Yanapop: Run For Your Life, a Love Story: The Ultimate Gothic Odyssey in SoCal(7 Darksf)

If you enjoyed Martin Scorsese's dark comedic film After Hours (with its all star cast), you'll love YANAPOP. What starts as a guy meets girl romance turns into a suspenseful, hair raising adventure of fantastic and enjoyably insane proportions designed to see how far our imagination can stretch before our brain melts.Martin Brown, 21, is a U.C. Berkeley Literature student, home from San Francisco, and spending the summer with his parents and sister in laid back San Diego. He's looking for a summer gig after his job shoveling krappe at a tree farm falls through.Acting on a lead from a friend, he drives two hours to Los Angeles to interview for a writing position with global media giant corporation YANAPOP. The acronym is a marketing concept meaning Young Adult + New Adult + Participating Older Persons.YANAPOP, Inc. creates games, films, books, and other entertainment for young adults, new adults, and participating older persons around the world. In Los Angeles for his interview, Martin meets a gorgeous young production assistant named Chloë Setreal (21). Chloë guides him through his interviews and takes a special interest in the handsome young applicant. Martin and Chloë fall madly and instantly in love that same day. Martin returns to San Diego, two hours south, to await results. All he can think of is Chloë, wishing for any excuse to go back and see her as soon as possible. Chloë is thinking the same up in L.A. With a little bad karma, their wish comes true., No sooner has Martin arrived back home, than he receives a call from Chloë in LA. She has been in a car accident, is stuck in her apartment with one leg up in a cast, and desperately longs for her dashing hero Martin to come hold her hand. Martin gallantly hops in his car and heads north, just as a tremendous Pacific Ocean storm begins to pelt San Diego. That's just the beginning of a hair-raising adventure, a nightmare of epic proportions, as courageous and undaunted Martin Brown strives to make it to Los Angeles (or Lost Alienopolis) at any cost. What should be a two-hour drive turns into a Homeric Odyssey lasting a seeming eternity... Like most John Argo feats of high imagination (novels, stories), this one starts out deceptively calm. It's the calm before the cyclone. When the hammer comes down, you'll know it. Nothing will separate you from this novel, especially when the speedometer is stuck on "blur" and you won't be able to sleep or eat because you'll be so anxious to learn what happens next. That's how a real thriller should be. Think of is as reading a summer movie in a novel. Like Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49, YANAPOP is a bizarre, Saturnalian plunge into the underground - a wildly imaginative, streamlined doomsday machine that never stops for a second until the last desperate, manic breath. Martin becomes Odysseus in search of Chloe as he pursues the goddess of his dreams. He becomes Pynchon's POV in pursuit of the nightmare secreted in the engine that drives Amerika - and the universe. Or whatever. You know, it's all donuts anyway.Martin goes from a mild-mannered student or reporter to a comic book hero and an avenger in the mythological landscape of Southern California at its most ingenious extremes. Just when you think you have finally swum ashore, be prepared - the next phase in this air-conditioned nightmare is already sweeping you back out to sea. YANAPOP is a yarn for lovers of The Crying of Lot 49 and for viewers of Martin Scorsese's After Hours. Think of films like The Last Seduction (starring Linda Fiorentino) or National Lampoon's Vacation, or Jack Lemmon and Sandy Dennis in The Out-Of-Towners film. YANAPOP is the next great thing.