This past April, we witnessed it first hand when false arrest reports were made in conjunction with the Boston Marathon bombings. One media outlet jumped at the chance to be the first to break the news and numerous outlets followed suit. Almost immediately, cell phones lit up, social media buzzed, and crowds flocked around the TV to learn more about the arrest. An hour later, the story was retracted and people voiced their disgust with the media but failed to see the bigger social truth—the desperate lengths the media will go to feed the public insatiable demand for sensationalism
James Campion, self-deprecating rogue journalist, is no stranger to the twisted relationship between the media and the public. Having chased stories for over thirty years, Campion, or jc, takes the ‘why’ out of journalism in his breakout novel, y—a whimsical satire that explores the seductive influence the public and the media hold over one other.
“We’ve learned to define society through celebrity scandal, underground misbehavior, and obsession with mayhem,” says jc. “Journalism in itself is a despicable trade with its only redeeming feature being either utter tragedy or indescribable joy. The greater public is obsessed with sensationalism and the media plays perfectly into it.”
In y, jc explores the extremes in today’s soundbite/image conscious society where guilt and shame have no place. Writing himself into the story, we follow the painfully bored freelance journalist James Campion on his quest for ultimate fame and fortune at the prospect of breaking the story on an underground society known as y. He falls deeper and deeper into the realm of NOWHERE, the society’s strange reality reminiscent of Alice in Wonderland, where confusion is a way of life and celebrating the message that there is no message becomes the only truth. As y coordinates outlandish, attention-grabbing artistic disturbences around New York City, and the public demand to understand who is behind it all grows, Campion finds himself at its core. The gullible reporter meets strange characters linked to y along the way—a cigarette-eating jester, a proper Englishman in a gorilla suit, mimes with televisions for heads, the sage of y, Chief Wonka, and many more—as he continues his quest to exploit the society’s myths and achieve notoriety.
Ultimately, as jc pushes the limits of normalcy, he is left to weave a gripping tale of self-awareness, as the the reader tries to figure out who is truly manipulating whom.
jc is a columnist, essayist, social wit and rogue journalist with more than thirty years working in the media, writing for various publications, including NY Newsday, Women's News, The Aquarian Weekly and more. He is the author of four previously published nonfiction works that explore social truths, the boundaries of art, religion, music, and more. y is jc’s first venture into fiction. For more information visit http://www.jamescampion.com or http://www.facebook.com/jc.author.
y is available on Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble in both print and e-book form.
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