fell through. “I thought you’d never ask.”

As a rule, Brianna Kingley never smiled. But she was alive again, if only for the time it took for her to legally drive her car to the teenage bar and hear Mason, that cutie son of a bitch who looked a little like Justin Bleeber, say he’d only been yanking her teenage chain, one last time.

So she smiled. 

No one could see her braces because they were invisible. 

In an effort to build an audience for Everything You Need to Survive the Apocalypse, my debut novel releasing in January 2012, I will be self-publishing several YA novellas over the next few months. I wrote these novellas over the course of two weeks in early July, while I was living in what had been described on Craigslist as “the world’s first hotel made entirely of living organisms” and turned out to be exactly that. I won’t get into the details except to say that I’m not sure why I thought it would be a good idea to book a nonrefundable two-week stay at the world’s first hotel made entirely of living organisms. And that I now have chlorophyll instead of blood, and bugs instead of bones.    

Anyway, here’s an EXCLUSIVE excerpt from the novella I’m releasing today on lookitsabook.com (for just $3.99!). Hope it whets your appetite!

A Very Historical Time Indeed

a young adult novella by Lucas Klauss

Chapter 1

“Truly, we live in historical times,” declared young Abe Lincoln as he ambled down the road. It was dusty, as many things were then.

“Indeed,” proclaimed his best friend, young Frederick Douglass, who ambled beside him. “Very historical times are among us.”

“What with slavery and women not being able to vote,” added Abe as he doffed his very tall hat, which was normal and called a stovepipe.

“And of course the Civil War that is hearkening unto us most quickly,” offered Frederick. ”I fear it. You should try to be president during it.”

Abe laughed quite loudly. “Oh my, Frederick. Me, the sixteenth president of the United States of America? What a jest!”

“I jest not, friend! These historical times require historical men such as I and thee. Let us shirk not our destinies.” Frederick referred to them as men even though they were only seventeen, for people at that time lived only forty years or so. Plus, he wore a large, gray beard, so he looked like a man of at least twenty and six.

“Destiny?” young Abe Lincoln said. He had just begun to grow a beard, like his friend, Frederick, but he felt sure he would shave it off soon. How it itched!

Suddenly a spirit materialized in the middle of the road, which was more believable then. The spirit wore a white wig, had wooden teeth, and was George Washington.

“Good morrow, young sirs,” said the spirit.

“Good morrow, George Washington,” the young men replied.

“Listen thee,” Washington said to young Abe in a slightly older version of English. “For I was the first president of the United States of America before I died. I was a good president, but I did not end slavery. How that choice haunts me, even unto death, which otherwise is quite pleasant!”

Abe and Frederick were delighted to hear that the afterlife was enjoyable, but anguished to see such a historical man in such great pain, even if he didn’t end slavery as he should have.

“The man who becomes the sixteenth president,” continued the spirit of George Washington, “will have he an opportunity to issue a proclamation ending slavery once and for all! In doing so, he willst become the most historical man in the history of America. Hear ye?”

“Hear we,” Abe and Frederick stated, astonished.

“Most excellent. Abe, I urge thee to the presidency of which I speak. Only thee, of all the young men in America, with the exception of young Frederick here, possess the might to resist the temptations of being so historical as well as the ability to deliver important addresses, such as Gettysburg ones. I apologize magnificently, Frederick, but a black man won’t be elected president until the year 2008.”

Young Frederick appreciated George Washington’s apology, but was still somewhat angry.

“I must return now!” George Washington’s spirit proclaimed. “Heed my words, young Abe! Free the slaves! And become historical! But be thee nice about it! And keep thine beard growing!” 

George Washington dissolved into the air. The two young friends stood in the silence that seemed to settle around them like chicken feathers. Most people then owned chickens.

“You were true,” young Abe spoke to his friend. “As true as George Washington himself.”

“I always am,” young Frederick said humorously and they laughed.

“I will become the sixteenth president of the United States of America,” young Abe whispered to the wind that carried across the plains toward Washington, DC.

“And the most historical man of these historical times,” young Frederick intoned.

