Control: Crimes of Youth and Passion
I, Daniel Trump, wrote a horror story about college, lust, and violence. Also, football. I want to share it with you. It’s called Crimes of Youth and Passion, and it’s about some college football players put in unspeakable situations. I write a book every couple months or so — this book was a NaNoWriMo book — and this is one that I really felt strongly about and cared for. This book is my take on the thoughtful football horror novel. It was written for National Novel Writing Month in November and rewritten for several weeks after that.
I wanted to write something more than a slasher villain butchering people. I created a situation in which a college football player would be surrounded by people that he could not trust. I wanted to create a true cynic, a weakside linebacker for a major college football program, a player who might not go pro but who plays for the second-rated college defense in the country. He realizes that strange things are happening all around him. First one friend, Klay, begins to act differently during practice, complaining of conspiracies and other impossible things.
Then, later, Darius, who plays the three-technique, stops acting like himself. He just has a total and overwhelming change in personality, and there is no explanation at all. He simply is not himself. Octavius, the weakside linebacker, must look for explanations for more and more bizarre occurrences around him: soon people sometimes cannot hear him when he talks to them.
Other characters show up, too. Yara is a liberal female reporter/college student who wants to find the courage to stand up for what is right. Sakura is trained to be a fighter by secretive people — and she is hired by the government to fight back against scary people hurting Americans. She has to save lives with minimal help against people with strange and powerful abilities.
Writing about a series of unpredictable and terrible situations is something that fascinates me. I try to throw terrible problems at my characters and watch them perform — to see how they respond to catastrophes. These bizarre problems can test my characters and allow me to test the audience and say something about reality more than I could say with a standard fight with a good guy against a bad guy.
I wanted to write about football players, and college seemed like the right time period to discuss. So often high school is portrayed, and I think that has been done repeatedly. I just wanted to show a little bit of a look at the way young men look at the world. I also felt a need to tell a horror story, something in which I tried to scare the audience in various ways throughout the story.
I’ve had a rough week mentally. I have paranoid schizophrenia. I lost two strategy games and was annihilated. My favorite football team lost a heartbreaking game. I have slipped on my workouts and haven’t done enough to keep in shape. I worked very hard on this book, and I want people to give it a chance, to read it and give it a fair review and rating. If not — I understand. No big deal.
This was fun to write. I had fun developing horror situations and characters for these situations. I hope that you can give it a chance. Through December 19th it will be available as a free download.
Thanks, and take care, friends.
