Alex Austin here. I'm a writer and teacher. The Permanent Press published my novel Nakamura Reality in 2016. It received a Publishers Weekly Starred Review: "powerful and moving." My other novels are The Red Album of Asbury Park (set in Asbury Park, NJ, during its Liverpool era) and The Perfume Factory (a realistic coming-of-age story), Kirkus Recommended. My latest novel is End Man, a speculative mystery. Cursed Dragon Ship Publishing (https://curseddragonship.com/) will release the novel in October 2022. Kirkus Reviews calls the novel "An engrossing and well-crafted SF Tale with timely themes."

Synopsis Afflicted with dromophobia, the fear of crossing streets, 26-year-old Raphael Lennon must live out his life in the one square mile that surrounds his Los Angeles home. Fortunately, the area provides everything an artistically sensitive person needs, including a job at Norval, an oddball company that tracks and markets the online remains of the deceased. Raphael's specialty is unearthing "possums," people faking their deaths. His new assignment is Jason Klaes, an allegedly dead physicist who is perhaps creating afterlives for the Internet-era deceased based on their social media content. Raphael must break out of his phobic prison to solve the Klaes Case and thwart his company's entry into a chilling spin-off of its product.