Get Out, (2017)
Grosses: $255,407,969 (Global), $176,040,665 (Domestic), $79,367,304 (International)
Audiences loved Get Out‘s portrayal of racism as a multi-dimensional threat that appears in many forms because it reflects the relatable circumstances of our everyday world.
Readers will appreciate that same honest depiction of racism as a real threat in a more overt depiction, more befitting the hyperbole of the end of the world.
A Song of Fire and Ice, (1996) and Game of Thrones (2011-Present)
90M copies sold from the A Song of Fire and Ice series.
$88M per episode episode per season in Season 8
$3.1B from subscriptions through out the series run.
Readers and audience of Game of Thrones enjoy high-stakes, mature themes, and the uncertainty of which character could die next. They enjoyed slowburn storylines rich with tension that take years to pay off.
Agony’s readers will enjoy its vulnerable characters, each in their own struggle for survival and freedom. Beneath the mushroom cloud, these characters grapple with racial violence, sexual oppression, an increasingly militarized police force, and simply trying to keep the family together.
Agony is the groundwork for a series, best described as “Hellraiser meets Wizard of Oz”. To explore, understand, and appreciate the dark horror of the post-apocalypse, this first book introduces real world characters that help readers find the circumstances more relatable and interesting. Picture sitting on the highest slide at the water park, looking down, and seeing the slide actually goes through the pool and into hell where you’ve been assured all your darkest secrets are waiting to torment you. Agony is the book that pushes you down the slide.
“What are you like at work, Patrick?”
World War Z, (2006)
1M copies sold in the first five years.
Readers loved the multi-facted view of the end of the world from beginning to end. They liked being in the nitty-gritty, hearing what the end of the world looked like to those who had seen in first hand.
In Agony, readers will be the ones to witness the end first hand through the eyes of characters standing at ground zero for the nuclear apocalypse and those desperately trying to escape it.
The Handmaid’s Tale, (1985) and The Handmaid’s Tale, (2017)
8M copies sold as of 2019
Readers and audiences enjoyed the story of an unbreakable woman, persevering in the face of theocratic authoritarianism and patriarchical overreach.
Agony’s readers will love the book’s strong female, nonbinary, and LGTBQ characters as they face bigotry, toxic masculnity, and patriarchical overreach.
The Stand, (1978)
Readers loved intimiately knowing the book’s main characters so as the global influenza strain overcomes the world, we appreciate how their world has changed, and feel their fear and vulernability as the world collapses around them.
Agony’s readers will enjoy the book’s “over the shoulder” style third person narrative allowing them to truly stand in the character’s shoes and feel the heat of the inferno upon their skin. As well as everyone remembers 2020, they will connect even more with Agony’s characters and viscerally experience their vulerability.
Fight Club, (1996)
Readers loved Fight Club‘s acerbic voice and succint narrative allowed for the reader to swiftly move from the main character’s casual philosophical ponderances to gritty violence, creating a story that was both kinetic and cerebral. They loved references to contemporary life and identified with the contemplation upon the meaninglessness of modern life and how it creates a generation of men easily led astray.
Agony’s will enjoy the sarcastic humor and references to contemporay life, like Black Lives Matters marches, COVID-19, and fearful stories of police violence. But whereas Fight Club spoke of a generation of men ready to be misled, Agony’s characters face the legacy of that threat and the rise of fascism.
“Patrick, I like GIFs. Give me your bio in GIFs.”
The Grapes of Wrath, (1939)
History values the Grapes of Wrath because of its humanization of capitalism’s consequences. Published the year the Great Depression ended, the story was a lookback at the unprecendented hardships the nation had just endured. The story of Americans driven from their own by circumstances beyond their control is one many students read in school as a warning of how readily society will abandon people.
Agony is written at a similar inflection point in American history. Regardless of what happens in the next few years, 2020 is likely to be remembered as when the nation first began to crack. As such, the book offers a similar lookback to historian, future students, and more importantly, global readers who are curious about what life was like in America at the painful juncture in our history. Agony also warns people against dehumanizing as others, as the book’s characters become refugees in their own nation, forced to flee the coast for parts of the country less than happy to receive them.
The Leftovers, (2011) and The Leftovers (2014)
Readers and audiences loved the story’s flawed, realistic characters struggling with unprecendented loss. Always hovering on the edge of the mystical, the story helps readers and audiences feel as though they’re always on the verge of discovery of questions about our place in the universe.
Agony’s characters also face unprecedented loss as civilization unravels around them. As opposed to the Leftovers, which kept its metaphysical mysticism off-screen, the journey through life and death is central to much Agony’s story, and to future books within the series.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah… but what do you watch on TV?”
The Seven 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle, (2018)
The commercial success of The Seven 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle demonstrates that the market supports stories that leverage a narrative dependent on reincarnation. The book also proved readers enjoy perspectives from beyond their mortality no matter how many times they’ve seen it before.
Agony’s use of this narrative tool is best strategic way to tell a story from inside a nuclear explosion. What The Seven 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle is to Gosford Park, Agony is to the film Speed.
A Tale of Two Cities, (1859)
A Tale of Two Cities has become a classic because it is human nature to feel betrodden, to root for the underdog, and recognize that the further social classes drift apart, the greater the threat to society. The potential for people from different walks of life come together or tear each other apart is rooted in every news story, and so readers continue root for characters who endure the chaos of horror of civil war because they believe they can reach a better future.
This fascination will be captivated in Agony as readers see the dark specter of civil war once again on the horizon. This story, being rooted in 2020, will capture the same experience of A Tale of Two Cities but with more relatability and without requiring you read the book next to a dictionary.