Publishers Marketplace: Brett L. Renwick

Atonement Boulevard is a work of highly commercial mainstream fiction. This novel reads like Colin Harrison (Afterburn) meets Anne Rice (Interview With A Vampire)—it is not Chick-Lit. or a book filled with hissing vampires who gape and maul each passing human. This is a genre-bending literary thriller that is equally smart, sexy, brutal and engrossing.

Read what “published authors” have to say about my second novel: Atonement Boulevard:

“I LOVE Atonement Boulevard. You're on to something here. You have found the right vehicle for your style, your voice, your pre-occupations. All your fortes come together effectively in this piece: Dialogue, acerbic wit, hardcore insight coupled with foul language, brutal honesty about the world around you. And for all its rawness, it's open and vulnerable in a way I've never seen your writing be. This one is different. It's close to you and therein lays its power.

More importantly, this work is fresh in its structure—the vampire story narrated to us by the loser guy who is writing it, and who has his own arc. Very clever. And it’s topical. Believe me, I'm reading The Corrections by Johnathan Franzen right now, and it's so much like what you're doing here (taking the pulse of our times) but without Brett's edge, and without the vampire. People want to read about how the go-go nineties left folks holding their heads once they woke up with a harsh 21st century hangover. Bonfire of the Vanities for the new millennium....”
Bridgett M. Davis, author Shifting Through Neutral, Amistad

“Brett, my friend, we think the unfinished end of a very good first novel has brought you to the start of an undoubtedly great one.”
Leon Wynter, author American Skin, Crown

“You are nearing art with Tracy…your damn writing was become pretty damn good.”
E. B. Baisden, author The Fever Of The Years, Caribbean Research Press

“You are an amazingly talented writer with a very interesting take on the world. A very cool and knowing voice. And with the new work you've found a sweet merger point for your creative impulses and the really rich and intriguing stuff from your life as a writer, here and back in LA. All of that really shows on the page.”
Michel Marriott, staff reporter The New York Times, author of The Skull Cage Key

Brief Summary:
Greg Watt is in a state of crisis. He is a good guy, a 39 year-old, married NYU film grad who has fallen on hard times. After scratching and clawing his way to be the Director of Marketing for a dotcom he watched it implode and has had to settle for assignments as an office temp when his unemployment ran out. He battles with the biological inheritance of a temper ridden, womanizing, alcoholic father and fears becoming just like him. And now, when he should be in his high earning years he feels as if his college degree and professional background are worthless in a the fall of 2001 in a city riddled by unemployment and scarred by 9/11.

In an attempt to distract himself he does what all writers do: he opens himself to thoughts and kneads them into possible stories. One morning, in an act of free association, the concept of vampires as a constantly reemerging phenomenon in film and books spikes his interest. What is it about them that fascinates people thinks Greg. Never having read a vampire book and only being mildly amused by the occasional vampire movie scoffs at idea of the genre making any sense to a logical person. How could a vampire survive in contemporary NYC—well they would have helpers and piles of cash no doubt. What kind of vampire would it be—and unconsciously Greg began to write his first novel with the reader looking over his shoulder and participating in every choice of character’s names, their development, their thoughts and aspirations. Then when he enacted the mother of drama, (complication mixed with tension) he decided it would be fun to have the vampire be neither a man or a woman but a 199-year-old man living as a woman. A transvestite vampire. But that was not good enough since Greg believed any such being would surely die on ennui.

Then one morning in front of Carnegie Hall, Greg sees a woman who was hit by a taxi laying on the street and the thought of his own mortality and what his death would mean to his wife Wendy told him what Tracy the vampire would want. Unconditional love—in a surprising form—and the story pours out of Greg. This vampire with fake breasts living in a penthouse in the meatpacking district is a raconteur and an amusing seductress who has befriended everyone from Picasso to Calvin Klein but can only share her experiences with victims hours before she consumes them. She purposely stretches her sexual encounters out over the course of hours to gain an emotional bond with victims that transcends pleasure and simulates months of intimacy and hopefully love. A wealthy predator, Tracy is the embodiment of a romantic with the cunning of a mass murderer and her story compels Greg to hack through the overgrowth of depression threatening to incarcerate him. At one point Greg, thinks writing the novel will not only serve as a distraction but save him. Then things take a turn for the worst.

In the ensuing months the reader is secured in a carnival ride that follows two separate but equally compelling tracks. Greg and his battle with unemployment, depression, isolation and alcohol and Tracy with her quest for a baby while having to juggle the tasks of acquiring enough blood to sustain herself without drawing attention to the life she has worked so hard to create.

Atonement Boulevard (word count: 115,548) is a sophisticated thriller. The writing is cinematic—Technicolor noir with teeth. This book explores the darkest recesses of the soul with intriguing characters, surprising events, and an atmosphere of chilling intensity.

Dear Literary Agents: a large market for this title exists and I hope you will allow me to send you the complete manuscript.

This writer is looking for an agent.