Free Download: The Day Detroit Went Dark

To celebrate and help promote The Day Detroit Went Dark audiobook, the Kindle version of The Day Detroit Went Dark will be a free download on Amazon.com starting December 24th through December 28th.

Get it here: http://www.amazon.com/The-Detroit-Went-Dark-ebook/dp/B00BIOR5K0/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1361485307&sr=8-1&keywords=the+day+detroit+went+dark

Here’s a few reviews:

5.0 out of 5 stars Terrifying and excellent, June 19, 2013

This review is from: The Day Detroit Went Dark (Kindle Edition)

As an ex-Detroiter I can assure you that if what happened in the book really did happen, this is about as close to what would happen without use of a crystal ball. Sadly the city of Detroit has been little more than a war zone for the last fifty years and it only gets worse with each passing decade. Mr.Silver has crafted a great and terrifying read. At once gut-wrenching and in some very small ways hopeful. I finished this in less than twenty four hours. Haven’t done that in a long time. Great book.

4.0 out of 5 stars good story!, March 30, 2013

This review is from: The Day Detroit Went Dark (Kindle Edition)

This is one of those books you just can’t put down, plenty of action and you “just have to know what’s going to happen next.

5.0 out of 5 stars PHENOMENAL BOOK!!! February 22, 2013

This review is from: The Day Detroit Went Dark (Kindle Edition)

This book is incredible. The author pulls me in and keeps my attention throughout. I love the characters. It’s like I’m literally watching a movie and it’s an easy read. Great Job!*****

4.0 out of 5 stars Much better than I had anticipated!, September 23, 2013

This review is from: The Day Detroit Went Dark (Kindle Edition)

So nice to be pleasantly surprised when giving a book a chance! Not to say that this was a pleasant book! No. In fact, both the implications AND feasibility of the story is frightening to say the least! The storyline was smooth and non stop. Not lots of flowery filler. Every word necessary to moving the story along. The short length of the story was enough time to get to know and care about thanks to the author’s style.

The audiobook is here: http://www.amazon.com/The-Day-Detroit-Went-Dark/dp/B00HEFDJCK/ref=tmm_aud_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1361485307&sr=8-1

And here: http://www.audible.com/pd/Sci-Fi-Fantasy/The-Day-Detroit-Went-Dark-Audiobook/B00HCP9C64/ref=a_search_c4_1_1_srTtl?qid=1387841012&sr=1-1

The Day Detroit Went Dark is also available on iTunes.

Thanks, everyone for making this book a success and Happy Holidays!

Update: Detroit

In a cascading email that worked its way through the Detroit Police Department, the height, weight and bra size of around twenty female officers was unintentionally circulated throughout the department and ultimately leaked to the Detroit media outlets.

This caused a big brouhaha (or brahaha) throughout the Police Department and Detroit TV and radio stations and the Internet. What was behind the email? The measurements were taken so the female officers could be properly fitted with bulletproof vests.

I’m familiar with cop humor and I’m sure this made the department locker room and watering hole rounds, but it points to a much more serious matter, and it’s not based on sex. Thirty people were shot last weekend in Detroit, and thirty the weekend before that. That’s nothing to laugh about. All humor aside, possessing a properly fitting bulletproof vest can save an officer’s life.

In many areas of Detroit gun violence is out of control. Standing in the line of fire is the risk DPD police officers take every day when they go to work, male or female. I hope their vests fit to a tee.

Communique From Detroit

A storm swept through Detroit this morning, bringing with it a storm of new violence.

A worker jumped off of his fork truck this morning at the Chrysler Jefferson North Assembly Plant and stabbed another worker in the face and neck, killing him. He then drove to Belle Isle and shot himself. I heard the police siren from my office.

