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Ross C. Hardy

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In 2012, Georgia-based writer Ross Hardy graduated summa cum laude from Mercer University with a Bachelor's Degree in English. Since then, he has been a background extra, a writing tutor, an editor, a bartender, a short order cook, a janitor, a seminary student, and, most importantly for his writing career, a barista.

It was during Ross' time working for a major coffee chain that he conceived of Cafe Noir, a neon-soaked, brutally dystopian satire of consumerism, customer service, and coffee. A violent science-fiction mystery in the vein of Raymond Chandler and William Gibson, at once terrifyingly real and hilariously tongue-in-cheek, Cafe Noir offers a glimpse into a future where privacy is a myth, life is cheap, and nothing-–nothing–-is more important than coffee.

Ross' writing has been featured on CBS affiliate Man Cave Daily, and he was one of the winners of the 2014 Top Cow Talent Hunt, a nationwide competition to write for Image Comics. His issue of Artifacts, published by Image and Top Cow, will be released May of 2015.

Ross enjoys hiking, Zumba, home-brewing beer, and Dungeons and Dragons. He currently resides in middle Georgia.

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BOOK REVIEW

Café Noir

BY Ross C. Hardy • POSTED ON Feb. 10, 2015

Consumerism runs wild in a chaotic, violent future dominated by the corporate superpower Krater Koffee. After an attack on his franchise, employee Argo Jones goes from frontline server/soldier to company commando.

After the ruinous Brand Wars, Krater Koffee is the most powerful corporate superpower in this polluted, privatized, brutalized, and thoroughly GMO’ed consumer-capitalist future. (The mega-business may remind readers of a certain real-life, ubiquitous coffee chain.) Krater refined how to give the teeming masses their coffee fixes via vapor-inhalers—to the point that drinking liquid in an old-fashioned mug is considered a dangerous, rebellious act sometimes enjoyed in underground competitions—“Very illegal, very dangerous….It was an ugly game: two jukers with more bravado than brains sat across from each other and drank freshly brewed coffee. Actual coffee.” In this dystopia, barista Argo Jones is a lifelong Krater employee and true believer, having been sponsored out of childhood poverty by the company and given Krater’s cybernetic implants and combat training to work the front line as a coffee tech/server. But when his franchise location is devastated by a lethal product contamination, management orders Jones into the chaotic streets—where average folk are bombarded by holographic commercials and neuro-implant ad blockers are a necessity—in order to draw out the shadowy subversives thought responsible. The rather basic narrative is largely a running battle between Jones and a South African supersoldier/assassin who, like the Terminator, seems unstoppable. Fortunately, Krater taught Argo how to fight dirty. On this slight framework the author pours bracing swigs of detail, such as Krater corporate memos, PR releases, and employee psych exams. In this nightmare society, cat meat is a fast-food staple, intelligent (and insulting) sea gulls are employed as couriers, and actors are lab-grown in vats. Fans of the cult sci-fi Jennifer Government (2003) will find a similar taste in first-time novelist Hardy’s blend.

A fairly small portion, but don’t be surprised if this bitter brew keeps you up all night.

Pub Date: Feb. 10, 2015

ISBN: 978-1505317947

Page count: 284pp

Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2015

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2015

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