AUTHOR - AntHony Mora

Type: Paperback

Date of Release:   December 1, 2022 

Category:  Thriller

Synopsis:    

Hang Fire is a character-driven drama in the tradition of Hollywood stories such as Nathanael West’s Day of the Locust, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Last Tycoon, Michael Tolkin’s The Player, and Elmore Leonard’s Get Shorty.  We take the trip down the Hollywood rabbit hole in November 2019 with a struggling novelist, James Lansing, whose book looks like it might be optioned for a movie by a quasi-fringe producer hustler, Lanier. Lanier steamrolls over James like a fast-talking cross between Morticia Adams and a bowling ball, and miraculously vanishes from their Four Seasons lunches whenever the check shows up. Lanier’s currency is her contacts, and James keeps getting close to a film deal with some of the biggest players in Hollywood, but through most of Hang Fire remains on the outside with his face pressed against the glass.

All James wants to do is escape from the endless meetings with disinterested celebrities and go back to holing up in his closet-sized studio apartment writing his novel and hoping his money won’t run out. His best friend, Jerry, a delusional wannabe producer and desperate wannabe ladies’ man, has other plans. Jerry sees James as his ticket into the big time, and will stop at nothing to get this movie made. Enter an ensemble of real-life inspired Los Angeles characters, including bottom feeder producers,  naive aspiring actors, exhibitionist psychiatrists and major Hollywood A-list players. They all are shooting for something that is not quite in their grasp with everything they’ve got.  Collectively and individually, they set in motion their byzantine plans, wanton back stabbings, take-no-prisoner assaults, and sexual machinations.  But, amid the intrigues and collusions, what none of them see is the coming tsunami that is 2020.