Media Release from ENC Press ...

MOZART:
Alive and living in a utopian city-state?

immortal lives in style by selling “lost” works,
ponders sex change

Mark A. Rayner’s Irreverent Amadeus Net Latest Novel

From Boutique Fiction House ENC Press

NEW YORK — Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was certainly irreverent enough that he might enjoy a 250th birthday present of a novel in which he’s immortal, plans on a sex change but paradoxically changes his mind when he falls in love with a lesbian, and lives in a self-aware utopian city-state he helped create after a globally catastrophic meteor strike — in Mark A. Rayner’s novel The Amadeus Net. Is Mozart, still alive in 2028, a fitting hero to explore art, love, and identity at the end of the world? Rayner and the equally irreverent ENC Press believe they have a case for this proposition.

In The Amadeus Net, the one-time wunderkind didn’t really die in 1791, but has kept his existence secret while trying to understand his immortality. Although he lives in style in Ipolis through funds raised by selling “lost ” Mozart works, a few complications mar his utopia. The world’s greatest reporter knows he’s still alive and will stop at nothing to expose him. The stakes are higher than Mozart realizes, because if this reporter finds him, so will the spy planning to sell Mozart’s DNA to the highest bidder. Oh, and, by the way, the world might end in seven days. Mozart’s only allies are a psychotic American artist, a bland Canadian diplomat, and the city itself: a sapient, thinking machine that is screwing up as only a sapient, thinking machine can.

Mark A. Rayner, author of The Amadeus Net, does some playing around with identity of his own. He’s also known as Professor Friendly, the Web design guy from the University of Western Ontario. When not “pushing pixels,” as he calls it, he’s the acting secretary of the Emily Chesley Reading Circle, a society dedicated to literary scholarship and frequent meetings in the pub.

The Amadeus Net is the latest example of intelligent alternatives to limited, mainstream-publishing editorial decisions, offered by publisher Olga Gardner Galvin of ENC Press ( www.ENCPress.com). Galvin’s ENC Press is a small, completely independent boutique press whose audience is the emerging independent-thinker counterculture. It is becoming known for sharp, entertaining, genre-busting fiction driven by engaging characters and likely to contain elements of social and political satire — offbeat, well-written novels too quirky and irreverent for mass-market publishers. ENC Press’s catalog of quality paperback originals is marked by strong elements of humor, unusual insights into foreign cultures, and a trail of tipped sacred cows left behind it.

ENC Press’s self-chosen “boutique” designation involves more than house size and the high level of attention given to the editing, design, and production of each release. It is a deliberately chosen business model as well. With the exception of a few independent bookstores, ENC Press bypasses the usual retail book-industry channels, whether brick-and-mortar or online, in favor of selling books exclusively through its Web site. Publisher Olga Gardner Galvin says only her small-run/direct-sales model makes it possible for her to take real editorial risks. It also allows her to keep all her titles available indefinitely on the Web — a practice recently adopted by industry giants Penguin and Random House. It’s a model that’s worked so far; ENC Press was in the black after one year, and Galvin had to take a break from reviewing new submissions because of the happy problem of having all the “excellent, original works of maverick minds falling through the cracks of big publishing” she could handle for the time being.

“ We certainly provide an intelligent alternative to the touchy-feely groupthink of the mainstream book scene, simply by publishing guilt-free, topical entertainment for independently thinking people. The Amadeus Net is another sophisticated good read the big boys simply didn’t get because it’s too complex and nuanced for the mass market, too multidimensional to be assigned to one particular genre, and too fun and readable to be classified as ‘literary,’” says Galvin.

You can order copies from ENC Press, or visit their site to check out other books in their catalogue.

For Canadian orders, go to the Ontario Library Association store ..>