Somewhere East of Me
By Sean Vincent O’Keefe
Announcing the hilarious debut novel available pre-sale in April 2024.
Accidental absurdist, Jake Dustin lives many lives, none more confusing than his own.
“Life doesn’t come with instructions. You’re either happy or you’re not.”
Jacket Copy – Somewhere East of Me
Denver writer Jake Dustin is untethered from indolence when his estranged sister announces South Carolina is exhuming their mother. With no choice but to go, Jake embarks on a cross-country odyssey of uproarious absurdity and self-exploration during the strange days of September 2021. Jake feeds the internet’s insatiable lust for content as the miles rumble by while pondering where he lost his inner child and why he lives in his ex-wife’s basement. Along the way, a rousing cast of characters like St. Louis Hobo, Tough-luck Chuck, and PTSD-ridden Spooky Cody offer a visceral distillation of life’s eclectic reality.
More than a metaphor, Somewhere East of Me untangles America’s course through the 21st Century in a poignant snapshot of where we are and how we got here. If you are ready for a rollicking adventure filled with unexpected twists, laugh-out-loud hilarity, and the infinite wisdom of mutants in the middle of nowhere – buckle up. Join Jake for an absorbing romp as he considers the common truths and complicated circumstances of the human condition in a cathartic jaunt you can’t put down. Merging historical fact and hysterical fiction Somewhere East of Me is postmodern literature written for a text message attention span. U’ll dig it.
How it begins
About Sean Vincent O’Keefe
Sean O’Keefe is a professional writer who thinks about architecture, engineering, and construction in the morning and whatever he wants in the afternoon. Somewhere East of Me was written in the fall of 2021 and refined for years before release in April 2024. Sean lives with his wife and children in Denver, CO. He walks dogs and takes pictures when he’s not making stuff up.
Referential Background – Somewhere East of Me
Amazon.com :Absurdist Fiction is a genre of novels, plays, poems, films, or other media that focuses on the experiences of characters in situations where they cannot find any inherent purpose in life, most often represented by ultimately meaningless actions and events that call into question the certainty of existential concepts.
Absurdist fiction uses satire and dark humor with pessimistic themes to explore the human experience of nihilism. It also looks at the range of human responses to nihilism, including escapism, religiosity, and the conscious construction of a personal purpose.
Classic examples of absurdist fiction include The Trial by Franz Kafka, The Stranger by Albert Camus, Catch-22 by Joseph Heller, and Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk.
Amazon.com : Postmodern Literature is marked, both stylistically and ideologically, by a reliance on such literary conventions as fragmentation, paradox, unreliable narrators, often intertwined plots, paranoia, dark humor, and authorial self-reference. The primary tenets of the postmodern movement include:
1) an elevation of text and language as the fundamental phenomena of existence,
2) the application of literary analysis to all phenomena,
3) a questioning of reality and representation,
4) a critique of metanarratives,
5) an argument against method and evaluation,
6) a focus upon power relations and hegemony, and
7) a general critique of Western institutions and knowledge
(Kuznar 2008:78). For his part, Lawrence Kuznar labels postmodern anyone whose thinking includes most or all of these elements.
Personally influential examples of postmodern literature include A Clock Work Orange by Anthony Burgess, In Cold Blood by Truman Capote, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson, and On the Road by Jack Kerouac.
Jake’s route across the mid-western heart of America; four days of wandering and wondering, Somewhere East of Me.
Contact: Sean Vincent O’Keefe / 303.668.0717 / sean@sokpr.com