The Zone

Dylan makes the best pizza in Los Angeles, lives above a laundromat with an owl named Oscar, and tells everyone who'll listen that the world is secretly run by lizard people. He means it as a joke. He's about to find out he was right about more than he knew.When a wounded reptilian warrior stumbles into the alley behind his shop one night - pursued by something far worse - Dylan is yanked out of his small, honest life and into a war that has been grinding on, invisibly, for ten thousand years. There are aliens. There are dark elves. There is a galaxy of refugees hiding on Earth, and a hidden machinery dedicated to making sure no one ever notices.And then a new pizza place opens across the street. Cheap, plastic, all-you-can-eat, with a smiling cartoon mascot and a ball pit that smells faintly of the grave. Its owner is a thing wearing a man, and he wants Dylan's corner, his shop, and his soul - and he's willing to be patient, because the dark always is.But Dylan is waking up. So is Chet, the gentle giant who works the register. And as the veil thins and the truth pours in - the ships in the ether, the felines behind their walls, the face that isn't quite his own in the mirror - Dylan learns that the real war was never fought with lasers. It's fought one ordinary choice at a time, in a warm room, over a hot slice, by people who refuse to be bought.The Zone is a cosmic adventure with its feet on the ground and its heart in a neighborhood - a story about waking up in a world built to keep you asleep, and discovering that the bravest thing a person can do is simply make something real, keep it warm, and refuse to look away.

Pages: 163, Paperback, Independently published