WILLIAMSBURG — After a career ranging from newspaper journalist to playwright, local author D. L. Farrar has released a Sci-Fi action mystery — “Vincent and the Grief Masters” — set in the year 2065.
After retiring from Colonial Williamsburg’s Trend and Tradition magazine last year, Farrar decided to concentrate on writing her novel.
The origin came from a short story she had written several decades ago called “Vincent and the Masters of Grief.” It follows veteran and inventor, Troy Vincent, who is wrongly accused of murdering the world’s most powerful CEO and is condemned to imprisonment in a new form of incarceration, the terrifying Virtual Reality Chambers. There he meets a young woman accused of the same murder. Together they must unravel the mystery of who is framing them while battling demons of their own making in the VRC.
Earlier in Farrar’s life, she said she experienced a series of tragic events that sent her into a tailspin. She knew she needed to find something to help her continue on.
“The elements that I latched onto were things like courage, hope, faith, loved — those were the things I found surround you and sustain you and they help you rebuild,” Farrar explained.
During this process, she also observed the number of teen and young adult suicides that were causing statistics to climb, something that inspired to send a message of encouragement to entertain that audience.
“I wanted to leave this same message to my own grandchildren, that life is hard and you may get some very horrible knocks, you need to know that these are the things that will sustain you through that. You will get through it and they will also pull you out of it,” said Farrar.
“When I was young, Science Fiction was my go-to. I loved those stories. Grew up on a lot of those kinds of stories and books,” said Farrar. It was for this reason she chose the sci-fi genre for her novel, as she believed it would be entertaining for an 18-and-older audience, as well as offering her the opportunity to build a dystopian world for her characters to deal with.
Farrar says a unique aspect of this work is that it references music through an android happens to like 20th-century rock. A QR code in the book takes the reader to Farrar’s website, which maintains the android’s playlist and relates to several chapters. Selections can be played through a link to Spotify.
Farrar is currently working on the sequel, as well as a third book that will be a collection of short stories.
To purchase a physical copy, “Vincent and the Grief Masters” is currently available on Amazon, with an e-book available Dec. 16. She also hopes to have a book signing at Turn the Page Bookshop in the future.
To learn more about Farrar, visit her official website.
