Level Up: An 8-bit gamelit novel

By Micah Joel

Ready Player One meets Mr Robot.In the future, all computers simultaneously brick--except, as it turns out, those from the 80s. Society retools around retro tech. Max Root, a refugee in a tent camp, starts seeing 8-bit visions, ultimately leading up to playable game levels. What's at the end of the level, though, is of intense interest to the greedy CEO of the LevelUP corporation, and the fate of the all technology hangs in the balance.Have you ever had your heart race as you typed 'take sword'?Have you ever lined up quarters on an arcade machine?Have you ever been disappointed that your princess was in another castle?Have you ever joyfully exclaimed 'unexplored territory!' as you uncovered a hidden passageway?Have you ever spotted sly Star Wars references in a novel you were reading? Have you ever been eaten by a grue?Then this is the book for you! Something delightful on every page. Escape to a simpler time inside the pages of LevelUP. Interview with the Author Q - Where did the idea for this book come from? A - I grew up in the 80s. I spent weeks freezing my butt off on a paper route, just to afford the latest Atari 2600 cartridge. (But never Adventure --my mom wouldn't allow that one). I set out to write a book that would be "cyberpunk lite" and appeal to a particular set of readers. Around the same time GameLit or if you prefer, LitRPG started taking off. Q - Tell us about the cover and the inspiration for it. A - I worked with a number of designers on various concepts. Some of them were 80s nostalgia to points approaching self-parody. There were a lot of video game references, but I ended up with something more iconic. I wanted a "LevelUP" logo that would look good on a shirt. And those sweet, sweet NES fonts. Mmmmm, memories. Q - Who is your inspiration for Max, the adventure's protagonist? A - I had sketched out a character named Max Root before I even started work on the novel. I've got a thing for characters whose name describe the plot of their story. (Ender's Game, anyone?) And yeah, that's an explicit reference to Max Headroom. From there, his backstory blossomed out. All it was waiting for was the right premise to build a story around. Q - OK A - I loved Ready Player One, and far be it for me to criticize, but I have trouble explaining how the characters manage to get SO into the 80s. I mean, War Games was a great movie, but who's going to memorize it? I was watching some Maker channels on YouTube, like The Ben Heck Show, where they're constantly repurposing vintage tech. Then the idea stuck without warning...what if the whole world was like that? Q - So you are working on more books in the series? A - There's a lot of hints here about the wider world the story takes place in. There's an obvious direction for a sequel (sorry, no spoilers here!) but lots of alternate ways things could go too. And astute readers have already keyed in on the possibility of crossover between this and Broken Tablet, my time-travel novel... Q - Why should readers give this series a try? A - Like most everything I put out, it's written for geeks, by a geek. It has a sympathetic main character, and an non-neurotypical secondary character. It certainly echoes certain themes of that blockbuster movie everyone's talking about, but this story takes great pains to go its own way. This book is the antidote, at least temporarily, for all the anxiety and stress going on in the world.Thanks for reading!

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1980709114
• ISBN13: 9781980709114
• Release Date: April 2018
• Publisher: Independently published
• Length: 350 Pages
• Weight: 1.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.0" x 0.9" x 5.3"