“Not if I have anything to say about it,” declared a young man with a moustache whose name was John Wilkes Booth. He was a bully at the same school they all went to. Bullies existed then as they do now but more often carried revolvers.

John Wilkes Booth pulled out his revolver.

Then Abe and Frederick pulled out theirs. Most people, actually, carried revolvers.

An exciting gun battle ensued that didn’t happen in real history but was nevertheless very historical.

Especially when young Mark Twain showed up.

(A Very Historical Time Indeed is available now at lookitsabook.com for $3.99.) 

In an effort to build an audience for Everything You Need to Survive the Apocalypse, my debut novel releasing in January 2012, I will be self-publishing several YA novellas over the next few months. I wrote these novellas over the course of two weeks in early June, while I was living in what had been described on Craigslist as a “writer’s cruise” of New England but turned out to be the equipment shed of a down-on-their-luck Pop Warner football team in Nebraska. I won’t get into the details except to say SHIMMY SHIMMY HOT FUDGE GOOOOOOO WOLVERINES! And that you can keep my security deposit, Kevin; tell your mom it’s for that college education you’ll get one day, alright, Sport? 

Anyway, here’s an EXCLUSIVE excerpt from the novella I’m releasing today on lookitsabook.com (for just $3.99!). Hope it whets your appetite!

The Fallenest Angel

a young adult novella by Lucas Klauss

Chapter 1

“Where’s your angel, Caitlyn?” taunted Nina Sommersby to me.

“Yeah, Caitlyn,” taunted Mina Pahlau to me too. “Is he still in heaven or something?”

Nina and Mina cackled loudly as I walked by them and their smolderingly hot fallen angel boyfriends, Dimitrius and Rael. I put in my mp3 player earbuds and pretended I hadn’t heard, but I really had heard.

It wasn’t fair. Sophomore year had barely begun, and already it seemed like every girl in tenth grade had a fallen angel boyfriend, each more fallen than the last. Except me. I didn’t have a fallen human boyfriend, or even a regular human boyfriend. I had no boyfriend at all.

As I walked home on the sidewalk from school, I tried to tell myself that I didn’t care. But I didn’t believe myself, no matter how hard I tried. The truth was, I wanted a fallen angel boyfriend. I acknowledged it to myself and played the song “Send Me an Angel” on my mp3 player.

Of course, I’d tried to get a fallen angel boyfriend. There were tons of them at school now. A lot of them didn’t even seem to go to class or anything. They just perched in trees outside, wearing leather jackets and smoking cigarettes. There was a whole pack of fallen Archangels who hung out in the parking lot on their motorcycles, tattooing each other with their swords. And just last Friday this whole host of fallen Cherubim descended on the football game and slaughtered both teams. It was hot.

But none of them were hot for me. I basically went straight up to this fallen Dominion named Philo or something during lunch and told him how I was feeling a timeless bond between us tearing my heart in two and was pledging my undying love for him and he just laughed. Which sounds really mean when a fallen angel does it.

Not as mean as Nina and Mina’s laughs, though. Those girls are mean girls, but worse than the movie. And they hate me for reasons I’ll explain later. And they have the hottest fallen angel boyfriends anyone has ever seen. They probably used to be best friends with God, that’s how hot they are.

So my life is basically hell now. Until I get a fallen angel boyfriend who’s even more fallen than theirs…

I felt something. In my heart. In my soul. As I got closer to my house. Like a burning. Like a fire. And it smelled like love and brimstone. 

And there he was. Standing in my front yard. Eighty feet high and bright red.

Satan. The fallenest angel of all.

“Come up here, cutie,” he grumbled, and he plucked me up like a grape. A grape with dark, curly hair and hazel eyes and whose name is Caitlyn.

His fingers felt hot and I thought they were probably even burning my skin. His red skin crawled like there were worms underneath it. I gazed into his enormous eyes, the color of milk, except more yellow than that. He was the most beautiful, most fallen angel boyfriend I’d ever seen.

“I love you, Caitlyn,” he said, his voice like the bleating of a thousand sheep. “I don’t know why, but I love you.”

