Layton Bonnell is a pen name to protect my family.

I'm in my seventies, and this novel is the first artsy-fartsy thing I have ever attempted. I was a successful businessman, before the price of oil collapsed, the Savings & Loan Crisis, the Reagan recession, the lawsuits, the indictments the bankruptcy, and an ALS diagnosis.

I've been married three times. Two daughters with my first wife. That family doesn't speak to me, and they have their reasons. My only son was killed by a drunk driver in a crosswalk at 7:30 in the morning, walking to first grade. Our marriage did not survive it. The second marriage embarrasses me to this day. My third wife died of cancer. My caregiver Natalie helps me with all the social media. She's family at this point.

Now that death is nigh and I can't move or talk, I hope I can finish my novel before I go. I can still type.

The novel was inspired by the Lone Biker of the Apocalypse. This is not the character from the Raising Arizona movie. This was a real biker I saw at a stoplight on Lamar, on the way to my neurologist. He was a sun-crisped, scary little man. He looked so cool with his sunglasses, his sweaty tattoos, his sleeveless leather vest with the outlaw motorcycle gang patch on the back. He looked free and healthy. I wondered what his life was like. How were we alike and different? Up until about 1985, I thought my road to riches was a straight highway without a cop for miles. What wrong turn did this biker take to live so righteously?

So I built a plot around this damaged, holy man, and in the first scene, I kill him. At 7:30 in the morning, crossing 45th at Lamar, a drunk driver plows into him.

This is the plot: a man dies, and a tech oligarch steals his soul to train his prototype autonomous vehicle. I don't have a title yet.

What you'll find here are his memories that are triggered by where the autonomous car picks up passengers. The oligarch's company scrapes data one from his soul with every mile. I will be posting the biker's memories one at a time. You'll need to buy they book to see how the whole story sticks together.

L.B.