Synopsis

Apok is a rollercoaster ride through the darkest recesses of the human psyche; an exhilarating tour of forbidden taboos and crippling addiction. It is the very stuff nightmares are made of where twilight dimensions toy in ripping your dreams apart. To a backdrop of war and genocide, Apok, is a man’s struggle to remember who he is, as the horrors of combat continue to torture and entice, vying for his soul, for he is the perfect psychopath; an invincible, blood and gore-soaked death machine; his mission to wage war on everyone and everything. To spare no-one!

Apok is a welcome to Hell on Earth….

This is fundamentally an anti-war novel; an expression of war’s madness and the insanity it spreads. Yet during my writing this novel the war aspect has evolved into the general failing of mankind’s responsibility towards its own species and that of the planet and subsequent species. I suppose the novel asks the age old question: why can’t man get along with his fellow man? And from an individual level, why aren’t the ‘powers that be’ doing anything about it? Is war that vital to the human condition? Must we have it in order to feel complete? I guess what this novel is really asking the reader: what does war mean to us, to you?

I see it like this. We live in a polluted world where our land, sea and air teem with waste impurities; war to me is just another pollutant, but like a virus has the potential to corrupt from prince to pauper. It is a drug indiscriminate in its reach, as our collective pollution is only an extension of how we pollute ourselves, and an indicator of how addiction has the planet in a vice-like grip.

But ultimately, drawing on the atrocities of the Balkan conflict, it is about the perfect psychopath who’s trying to find himself amongst the horrors and torment of frontline warfare and genocide. One man’s personal journey through a kaleidoscope of alternating dimensions where different versions of Hell collide in an attempt to seduce him once more towards the darkest of addictions.

It is my interpretation of the madness that drives men to do evil things. It describes how individual acts become collective actions. It captures the need to survive, to kill, to do whatever it takes. It depicts life as meaningless and cheap, as well as the most precious commodity we have. It will take you through the pain barrier to places no-one wants to go, but are still curious despite the terror. It is a mind-trip flipping the accepted concept of addiction, and the fallibility of addiction. On a practical level it asks: can addiction make us stronger and better people? Is addiction good for the body and soul? But also on a spiritual level it tries to balance the argument asking: what would God have to say? And then beckons how the Devil might reply ….