Good morning everyone I’m kicking off the blog tour for Playing With Death by Simon Scarrow today and I have an exciting guest post to share with you all.
Playing With Death is available in ebook, paperback and hardback, purchase your copy here.
Before I share my guest post with you here is a little bit about the book.
Book Synopsis:
A UNEXPLAINED DEATH
The discovery of a horribly mutilated corpse launches FBI Agent Rose Blake into a puzzling investigation. The victim was alone at home with no signs of forced entry. Who – or what – burnt him to death?
THE GAME BEGINS
Strips of rubber melted to the body emerge as evidence that the victim was wearing The Skin, an innovation that takes users deep into a virtual world.
ESCAPE OR DIE…
When a body with identical wounds is discovered, Rose realises that in the darkest corners of the Dark Web, a brutal killer is playing a deadly game. A game with no rules – and no mercy. To stop it, Rose must play too…
Guest Post:
Playing With Death is a fast paced crime thriller that also tackles head on the grittier aspects of our everyday reliance on technology. I’m trying to avoid too many spoilers here, but one of these aspects is Virtual Reality/VR. The concept of VR is not new, but what is new is the daily potential for VR.
VR was attempted before back in the 90’s. The real life efforts never really took off with clumsy equipment, prohibitively high prices and intolerable nausea. VR in cinema didn’t fare much better. The Lawnmower Man movie is a fairly terrible example (it was completely disowned by Stephen King) andThe Thirteenth Floormovie flopped (although I quite liked it).
Fortunately, The Matrix in 1999 made virtual reality very cool again, but this VR only worked via highly advanced artificial intelligence controlling our brains, something that isn’t really an option. Yet… and hopefully won’t be!
Fast forward to 2018. The technology explosion has finally caught up and closed the gap, with a number of companies offering consumer grade headsets (PSVR, HTC, Oculus), although personally I still can’t use VR for longer than thirty minutes. The Batman crime scene reconstruction is probably my favourite use of VR, as it’s very clever and immersive.
Stephen Spielberg’s adaptation of Ready Player One also hit cinemas this year, and I found it a very enjoyable kaleidoscope of nostalgic pop culture. VR, I think, is here to stay longer this time.
Ready Player One, however, offers a fairly sanitised use of VR, at least, the film version does. I haven’t read the book so I’m happy to be corrected. Playing With Death takes a distinctly darker look at VR addiction via the use of a super immersive haptic feedback suit called a ‘Skin’, to add another layer of thrills and tension to a serial killer plot. Crime + VR? Sounds cool to me!
Simon and I started formally developing this project together back in 2013, when VR was still very much a far fetched concept. Simon actually conceived of the initial idea of a ‘Skin’ way back in 1995.When we finished writing Playing With Death in 2016, what started as science fiction is now verging on a contemporary reality. In our story, VR is also used as a metaphor to explore broader concerns that FBI Special Agent Rose Blake has to tackle. Our access to digital words is now only a tap away, but what does that do to us as human beings? What happens to our lives in the real world if we spend so much time in artificial ones? Will we get critically dependent on these things, to theexclusion of everything else?
I grew up with dial up internet (fortunately, I think in some ways), so I’d only get 2 hours a night to use the internet for homework! Now, we can be online 24/7, sucked into other worlds, whether it be VR, or on social media. We even have a prequel app to Playing With Death called ‘Catch a Killer’, available on iOS and Android that allows you to ‘message’ a serial killer and start the story. We wanted to offer an immersive experience for the reader, with more to explore than just the book.
Playing With Death is a page turner with intelligence, and takes a thrilling look at how things can go very wrong for one FBI agent and her family… Stay tuned to our social media accounts for more exciting content and videos, with our very own VR ‘Skin’ suit being revealed shortly!
About The Author:
A regular on the Sunday Times bestseller list with his historical novels, Simon Scarrow launches an exciting new strand to his writing with PLAYING WITH DEATH, written with Lee Francis: both an edge-of-your-seat thriller and a terrifying exploration of the dangers of the modern world.
Simon’s Eagles of the Empire novels are legendary amongst readers of historical fiction, and all his novels, have been acclaimed by reviewers and readers alike. Prior to writing fiction Simon worked as a teacher and lecturer; he is now a full-time writer.
Lee Francis worked for several years in the world of film, TV and advertising as a script reader and assistant director. PLAYING WITH DEATH, written with his former lecturer Simon Scarrow, is his first novel.
Over The Rainbow Blog 
Huge thanks for the blog tour support Jo x
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Anytime lovely x
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