Welcome to my primer article about my first self-published original novel, Hype Beach. Here, I’ll go over different things about the story to help lead potential readers in. Hopefully, what you see grabs your attention and makes you want to look further into it.

Setting

The story is set in Nueva Miami, a futuristic version of Miami, Florida, in mid-June of the year 2055, right at the start of the Hype Beach festival, a two-week long music festival set around South Beach and in participating locations in downtown Nueva Miami, hosting some of the biggest names in rock, hip-hop, and electronic music.

It also takes place a few years after the Great Reveal, a period where, through several smaller events spanning a few years, magical creatures were slowly revealed to humanity to be real after centuries of hiding. Since then, humans have had to adapt to beings of myth and legend integrating into human society, with some places being more accepting of them than others. Meanwhile, the magical beings, or “Mythics” as they’re frequently called here, are adapting to humans being able to freely interact with them and them now having free access to the science and technology that humans have been using all this time.

For its part, Nueva Miami is somewhere in the middle on the scale of accepting Mythics into society, with even a historic section of the city called Little Avalon, a previously hidden Mythics-only community now open to the public, becoming a popular part of the city. Though there is some anti-Mythic sentiment in the city, including a support group called the Scrap Castle Initiative, or SCI, becoming more popular among magic-hating humans.

Characters

The main characters are three friends local to the city who are attending Hype Beach. They are Nick Carrillo a.k.a. Tesla, Jamel Jemison a.k.a. Jet, and Santiago Rojero a.k.a. Santi. Aside from being festival attendees, Tesla is a student at the University of Miami studying robotics and sound engineering, while Jet and Santi run an online video channel where they do parkour, hoverboard tricks, martial arts, and other kinds of physical stunt work. Also, while Tesla and Jet are unpowered humans, Santi is a Mythic, a magical fire lion creature called a Tonat’leo. Though Santi has been trying to convince the other two to see if they have inner magic that can be unlocked, something that can easily be done if they find the right people.

Story Synopsis

As the three are taking part in the festival and enjoying the various attractions, the venue they’re at gets attacked by a group of thugs using magical abilities to rob and menace anyone they can. They are members of the Eldritch Boyz, an all-Mythics gang that’s been causing a lot of high-profile incidents over the prior few weeks, with this just being their latest. The three friends had been seeing reports about them before now, but now having been involved in an attack, the three of them decide to go out themselves and try to do what they can to fight off the gang.

As for why the police can’t just handle it, we see that through the story’s B-plot following two other key characters, police detectives Penny Townsend and Barann Lochtur. As these two investigate a drug cartel doing business within the city and uncover their local benefactor, we also see how the police have been responding to the Eldritch Boyz and crime in general now that magic is something new to contend with.

Inspirations

This story draws a lot of inspiration from fighting games, shonen anime, and the worlds of superhero comics, the kinds of worlds that blend fantasy and sci-fi elements into an action-heavy package. The story is set in a futuristic Miami during a large music festival because it takes a vibrant setting to accommodate such colorful and crazy characters. If you like series like Street Fighter, Marvel vs. Capcom, Dragon Ball, Yu Yu Hakusho, Teen Titans, or X-Men, you might like Hype Beach.

Where to Find

You can currently purchase the story from Amazon here. A link to Lulu is coming soon on this page.

Also, shortly after this article goes up, I’ll also be posting the first three chapters of the story to this site. Then, you can read them for free as a demo to decide if you want to see the full story.

Thanks for coming! Hope what you’ve seen gets you Hype!

(Custom artwork created by: KristKC, CrispyToastYT, and UMSAuthorLava. KristKC also created the cover art and logo for the book.)