“I love you too, Satan,” I said. “It’s like we have an eternal love that stretches across the ages. Will you destroy Dimitrius and Rael for me? They’re Mina and Nina’s boyfriends.”

“No problem, girl,” Satan said.

He set me on top of his neck, where there was a tiny saddle made of interlocking leather hearts and the skin of human sinners. He squatted down to launch us both back to school, where he’d destroy Mina and Nina’s pathetically fallen angel boyfriends.

But then a bright white cloud, brighter than the sun, floated in front of us. Even Satan had to shield his eyes.

“Who goes there?” my boyfriend Satan said.

In a thunder voice, the cloud said, “God, you fool. I’m dating Lily Nance and now we have to fight.”

I gasped.

Lily Nance was my best friend.

(I forgot to mention that.)

(The Fallenest Angel is available now at lookitsabook.com for $3.99.) 

In an effort to build an audience for Everything You Need to Survive the Apocalypse, my debut novel releasing in January 2012, I will be self-publishing several YA novellas over the next few months. I wrote these novellas over the course of two weeks in early May, while I was living in what had been described on Craigslist as a “gorgeous college campus in the Green Mountains of upstate Vermont” but turned out to be a ramshackle strip club in the back of a tractor-trailer that toured every shit-hole town in the American Southwest. I won’t go into the details, except to say that I’ll never forget you, Roxie. And that I still want my security deposit, Mr. Fakename, which surprisingly turned out to be your real name, even though you’re a no-good, two-timing son of a whore’s dog’s ringworm. So there.

Anyway, here’s an EXCLUSIVE excerpt from the novella I’m releasing today on lookitsabook.com (for just $3.99!). Hope it whets your appetite!

Lolita and Werewolves

a young adult novella by Lucas Klauss

Chapter 1

Lolita, light of his life, fire of his loins. His sin, his soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta.

I was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. I was Lola in slacks. I was Dolly at school. I was Dolores on the dotted line. But in his arms I was always Lolita.

Until I bit his fucking head off, that is. Took my own trip: from the doughy, sweet flesh of his neck to the chicken-gristle trachea and onward, through his sighs, to the bone, which snapped like a carrot. Hum. Bert’s. Dead.

Three steps, however, was too short a trip. A hirsute nymphet, once released, cannot return to her cage. So a newly lupine Lo fled and fed on the blood of degenerates. Ecstatic with gore, I stalked the stalkers, turned sexual predator into asexual prey, and howled at the naked moon. You can always count on a murderous werewolf girl for a fancy prose style.

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, exhibit number one is what the perverts, the misinformed, simple, decapitated perverts, ogled. Look at this tangle of fur.

(Lolita and Werewolves is available now at lookitsabook.com for $3.99.) 

In an effort to build an audience for Everything You Need to Survive the Apocalypse, my debut YA novel releasing in January 2012, I will be self-publishing several YA novellas over the next few months. I wrote these novellas over the course of two weeks in early April, while I was living in what had been described on Craigslist as a “writer’s colony” in the Catskills but turned out to be a defunct leper colony in rural Kentucky. I won’t go into the details, except to say that I don’t think I’m capable of having dreams other than nightmares anymore. And that I still want my security deposit, Mr. Realname, which I realize now is not a real last name, and that I’m pretty sure you’re a ghost, anyway, so what use could you possibly have for money?

Anyway, here’s an EXCLUSIVE excerpt from the novella I’m releasing today on lookitsabook.com (for just $3.99!). Hope it whets your appetite!

All My Dead Moms

a young adult novella by Lucas Klauss

Chapter 1

My dead moms had just about ruined my life. Not because they’d been my moms and they’d died—I was totally fine with that OKAY? Back off!

No. The actual thing was, they’d made me too sympathetic. Everybody knows a teen with a dead mom is sympathetic. But a teen with seven dead moms? Stupid sympathetic.

Back at my old school, after my most recent two foster moms had died in a trolley crash, it had gotten to the point that I couldn’t even go to class. Because as soon as I walked in the room everyone would get up from their desks and hug me and confess their secrets to me all at once.

