My breakfast partner was Hera, an orange-and-white cat who, after I had retreated to my childhood home after the divorce and layoff, had emerged from the backyard bushes and informed me through meowing that she lived with me now. She was now back in her hometown of Boston, dating an investment banker and, if her Instagram account was to be believed, spending most of her time being well-lit in enviable vacation spots around the globe. “Are you hearing this?” I said to my breakfast partner, who was not my wife Jeanine, because she was no longer my wife and no longer living with me. I stopped mid-peanut-butter spread, knife in hand, as cohost Andrew Ross Sorkin announced that my uncle Jake, reclusive billionaire owner of the third-largest chain of parking structures in North America, had died of pancreatic cancer at the age of sixty-seven. Thus it was, as I was preparing my peanut butter on toast, I heard the name “Jake Baldwin” from the iPad I had running on the kitchen island. These days I had less need of it-substitute teachers do not usually need to be kept up on the state of the Asian markets in order to babysit a bunch of students in a seventh-grade English class- but old habits, it turns out, actually do die hard. I had Squawk Box on from force of habit when I was a business reporter for the Chicago Tribune I would turn it on in the mornings, in rotation with Bloomberg and Fox Business, while I and my wife Jeanine got ourselves ready for our respective days. I learned about the death of my uncle Jake in a deeply unexpected way, which was from the CNBC Squawk Box morning show. Please enjoy this free excerpt of Starter Villain by John Scalzi, on sale 9/19/23 But with unionized dolphins, hyper-intelligent talking spy cats, and a terrifying henchperson at his side, going bad is starting to look pretty good. It’s up to Charlie to win the war his uncle started against a league of supervillains. His uncle might have been a stand-up, old-fashioned kind of villain, but these are the real thing: rich, soulless predators backed by multinational corporations and venture capital. Jake had enemies, and now they’re coming after Charlie. Then his long-lost uncle Jake dies and leaves his supervillain business (complete with island volcano lair) to Charlie.īut becoming a supervillain isn’t all giant laser death rays and lava pits. A divorced substitute teacher living with his cat in a house his siblings want to sell, all he wants is to open a pub downtown, if only the bank will approve his loan. Particularly when you discover who’s running the place.Ĭharlie’s life is going nowhere fast. Inheriting your uncle’s supervillain business is more complicated than you might think.
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