Details here: http://www.myfoxdetroit.com/story/19593495/chrysler-employee-kills-co-worker-self-at-detroit-factory

A 14 year old boy was fatally shot running away from a gas station robbery. Details here: http://detroit.cbslocal.com/2012/09/20/3-wanted-for-questioning-in-detroit-teens-death/

To top it off, a Google Street View camera car cruises through a neighborhood and the crew have a shotgun pointed at them. Illegal? Nope- not in Detroit. Details here: http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20120920/METRO01/209200458/Google-Street-View-captures-man-Detroit-pointing-gun?odyssey=tab|topnews|text|FRONTPAGE

Just another day in this dangerous city…

Detroit Update

Detroit Update

Seven people were shot getting off of this boat this morning about 1:30am. This is the view of the boat from my window:

 

The shooter is still at large. Just another night in Detroit. Read more here: http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20120806/METRO01/208060371/1361/Police–7-injured-in-Detroit-riverfront-shooting

Welcome to Detroit

I pulled into the Millender Center parking structure in downtown Detroit, which is supposedly under video surveillance, and here’s what I saw on the first level so I snapped a picture:

All four wheels are missing on this nice new car. In the novel, The System – A Detroit Story – Zippy Sanchez teaches Pauli Tucci how to boost wheels like this.

Welcome to Detroit! 

The System and Objectivism

I work in downtown Detroit and have so for years. Detroit’s small downtown core, running from the Renaissance Center along Jefferson, down Woodward and up to Campus Martius resembles a small town. People are in the streets, parks and stores and you get to know them by name. Go into a restaurant and the girl behind the counter already knows what you’re going to order and calls our your name when it’s ready.

Bands and street musicians play, even in winter. The same beggars beg (give them a dollar and they hound you forever), street vendors sell hotdogs, people stroll along the boulevards and kids ride the carousel at the edge of the RiverWalk. Some people haul in catfish and walleye two at a time and watch thousand foot freighters lumber down the Detroit River. Others sun themselves on the grass near Hart Plaza and eat lunch with their shoes off at Campus Martius.

Inside the Renaissance Center, the largest building complex at the base of the city, an old, well dressed gentleman sits outside a coffee shop every afternoon listening to John, Miles and Ornette stream from his small transistor radio. He’s a fixture and everyone knows him. There isn’t a person that goes by he doesn’t politely greet. This is civilized life at its best.

Walk a few blocks in any direction and it all changes. Walk a few blocks in any direction and you’re in the midst of eighty thousand abandoned houses. Eighty thousand. Walk a few blocks in any direction and you’re surrounded by unthinkable violence, lawlessness and brutality, where human beings are no more than street dogs to be put down if they get in your way. I could cite hundreds of horrific examples, even as recent as this morning, but there isn’t enough room here to post them.

News stories showing the dark side of Detroit are everywhere, as with the positive stories. Blurbs that pledge “we can rebuild Detroit together”.

Sorry, there is no “together”.

After close of business on any give day the Detroit work force heads for city limits. Fast. So have the residents. Detroit’s population, once two million strong, is now roughly 714,000 people and declining. What’s left is a no-man’s land of abandoned neighborhoods where the principles of urban Darwinism prevail and human life has profoundly little value. It’s a wasteland where bodies are dumped in empty fields, wash up on the shores of the Detroit River and even rolled out of vans on major freeways.

I used to ride a bus downtown everyday and listened to the driver talk. He once said, “You can get anything in Detroit, you just gotta know where to look.” Simple supply and demand, and Detroit supplies one thing in excess- profound hopelessness, along with a “what’s in it for me?” attitude. “What’s in it for me?” Isn’t that the theme of Objectivism?

The System – A Detroit Story – is a violent, shocking book, but it’s written to be hopeful and inadvertently anti-objectivist. Here’s a quote from Ayn Rand circa 1962:

Man – every man – is an end in himself, not the means to the ends of others. He must exist for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself. The pursuit of his own rational self-interest and of his own happiness is the highest moral purpose of his life.

The hero of The System chose otherwise. Why? And why in Detroit? Through the tidal wave of corruption, lawlessness and incompetence, fierce racism (white and black), blind self-interest, con men (and women) politicians, murders and addiction, some people choose to sacrifice themselves for others. They let go of their dreams of escaping to a better, easier life and act in someone else’s self-interest. That’s what makes us human. That’s what gives us hope and provides us with the strength to wake up in the morning and face another day. Is Detroit hopeless? Probably. But what isn’t hopeless is human nobility rising in the midst of a cold, dark place.

That’s why I wrote The System.