Slade Harris will do anything for a story and now he is desperate and going under.

He doesn't think twice about jumping out of a plane or conducting disastrous love affairs to gather material. But his self-indulgent life is catching up with him: stumbling through his late thirties hopeless and a little drunk, his agent after him like a particularly stubborn rash, waiting for his next money-spinning Work of Genius, which is a year overdue and which Slade has not yet started.

To celebrate his dismal situation – Everest-like debt; unrequited love; a fear of turning into his sad, shuffling father and the severest case of writer's block ever experienced by man – Slade has a dazzling, dangerous idea, born of a febrile mind, frustration and outrage, which sets off events that will change his life forever. It's going to be Slade's ultimate story, and all he's hoping for is to survive it.