Inspirational Indie Author Interview #30: Sex, Drugs, and Rabbis: Inside Phil Cohen's Dystopia

My guest this week is Phil M. Cohen, whose new novel creates a dystopian future of uncooperative machines, a messianic Jewish cult, and the quest for control over a powerful new drug. He uses humor and scifi to discover the meaning of being Jewish in a chaotic world. Phil's book, Nick Bones Underground, combines the Jewish wit of Michael Chabon with the sci-fi absurdity of Douglas Adams. The backdrop to this story is a dystopia, where machines stop working, or just evolve other priorities, and an economic collapse that further stratified the world. It's the classic Holmes and Watson, but with Holmes a somewhat depressed, middle-aged Jewish professor and Watson a wise-cracking, gender-switching computer.  Every week I interview a member of ALLi to talk about their writing and what inspires them, and why they are inspiring to other authors. Find more author advice, tips and tools at our Self-publishing Author Advice Center: https://selfpublishingadvice.org, with a huge archive of nearly 2,000 blog posts, and a handy search box to find key info on the topic you need. And, if you haven’t already, we invite you to join our organization and become a self-publishing ally. You can do that at http://allianceindependentauthors.org. About the Host Howard Lovy has been a journalist for more than 30 years, and has spent the last six years amplifying the voices of independent publishers and authors. He works with authors as a book editor to prepare their work to be published. Howard is also a freelance writer specializing in Jewish issues whose work appears regularly in Publishers Weekly, the Jewish Daily Forward, and Longreads. Find Howard at howardlovy.com, LinkedIn and Twitter.