After meeting at a grief share group, Will and Olivia quickly bond. See, Will is a fraud and Olivia is a wreck. Together in their brokenness, they discover they also share a particular hobby: seeking out sickness. While Will hunts for the latest outbreak of the flu, Olivia just doesn’t feel comfortable unless she has a fever. Chasing viruses together, they become more confident they can conquer every illness that comes their way.
But they’re not alone. There’s an online community of chasers known as The Source. Now Will and Olivia see their hobby isn’t so odd after all. Then Zaff walks into their lives. With claims that he has the goods and knows where the next outbreak will drop, Will and Olivia drive their hobby to obsession. If they can overcome the newest strain, nobody can hurt them.
Why we’re excited about this book:
With a penchant for looking at the darker side of life, Michael J. Seidlinger’s fiction works on multiple levels to make readers squirm. The author of The Fun We’ve Had, Falter Kingdom, My Pet Serial Killer, and most recently Anybody Home?, Seidlinger’s writing has appeared in such publications as Wired, The Believer, Polygon, The Observer, Thrillist, The Lineup, and Buzzfeed among others. With his latest, Seidlinger goes viral as he taps into our collective obsession with illness in this Ballardian nightmare. Brian McAuley (Curse of the Reaper) says: “Michael J. Seidlinger is a twisted wizard of transgressive craft, and The Body Harvest is his phlegmcore Fight Club. A tale of viral codependency that starts off like Terrence Malick’s Badlands with a biohazard spin before taking a Cronenbergian turn down David Lynch Lane. This book will leave you bedridden and babbling for your next Seidlinger fix.”, Ai Jiang (Linghun) says: “The Body Harvest is an absolute fever dream. It features characters who have the need to feel alive through feeling their mortality, identifying it, and pushing it to its very limits; of being on the verge of death but not dying, of using illness as a way to overcome the difficulties of life. If given the opportunity, if there are no consequences, how many would succumb to their darkest desires? If we are immortal, would morality still stand?”, and Eric LaRocca (Everything the Darkness Eats) says: “Raw and alarmingly prophetic, Michael J. Seidlinger’s The Body Harvest is a crucible of torment that lures the reader into a consecrated baptism of human suffering and then traps you there until you turn the final page and find yourself forever marked, eternally polluted.”
Unleashing from CLASH Books 23 July 2024, The Body Harvest by Michael J. Seidlinger is available for pre-transmission now.
BOB PASTORELLA