Los
Angeles, Calif. (October 23, 2013) — Retribution High, a new novel by Bob Gale,
is now available exclusively in Amazon's Kindle Store for $3.99, and from the
Kindle Lending Library. A print version will be available soon.
Retribution
High is a dark, twisted, horrific tale of high school bullying, subtitled “A
Short Violent Novel of Bullying, Revenge, and the Hell known as High School.”
16-year-old
best friends Mitch Simon and Jordy Hubbard are two of the smallest kids in
their suburban high school. All they want to do is hang together, mind their
own business and survive their junior year. But their size, their lowly status,
and their rumored sexual orientation makes them the targets of “The Syndicate,”
a group of rich, arrogant kids who take pleasure in relentlessly bullying,
tormenting and humiliating them, directly and on the internet. Desperate and
powerless, with no one to turn to, Mitch and Jordy fervently pray to heaven for
help during a very intense lightning storm. Amazingly, it soon arrives in the
form of James Batt, a seemingly clueless kid who immediately becomes the
primary focus of The Syndicate. But “J.B.” isn't exactly what he seems, and
before long, the boys – and everyone else at school – are wondering: just who
is this new kid, where is he from, and what's his agenda?
As
J.B. says, “Sometimes God answers prayers, and sometimes the devil does.”
“If you combine the Friday the 13th movies
with High Plains Drifter and set it in a contemporary high school, you get
Retribution High, says Gale. Some people really like it, and some people are
very disturbed by it, so it's clearly touching a nerve. I wish I could say that
it offers some sort of solution to the plague of bullying, but it absolutely
does not. It's a dark, violent retribution fantasy with some black humor and
religious overtones, and that's all it is.”
Retribution
High is available in two versions, Standard (green) and Explicit (red).
Although the overall story and content in each is the same, the Standard
Version contains none of the 68 words or expressions banned on network
television, and the sexual situations are toned down. As a movie, it would
probably be rated PG-13. The Explicit Version is exactly that – full of
explicit profanity, and also containing a scene that is not for the squeamish.
As a movie, it would be rated R or X.
“There
are a lot of readers who don't like to see certain things in print,” says Gale,
“so with today's technology, it's easy to provide alternate versions to
accommodate different audiences. There are explicit and radio versions of some
hip hop music, and there are R-rated and G-rated movie trailers for the same
movie, but I don't think that this has ever been done with a new book before.
Who knows, this may start something. Still, neither version is politically
correct, and it's definitely not family entertainment. I suggest you use
Amazon's Look Inside feature to read the first two chapters of each version, and
that should give you an idea.”
About
the Author
Bob Gale is an Oscar-nominated Screenwriter-Producer-Director, best
known as co-creator, co-writer and co-producer of Back to the Future and its
sequels. Gale was born and raised in suburban St. Louis, Missouri, where he
attended public high school; he then moved to Los Angeles to major in Cinema at
the University of Southern California. He has written or co-written over 30
screenplays. His other film credits include 1941, I Wanna Hold Your Hand, Used
Cars, and Interstate 60, which he directed. His darker side is clearly seen in
the 1992 movie Trespass, which he co-authored, and in his episode of Tales From
The Crypt entitled “House of Horror,” which he wrote and directed. Gale has
also written comic books, most notably issues Spider-Man, Batman and Daredevil.
