New Novel Takes Zany Look At FM Radio

Press Release

Contact: Alexander K. Dupuis (410) 727-0723 (h)
                        (410) 561-9028 ext. 230 (w)

New Novel Looks At The Crazy World Of FM Radio

November, 2000—Tower 102, a new novel published by iuniverse.com, offers a hilarious and heartbreaking look at the world of small-town FM radio and the people who inhabit that world.

The year is 1984. Reagan is in the White House, money is the new sex," and while the national news media go on and on about the yuppies" and their out-of-control materialistic excess, the music that supplies the beat is that of Cyndi Lauper, Lionel Richie, Michael Jackson, Culture Club and Wham. At KTWR 102.5 FM,(Tower-102") a small 2800-watt radio station in the Sierra Nevada foothills of northern California, they play the songs, but the fabled bounty of the ‘80s has not trickled down to them. Tower-102 takes a look at life in broadcastings single-A league;" the disc jockeys and newscasters who dream of the big time while they count their spare change and hear the clock tick. The story is told by one of the stations newscasters, himself pushing 30 and beginning to wonder if What? And give up showbiz?" is such a wise dictum after all. Life at the Tower-102 Refugee Camp," an apartment shared by some of the stations denizens, is a slapstick round of broken relationships, broken dreams and carefully-managed near- poverty. The novel builds to a bizarre climax in which a disaffected ex-disc jockey commits an outrageous act of vandalism, blowing the station off the air and blowing the narrators life, at least for now, out of neutral." Hope and despair, laughter and tears, love and betrayal, rage and renewal—theyre all on the air" at Tower-102.

Tower-102 (ISBN 0-595-10074-0) is available in paperback for $12.95 at BarnesandNoble.com, Amazon.com, Borders.com or by order from any major bookstore.    

Alexander K. Dupuis (Kelley" to his friends and family) worked in both newspaper and radio journalism before joining the Foreign Service in 1985 to spend the next 13 years travelling about the world. (In fact, he wrote much of Tower-102 while living in Africa.) His articles, reviews and poetry have appeared in The San Francisco Chronicle, The San Diego Reader, The Imperial Valley, CA Press, The Vacaville, CA Reporter, The Vallejo, CA Times-Herald, State magazine, The San Diego Union-Tribune and Writers Carousel. He is a regular contributor to www.ernest.hemingway.com, an internet web-site dedicated to Hemingway studies. He lives in Baltimore, Maryland.