I mean, sure, I got a lot of dead mom mercy sex after school too, and that was cool. But I was tired of people telling me they loved me, when they really just loved my dead moms.

Plus, do you have any idea how time-consuming having that many dead moms is? Everybody knows that when a teen’s mom is dead, he has to spend countless hours searching her old journals and photos to find out what kind of a person she was so that he can determine what kind of person he is. I hadn’t even unraveled the enigma of my genetic mother, let alone my surrogate mother, or my stepmother, or my second stepmother, or my first foster mother, or my most recently deceased lesbian foster mothers, the ones who’d died in the trolley crash.

Anyway. Whatever. I don’t know why I’m going over all that stuff when I don’t even really give a crap about it. IT’S NOT A BIG DEAL, ALRIGHT? But I thought living with a single foster father and moving to a new school might change things. Take the pressure off.

It was my first day, and I walked into homeroom and cringed, expecting the usual suffocating group hug and endless confessions that, at the very least, prevented all of us from getting an education.

But nobody even noticed me. It was amazing. I sat down next to a brown-haired girl with a cute smile and a nice body. I wondered if maybe one day she’d have sex with me for me, not my dead moms.

“Hi,” I said. “I’m Caleb. My moms are…”

I froze. I couldn’t believe I’d almost said it. She looked at me expectantly.

“Totally not dead,” I finished.

“Cool,” she said. “My name’s Tara.”

I wondered if I should ask about her mom and whether she was dead. But before I could, my new foster father, Tom, called to me from the door to the classroom. It was even more embarrassing than almost admitting I had seven dead moms.

“What?” I said, totally peeved. People were staring.

“It’s an emergency,” Tom said, and he motioned for me to come to the hallway. I got up and went out there, anxious but not worried. After all, all my moms were already dead.

When I reached the hallway, Tom was sweating like crazy. He gripped my shoulders and stared at me with wide, wild eyes.

“Caleb, I have three important things to tell you,” Tom said. “First, I’m a woman.”

“What? No, you’re—”

“Yes, I’m pre-op transgender. That means I identify as a woman, so I’m now technically your mother. Second, I’m about to die of poisoning. Third, the person who poisoned me is—”

Tom fell to the floor, dead.

“Goddamnit,” I said, stomping my foot. Now I was up to eight dead moms and Tom had the most mysterious backstory yet! It would take me forever to unravel it.

Just then Tara came out of the classroom, crying. “I heard everything,” she said. Then she grabbed my neck and started making out with me and admitting that she stole makeup from the CVS sometimes. I was trying to push her off me when I got a little help from the principal.

“Tara, get yourself together,” Principal Meyerson said. Then he looked down at Tom’s body and shook his head. “So sorry to hear about your loss, Caleb. You must be so strong. So strong.”

I was just about to tell him that I was definitely NOT emotionally traumatized from all the death I’d witnessed and burying it under layers of denial when he got the Look on his face. I’d seen it eight times in my life already. I knew exactly what it meant.

Or so I thought. “I’m afraid I have some strange and bad news,” Meyerson said. “They’re not different news, they’re same news, so you won’t have to choose. Anyway, what I’m trying to say is, we’ve received word that you are the result of a secret government program that aimed to try and create human eggs from the DNA of multiple women. In your case, they were successful. Your mothers also received this news.”

He paused. “They all got on a bus to come to town to see you. But the bus was hit by a giant meteorite and exploded and they all died. All sixty-three of them.”

“Are you fucking kidding me?” I said. Sixty-three dead moms plus the eight I already had? It actually took me a second to do the math of all my dead moms but when I did I was pretty pissed off. Seventy-one motherfucking dead moms?! Seventy-one motherfucking tumultuous pasts?!

Not to mention that my sympatheticness had just hit epicly stupid levels. Tara and Principal Meyerson were ripping my shirt off and confessing to a bunch of misdemeanors and moral transgressions. I could see people down the hall turning and running at us, my endearingness like a siren’s call or whatever. If they all hit me at that speed, they’d crush me.

I was lethally sympathetic.

