Summer Rain

John Conner has lost his girlfriend, his job, a scholarship, and has been kicked out of college. Instead of retreating back to his parents' basement and a life of mediocrity and factory labor, he decides to stay the summer in the college town of Bloomington, Indiana.

On the lazy Indiana University campus, Conner explores the worlds of death metal, zines, no-budget radio, and slackerdom while trying to learn about women, deal with depression, and get his life back on course. While he works telemarketing jobs and hawks glowsticks as a street vendor in order to survive, he learns who his friends are in the strange mix of people left at the college for the summer. The atmospheric and descriptive narration weaves the hidden beauty of the Midwest and the crossroads of the early Nineties into a timeless story of the follies of youth.

Conner's ramblings through the desolation of an empty campus parallel the meaningless jobs he must take to scrape by while he decides whether to remain sequestered in the relative comfort of college living or leap into an unstable world fueled only by his own creativity.

Update: Summer Rain has been re-released on lulu.com. This means there is a new print edition that is not only better-looking, but signifigantly cheaper, at only $16.95+S/h. There's also (finally) a hardcover edition available. Click the icon to the right to buy it, go to lulu.com/jkonrath for my page at lulu with all of my books , or click updates for more details.