Official Website of the Prize-winning Speculative Fiction Novel by:
THE CLOUD
When Everyone's A Virtual Reality Slave, Who Can Free The Human Soul?
Available on Amazon Now!
THE CLOUD has been chosen as one of the 20 Best Books of 2023 by Julie Sarah Porter, of Bookworm Reviews.
Cover design by IndieDesignz.com
In twenty-second century L.A. dominated by The Cloud, every imaginable pleasure is accessible—yet the entire world can vanish in a single upload. That choice rests in one man’s hands.
Blaise, a brilliant but tormented VR programmer, is trying to forget his violent past as a special forces commando by throwing himself into creating VR fantasies. He finds himself tempted by his megalomaniac boss, who offers him wealth, power, and eternal life in exchange for coding a new VR series that will addict and eliminate billions of “unproductives.”
They say you can’t die in your dreams, but in virtual reality you can, thanks to Blaise’s new coding refinements. He created them to sharpen the VR entertainment experience—but his sociopathic boss wants to use them for mass murder.
Caught between joining those who want to bring down the ruling Cloud regime in Hong Kong, or accepting the offer of personal immortality, Blaise finds himself flanked by two relentless femmes fatales—a psychic risking overwhelming personal odds to save humanity from annihilation, and the other using her extraordinary carnal wiles to accelerate the final triumph of The Cloud. Ultimately, Blaise must re-embrace his violent warrior nature in a desperate bid to destroy it.
about the author
Robert Rivenbark earned a master’s degree in Creative Writing from Antioch University, after winning a full academic scholarship to study for two years in Oxford and London, England, based on his winning short story collection. He returned to the U.S. for a career in journalism and advertising, and worked as a senior copywriter and video producer for some of America’s most prestigious advertising agencies and Fortune 500 companies.
His novel The Cloud won First Place in the science fiction category in the San Antonio Writers Guild 27th Annual Writing Contest in February 2019. He subsequently secured exclusive representation from Hollywood literary manager Ken Atchity of The Story Merchant. Robert will expand The Cloud into a novel trilogy, also suitable for screen adaptation.
Robert is the co-author with Elizabeth Rockett of THEODORA, an epic historical dramatic TV series about the most powerful Roman Empress in history, who co-ruled with her husband Justinian I. The series is in development with Atchity.
Additionally, Robert has co-written a feature psychological thriller with Rockett, and has been tapped by Atchity to co-write two other epic historical series.
IN THE PRESS
“The Cloud is a classic hero’s journey; a page-turning thriller with action, suspense, and romantic intrigue; and it works as a philosophical novel asking eternal questions about human freedom, the quest for enlightenment, and the meaning of suffering and evil.”
Kate Danaher,
Goodreads