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Son of a Madman
This contemporary generational saga follows the existential crises of a man named Ivan and his family.
Ivan is a businessman who has sidelined his own life in order to expand his commodities firm, and who constantly comes home to the abuse of his father—a drunken madman.
Exhausted by going through the daily motions, lost in a futile attempt at catching up with yesterday, a confrontation with death causes Ivan to take his life more seriously. Aided by the spark of a new romance with his peculiar secretary Ivan sets off in search of hidden parts of himself before the best years of his life fall behind him.
Unfortunately, his sister's renaissance does not follow suit. Instead, she comes face to face with the uncomfortable recognition of the worst parts of her father in her husband Robert. The contours of her family dynamic lead to a reckoning where she must evaluate what is best for her and her children.
Author Reading and Interview Videos
With the full weight and gravity of the world pressing down upon her, Alethea rests in an uneasy slumber...
Through this thoughtful collection of stories, her dreams come to life. Begging to be uncovered, unearthed, and awakened, her concern for humanity manifests in the curiously tragic, romantic, and insightful lives of her dream’s main characters.
As the winds of change blow and the dirt is whisked away, the nature of her truth resurfaces in a myriad of times and places: the slave pit of a rock quarry to the King’s table; along distant mountain passes and the many endless highways of civilization; between the lines of blank pages; in the heart of modern suburbia; underneath the red berries of a threatened coffee farm that rests deep in the El Salvadorian jungle; stuck under the surgical knife in a flickering makeshift operating room amidst the chaotic throngs of war; across time and space into our most painful traumatic pasts, unto our unfolding futures and beyond,
Alethea and her dreams take us underneath the surface of our illusions to the distant future that our hearts all long for.
My Story
Born in Orange County, California in 1990, I grew up at the beach. In 2011 I moved to Hawaii to study philosophy at the University of Hawaii at Manoa on Oahu. I spent a few years after my undergraduate studies living on Maui, in California, and on the road. In 2018 I moved to the Netherlands to study for a Masters in Philosophical Anthropology and Philosophy of Culture.
I write to influence the way humans interact with the world through their own intimate lived experiences. I have stepped away from the boring confines of academia to instead focus on creating deep and investigative fiction. The current themes I play with are conscious reflexivity, self construct, cultural relativism, and human disconnection from self, other, and the natural world.
My work is 100% self-published through my own publishing house, Prefuture Publishing, which offers me constant new challenges and opportunities for innovation but which ultimately provides for full creative control over my work.
Reader Reviews
"Alethea’s Dreams by Daniel Martin is a sweeping look at an array of philosophical topics, such as freedom, love, truth, value, and honesty. With laser precision the author unfolds the deep inner workings of the human psyche through the compelling format of short stories that seem unrelated but are actually intertwined in the messages they convey.
This book provides a good look at humanity. The opening explanation of who and what Alethea is was helpful to set the tone for the pages to come, and the revisiting of Alethea at the end helped the reader intellectually and emotionally digest the stories in the book. Author Daniel Martin creates an often magical and sometimes tragic setting for each story and has the skill to make each character come alive within the first paragraph or two of each story. I can’t imagine any reader not enjoying this book. Alethea’s Dreams is beautifully and compassionately written.
Sheena Monnin
Luminisoity Media Group