“Attention!” came a voice from the speakers in the ceiling. “Sophomore Katie Westaway’s baby sister died and Katie blames herself for it even though she’s not at all responsible. Everyone please converge on Classroom C31 to comfort her!”

Tara and Meyerson and everyone rushed away from me toward poor, poor Katie. I’d been out-sympatheticized, thank God. But for how long?

Because if I had seventy-one dead mothers, how many dead grandmothers did I have?

(All My Dead Moms is available now at lookitsabook.com for $3.99.) 

In an effort to build an audience for Everything You Need to Survive the Apocalypse, my debut YA novel releasing in January 2012, I will be self-publishing several YA novellas over the next few months. I wrote these novellas over the course of two weeks in early March, while I was living in what had been described on Craigslist as a “writer’s bungalow” in the Hamptons but turned out to be a rat-infested houseboat in Pittsburgh. I won’t go into the details, except to say that I hate motherf%$#ing rats, especially you, Percy, if you’re reading this. And that I still want my security deposit, Mr. Fakelastname, which I realize now is a fake last name you gave me, and that you were a bunch of rats dressed in a trenchcoat and hat the whole time.

Anyway, here’s an EXCLUSIVE excerpt from the novella I’m releasing today on lookitsabook.com (for just $3.99!). Hope it whets your appetite!

Guess I’m Just a Horse Gal, Is All

a young adult novella by Lucas Klauss

Chapter 1

Always did love a good horse. Then again, I reckon I always did love a bad horse more.

“Whoa, girl! Whoa now!” I cried as Tyler kicked up a cloud’a dirt thicker’n spit.

But he weren’t listenin’ to me nor God. Tyler was just about the troublesomest horse at Troublesome Horse Ranch, which is sayin’ a heckuva lot, considering this ranch is where some of the state’s most troublesome horses get sent when they … well, when they done caused trouble.

And for all his trouble-causin’ ways, I loved Tyler best. Always had, as long as I’d been at Troublesome Horse Ranch, which was fer three summers yet. I couldn’t help it. He’d bite and scream and he’d even crushed some poor fella’s skull one time with a well-placed kick. But then he’d give me that look. Those chestnut eyes under them powerful long eyelashes … oh, I can’t even think of it without gettin’ a bit hectic.

Now Tyler’d finally calmed down a bit and was standin’ there anxious in the corral. I was just gettin’ ready to feed ‘im a carrot with my mouth when I heard a puny cough. I turned around, carrot still in mah dang mouth, and guess who’s standin’ there but Noah.

“Don’t feed the horses with your mouth, Cassie,” he whined. “You know it’s dangerous.”

Ugh. Noah’s cute for a human, I guess, and he can ride okay, but he just doesn’t understand horses like I do.

I took the carrot from mah mouth. “Tyler’d never hurt me, ya nincompoop,” I said, and I spat fierce at the ground.

“‘Nincompoop’? Why do you always talk like that, Cassie? You’re from Orlando, just like me.”

I rolled mah eyes just about to the sky and back. “I’m just different’n you, is all,” I said.

“Yeah, I know,” he said, real put out. “Anyway, be careful. I just brought over a new horse. He’s supposed to be even wilder than Tyler.”

Wilder’n Tyler? I do believe I quaked in mah boots just then.

“Whar is ‘e?” I said. Noah didn’t have ‘im and I didn’t see ‘im nowhere.

“Just over …” Noah said, turnin’ toward the barn, but I could see in his dumb human eyes he didn’t see nohorse nowhere neither.

I was readyin’ up a scorcher of a reply when what did ah see but the most beautifulest sight in all Creation. Twas a moonlight-colored horse a-gallopin’ straight for the corral fence, front legs lifted and back legs risin’, lookin’ about to take off for anywhere other than Troublesome Horse Ranch.

‘cept when he came down, like all horses do, he trotted right up to me, lookin’ like he done found himself a reason to stay. Horse-blond hair tossed just so over his eyes, lashes longer’n a haystalk, with a devil’s grin just for me.

It were like Tyler just didn’t exist no more. I popped the carrot in mah mouth and tilted mah chin up at this wondrous being whose name I didn’t know atall.

