Discarded

Two years into a global pandemic, 17 year-old Cassandra begins to find snippets of poetry written on discarded sticky notes in the deserted Hollywood streets and sets out to discover who the artist is, propelling her onto a quest through the dystopian "Wasteland” that has become her two-block microcosm of America.Written in only two months while in quarantine, on the exact same historic Hollywood street where the story takes place, DISCARDED is a Neo-Modernist mixture of Greek mythology, Arthurian legend, Dante's Divine Comedy and a plethora of contemporary pop-culture references (see how many you can spot!) The story is 13 chapters long, one for each day of quarantine...Now available in E-Book only to help reduce the spread of COVID-19! A portion of each sale goes to "Directrelief.org," which provides PPE and funding to assist the brave hospital workers around the world. So, for those who can, stay safe, stay home and enjoy!The joke was that everyone would write a novel in quarantine! By our count, this is the first!SynopsisIn what should be the spring of her Senior year of High School, Cassandra (named after the Trojan woman who could see the future but was doomed to disbelief by others) is stuck inside a three-bedroom apartment with her witty, hopeless romantic, younger brother, Alex and their over-protective, immunodeficient, aging actress mother/teacher, Carmen.While Alex spends his boring days writing love letters to the “girlfriend” he’s never met, and Carmen keeps them both busy studying the old theater plays she has lying around, Cassie prefers to walk up the street to visit the “Bread Man,” a flamboyant Tiger-print wearing sourdough merchant who sells his wares on the corner of Sunset Boulevard and Crescent Heights. Then again, Cassie would take any opportunity she can get to go outside…You see, although the contaminated streets are dangerous for most people, Cassie is marginally safer than most! Last August, 2021, Cassie contracted the HKU-6 virus, a novel coronavirus that has now ravaged the country for 30 months and, against all odds, she SURVIVED! Sadly, the world isn’t what it used to be. The pandemic got so bad that the U.S. government was forced to nationalize the communication and transportation system, overly-regulate the food industry, which delivers meals to the quarantined citizens, and consolidate the health care industry under a single company, Corbin, which revolutionized decontamination methods. They are currently still hard at work trying to find “The Cure.”But, one day, Cassie finds a crumpled up post-it note in the middle of Sunset Boulevard with poetry written on it and her fragile young life is turned upside down (or, right-side up, considering the dystopian circumstances). For the rest of the spring, between ducking calls from her ex-boyfriend Apolo and a trip to the beach to learn math with their alcoholic father Troy and his bubbly girlfriend “Pebbles,” Cassie spends most of her time on a modern-day "Grail Quest" to discover who the mysterious author is! And why he or she has chosen this method of expression when all hope in the weary world seems lost.