Static

?It was strange - Wilt calling me when he’d died the week before. Maybe a lot of other people get called from the spirit world or whatever, but it was a first for me and so I didn’t pick up until the fifth or sixth ring.”

When Curtis Brooks gets a phone call from his older brother Wilt the week after his funeral, he’s sure his brother is reaching out from beyond the grave to find evidence that will lead to his murder’s arrest. But Wilt claims he wasn’t murdered; his calling is standard protocol for newly deceased at the Aftermart?a kind of inescapable, ever-expanding Walmart filled with obsolete technology and discontinued products.

Curtis embarks on a dangerous plan to find the killer, which soon has him scheming against a billionaire and fumbling towards love with his brother’s ex-girlfriend Suzy, all while struggling with typical high school drama and his single mom’s questionable choices.

Why does Wilt help Curtis win over Suzy, even as he organizes a rebellion at the Aftermart? Who wanted him dead? Curtis risks his life to answer these questions, in the process forging a bond with his brother unlike any they ever had.

A New Yorker by birth, Eric Laster now lives in Los Angeles. As he learned his craft, he supported himself in myriad jobs in New York and L.A., including cashier at a pharmacy, office manager or executive assistant at a couple of record companies, and even a brief stint at the United Nations. After a decade as a successful ghostwriter, he re-launched under his own name with the middle-grade novel Welfy Q. Deederhoth: Meat Purveyor, World Savior. Whenever he’s not scribing, he records punk rock and presses it to vinyl.