Asher Black Created Worlds
The world of a book is created, even if it's this world, because it's the world as the characters experience it, the milieu of the human condition as they see it, and a particular understanding of the times in which they're living.
The World of Milo Frayne
Milo Frayne, formerly employed in both military and civilian intelligence, leaves that career frustrated by the ethical quagmire of the Cold War and Reagan's secret wars in Central America. He relocates to a small Midwestern city, spins up a detective agency, and hopes to use his knowledge and abilities to a more just purpose and stay out of the international chaos. Milo is continuously building his own network for good—people who look out for each other and help when they can. This has the unfortunate effect of pulling him into cases that go beyond the typical stolen pet or cheating spouse. The number of books in the series will be indefinite (continual). The first one is written, and the second is started.
Book One of Milo Frayne
The daughter of a general that Frayne worked for during his intelligence career comes to him with two pieces of news: Her father has died, and she has been referred to Milo by an old colleague and former spy, Brawley Fiske, who is supposed to be in hiding. There's a price on the head of anyone who stayed in for the Central America fiasco, including Brawley, and now, with the general out of the way, his last lifeline of protection is gone. The general's daughter wants Milo Frayne to find a little girl missing in South Korea, but she isn't telling Milo the whole story. He takes the case anyway to locate Brawley, inform him of the general's death, and warn him of the threat to his life now that he has surfaced again. The story draws heavily on Asher Black's own experience in South Korea. This book is complete, and Asher is currently seeking an agent while writing the next book in the series.
Bamberry's World
A boy growing up in the rural South and Midwest is thrust repeatedly into unusual situations and confrontations. The adults in his life generally govern in absentia or through violence, and he must navigate coming-of-age in a world of boys on their own that is seldom seen or oft forgotten.
Three to four books are planned in this series. The last will be focused on a grown man's coming of age. The first book is written, the second is started.
Book One of Bamberry's World
A fifteen-year-old boy is sent to live in the Appalachian mountains at a boarding school where adults rely on a nearly autonomous hierarchy of boys to keep things running. The rules are unwritten but profoundly different than Bamberry's previous experience. The boys drive their own school bus into town for High School classes, act as their own internal police force, and fall in as the de facto army to protect the school against attacks from armed young men and a kidnapping attempt by the Ku Klux Klan. Bamberry, unafraid of the pitch-black of the surrounding forest at night and the wild animals that lurk there, is quickly assigned the job of going down the mountain in secret each night to bring back tobacco and food for boys who are worked hard, fed very little, and who fight over something as trivial as a candy bar. For the first time, he must learn to stop running from a traumatic life, integrate into a society of boys from broken homes, and stand up for a close-knit community, thereby learning to stand up for himself. This is autobiographical fiction, drawing on Asher Black's own experience of childhood. The book is complete, and Asher is seeking an agent while writing the next book in the series.
The World of Man
Asher Black is planning a five-book series that re-imagines the pivotal moments in man's existence, from the dawn of the species to the end of human life as we know it.Â
Asher is interested in fiction that melds and crosses genres. This series includes works set in a single milieu, but each in a separate genre: alternative history, literary fiction, magic realism, and post-apocalyptic fiction with sci-fi elements set in the same milieu.
The World of The Final Hero
Asher is planning a series of novels about a hero who doesn't want to be a hero with one unique 'superpower' that enables him to do nearly anything—but as though he were an ordinary man. He is a contest, in one person, between a rock and a hard place, faced with a quandary that puts him and his friends in continual jeopardy.
Asher is hoping to collaborate with a graphic artist who enjoys the vision so as to weave graphic novel segments and components into a traditional novel, thereby integrating two mediums.Â
