Jessica Shubert's Blog: Gift of Rats

As I anticipated in 2019, summer ended, college kicked in, and I left this blog to collect dust last year. After just three posts! We'll see how long it lasts this time now that I don't have school to go back to, but I do have actual work.

The plan: new posts on Fridays to either get you more familiar with the world of the Rat Race Chronicles or just tell you where I'm at with writing, which is for now just about where it was last year: two books published, five books written. Perhaps editing book 3 will begin soon...

The hope: some more interaction so I can tell what people actually want to see.

The goal: actually do a book giveaway for My Name is Criminal! Preferably before Christmas.

So, you've reached that sentence of the summary of My Name is Criminal. "They even have a digital Plexus of codes that connect every citizen together via chips implanted in their heads." You didn't question the self-driving cars and you could even get past the whole "lightning powers everything," but "microchips in brains" is a giant red flag.

What is the Plexus?

The Plexus is a giant network that connects (almost) all of Tersatellus. It started as a way for spies to communicate during the Tersatellan Revolution: with the chips in their brains, they could send each other messages silently, letters showing up across their eyes. Over 300 years later, it's evolved into so much more.

It's a daunting combination of telepathy and the internet. The chips are put into people's brains before birth, so it's just another bodily function to them. Almost everything is done with the Plexus, from checking the time to storing vast amounts of government knowledge.

But it's not like it does everything for them. People still walk, talk, carry their own shopping bags...Many, however, choose the option of monitoring their health with the Plexus, and the government pays them to be healthy. People have forms of social media and messaging via the Plexus to talk to someone kilometers away in real-time (without needing a phone or computer). If they don't feel like carrying shopping bags, they can order things to be delivered to their house or even their exact location.

Does that seem a little too invasive, a little too all-knowing? Or are we just kidding ourselves thinking that our own networks aren't that far off from the Plexus?

The fun of looking at fictional civilizations, whether they're utopian or dystopian, is comparing them to our own.

The Plexus has "visual reforms" available that alter a user's vision so that they can adjust what the world looks like to them--dimming everything like sunglasses, for example, or seeing the world through a rosy tint. There are billions of failsafes installed, and the Plexus is monitored 24/7 by experts for people's safety...the government promises. There are also now robots being controlled by a new part of the Plexus, driving people's cars and making their deliveries.

Sound familiar at all?

What if I don't want this?

You're not alone. People who opt out of the Plexus are called cutouts. They tend to get their mainframe (chip) deactivated or completely removed. At expensive government-sanctioned facilities, this is a painless operation. At popular, cheaper "snip shops," complications run rampant.

Since the Plexus is so pervasive, survivors are mostly cut off from conventional society. There are groups of people in Tersatellus who were even born without mainframes, but they tend to live in isolated areas, forgotten. Tersatellus has been suffering from a wave of anti-cutout sentiment as it has become more reliant on the Plexus than ever due to the Mechs (robots).

Rejected, cutouts will often turn to a life of crime if they don't have a solid plan and support system in place before their operation. There are criminals who still have the Plexus and there are cutouts who aren't criminals. However, "cutout" and "criminal" are regarded as synonymous these days.

Some of them embrace it.

Which is where people like Rat come into play.

13-year-old me had an idea for a story and really enjoyed making characters for it. 18-year-old me didn't have the heart to kill the darlings I'd spent 7 books developing, so here they are in the finished product, My Name is Criminal. It can be a lot of names--er, tags--to keep straight, though. I'm going to organize the ones you'll definitely need to know into 2 groups that won't make sense until chapter 4.

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Rat: our beloved protagonist and totally trustworthy narrator. Lying, cheating, sneaking thief who won't give up her life or sass for anything. Vici's partner in crime/mentor.

Eli: recently brought back from the dead via cybernetics, his humanity and trustworthiness is a point of debate. Accused of murder. Just wants to help everybody.

Rex: cantankerous vandal and conspiracy theorist. Nephew of "Gypsy" (minor character, her controversial nickname will be addressed in later books). Has met Rat.

Voxel: top-notch hacker, extortionist, and blackmail artist. Values knowledge and the truth. Has the best words for things and draws on herself with black marker.

Craw: absolute fraud. No identity. Just a teenager out for love wherever it can be found. Has run into a few of the other characters pre-canon.

Motor: young but infamous automobile thief. Otherwise mostly innocent.

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Lily: involved with black market, namely weapons trafficking. Struggling with leadership. Stuck-up.

Ivy: Lily's sister; involved in same enterprise. Beautiful but eerie. Rarely speaks. Surrounded by enigma and rumor.

Vici: expert hacker and novice thief. Rat's protégée. Excellent book smarts. Suffers from epileptic seizures.

Tom: also involved in black market. Much more established than the sisters. Can sell you just about anything. The nicer, inventive twin who mockingly abandons all rules of grammar.

Tim/Jacques: the exact twin of Tom; very protective of him. The quiet, threatening, scary twin who mockingly pretends Shakespeare writes all his dialogue.

Spike: notorious, stylish thug who lost the ability to feel pain. Wears sunglasses at night. Bully.

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Other recurring characters you should remember:

Jaden Steele: Adaman of the Technology Sector. Eli's older brother; responsible for bringing him back to life.

Absolon Vastate: Adaman of the Public Prosperity Sector. Last surviving creator of the Plexus.

My name is Jess and I like to write things.

Am I good at it? Sometimes. Do I have any idea what I'm doing writing this? No. Do I expect any attention or an audience? Not really. Am I doing it anyway? Oh, yes.

I have other blogs, social media, and an abandoned website, and I'll probably forsake this place, too. However, I'm hoping to do a giveaway soon, so I thought it wouldn't hurt to establish at least the pretense of a presence!

Oh, yeah, I wrote a book! Well, actually, I've written about 11. Two of them are published. One of them's on here! It's called My Name is Criminal, and it's about a thief who steals things like soup cans and glass balls full of liquid electricity in order to qualify for a secret vacation funded by the Tersatellan government to "temporarily" exile some criminals. They'll be allowed back into the country at the end of the week...if they can survive. (Yeah. Another one of Those Books.) It's book 1 of the Rat Race Chronicles, which will be 7 books long--one for every day of the week of the extermination. Sci-fi fantasy. There are robots. There will be dragons. There's a social revolution happening in the background. It's a fun time.

Thanks for reading! Be prepared for random updates and information you didn't know you needed to know!
- Jessica Shubert