“Cassie!” Noah shrieked. “Stop! This guy’s bitten three people’s noses off!”

I took the carrot from mah mouth. “What’s ‘is name?”

“It’s Tornado, but that’s not—”

But I couldn’t hear ‘im no more—I was caught up in the Tornado.

Our eyes met. He took the carrot right from mah daggum mouth and was about to give me just the most dangerous little peck on the nose.

That’s when the Hurricane arrived.

A’course I didn’t know that at the tahm. All I knew then was a furious neighing and a shining ebony coat and a smell of ancient wildness.

But another horse had jumped the fence and stepped to Tornado. They huffed and stomped at one another like old foes. Old foes, fightin’ again.

Over l’il ‘ol me.

“Cassie!” Noah whined like a damn girl. “Get out of there! That horse has killed six people!”

I took ‘nother carrot from mah back pocket, stuck it in mah mouth, and stepped right ‘twixt the two wild-eyed beauties. Stuck mahself right ‘tween a Tornado and a Hurricane.

“Stop trying to get those horses to kiss you, Cassie! Jesus Christ!”

It was gonna be a real interestin’ summer. 

(Guess I’m Just a Horse Gal, Is All is available now at lookitsabook.com for $3.99.) 

Excerpt from my self-published YA novella

In an effort to build an audience for Everything You Need to Survive the Apocalypse, my debut YA novel releasing in January 2012, I will be self-publishing several YA novellas over the next few months. I wrote these novellas over the course of two weeks in early February, while I was living in what had been described on Craigslist as a “writer’s retreat” in upstate New York but turned out to be a swamp shack in Delaware. I won’t go into the details, except to say that the microwaved whiskey-and-waters I consumed over that fortnight were as much to prevent hypothermia from the frigid marsh air as they were to grease the wheels of creativity. And that I still want my security deposit, Mr. Lastname, which I realize now is a fake last name you gave me.

Anyway, here’s an EXCLUSIVE excerpt from the novella I’m releasing today on lookitsabook.com (for just $3.99!). Hope it whets your appetite!

DYSTOPIA U.S.A.

a young adult novella by Lucas Klauss

Chapter 1

Man, we were in a big-time dystopia. It was just super-dystopian all the time in the U.S.A. these days. The government was way dystopian, for one thing. Always watching us with dystopian eye-cameras. And black vans. Nobody could own a car unless it was a black van, so you could never tell who worked for the government and who was just driving to the dystopian grocery store for a gallon of 2% dystopian milk. Not that they even had it stocked half the time. Because it was a dystopia.

And there was definitely some kind of sinister dystopian corporation involved in all of it too. You could just tell. Everything, and I mean everything, had the UniCorporation™ logo on it, which was just a black square with the word UniCorporation™ under it. And if you tried to scratch it off, like say off of your dog because you just had this feeling that dogs shouldn’t have logos on them, then the Authorities showed up in their black vans and scolded you the first time and then took you to SkyJail the next time.

Oh yeah, by the way, all jails are in the sky now. I think that happened around the time of the Bedarkening, which my grandma says they used to call “the year 2017.” That was when the United States of America became the Un-united States of America. Then, after that, Civil War 2 started. Then UniCorporation™ won Civil War 2 and it became the UniCorporation™ States of America. Then they changed it back to the United States of America because people missed that. But the UniCorporation™ logo is still the flag.

Anyway, so it was a UniCorporation™ Tuesday like any other. Totally overcast. Menacing string music playing. No free speech and women couldn’t have babies unless they were UniCorporation™ CloneKids. The usual.

I was hovering down the street with my friend Blendon. My name’s Blendon too, just like every boy under sixteen. So it gets confusing. Especially when the crusty old guy who lives in the alleyway called to us.

“Hey, Blendon!” he said, in this crusty way he always had that made it clear he was totally not the disguised guardian of a secret underworld resistance that looks kind of like that part from The Matrix now that I think about it.

Except he was.

And he was calling me, not my friend, Blendon.

Calling me to make the U.S.A. not a dystopia anymore.

(Dystopia U.S.A. is available now at lookitsabook.com for $3.99.)