August 6
A sinister ninety-six degrees overtakes the city like a DC Comics villain. Sticky hot. Too much humidity. It feels like the city is a swamp. I can’t read because it’s too f*****g hot. Damn it.
Reading. It’s what I do for a living. My job. I’m a professional book critic paid by Glossner Books out of New York City. Glossner pays me to write positive reviews on their fictional releases so they sell better. My reviews are all over the Internet. Horror. Thrillers. Romances. Mysteries. Westerns. Science fiction. Any genre in fiction. I have a four-year contract with Glossner to create strong and positive reviews of the fiction they publish, even if the books are sometimes shitty, boring, and poorly written. It’s quite the sales gimmick that every publishing house executes. And suppose
