Charlie Sinclair is having a terrible week. His day job at Evergreen Software is being outsourced to Puerto Rico. His best friend⎯the lead singer of Pistonhead⎯is spiraling downwards into drug abuse. The girl he loves is unattainable. His apartment is full of mice and his old girlfriend wants to dig her claws into him again. His mother has a new boyfriend and the guys from his old neighborhood hate him because they think he’s a successful rock star. The band’s audiences revel in violence.

When things couldn’t get any worse, a tragedy forces Charlie to make a life-changing decision and take a bold step into the future.

This breakout novel, filled with gritty realism and dark humor, paints a picture of a working rock musician’s life that is both poignant and inspiring. The concert scenes are exhilarating and the depiction of the grinding world of the assembly line is wrenching in its unblinking clarity. This is no rock-and-roll jet-set platinum-record romp; these are the real lives of artists who struggle to get to the top of the local rock heap. Their limousines are subway cars and their private jets are late-night taxicabs from grungy nightclubs.

Charlie thinks he knows what it means to be successful, but his view of the world is challenged. How do you define success? The answer may surprise you.