Nuclear Winter Wonderland provides a good scream and a nice giggle
Joshua Corin's debut novel may soon be a motion picture. His book caught the eye of Producer Kristy Hamer of Sentinal Entertainment, who says, "Beyond being hilarious and truly unpredictable, Nuclear Winter Wonderland engulfed me completely. I was having such a great time and so involved in the story, I didn't realize until I finished the book just how attached I'd grown to these characters. I knew I had to make this movie."College Senior Adam Weiss wants to be home for the holidays, even if home is in New Jersey. When a lunatic nuclear terrorist kidnaps his twin sister Anna from a rest stop, Adam's plans take an abrupt twist. In his quest to save his sister, he teams up with a dyspeptic ex-mob thug and a Spanish-speaking female clown, creating an oddball rescue squad that is soon busy dodging the police and defeating an army of shadowy opponents. Not only must Adam save his sister, but the plot escalades as he realizes he has six days to save the world from atomic annihilation. Nuclear Winter Wonderland is an offbeat tale about a frenzied race from the icy Pocono Mountains to the dark heart of Walt Disney World.
The starred review from Booklist describes Corin's novel as "richly comic, surreal without being silly--except where it intends to be silly--and playful in its use of language...if you can judge a writer's future output based on his first novel, Corin is one of those writers who, years from now, other newcomers will be imitating."The idea for the novel came to Corin at a dilapidated rest stop off the Pennsylvania Turnpike, when he realized someone was in the adjacent stall. It got Corin thinking, "Well, what if he had been there a long time? What is he had been waiting for someone to sit down beside him? And what if he was armed...?"
Asked who the target audience for his book about a college senior is, Corin said, "Anyone who enjoys a nice giggle, anyone who enjoys a good scream, and especially anyone who recognizes that the line between a nice giggle and a good scream is very, very thin."
Mixing humor with suspense is a difficult recipe for any writer. According to Corin, eating a lot of chocolate is his secret to getting the mix right. His next book, with the working title "Galileo's Aim," is about a sniper serial killer and has more screams than giggles.
An author and screenwriter, Joshua Corin is a native of Rhode Island. He's a college instructor, teaching English and theater to woebegone freshmen and sophomores.
Contributing editor Sibylle Barrasso is the author of Dark Waters. She was a finalist in the "St. Martins Press Best First Private Eye Novel Contest," received an award from Sue Grafton at the Santa Barbara Writers Conference, and was a contributing author of Bad Boys and Bad Girls in the Badlands, a critical anthology about mysteries set in the Southwest.
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