Arizona Free

by Doug Martin

THE ENERGY DRINK WARS HAVE REACHED NEW HEIGHTS... THIS TIME, PEOPLE ARE GETTING UGLY. When three co-workers searching for a way out of the corporate rut try an irresistible multi-level marketing product called DiNAmite, it was love at first sip. But as Jason, Tony and Cloe soon find out, there's more than just caffeine in that supercharged energy drink: it's chalk full of dinosaur DNA, and it's causing some unusual changes in peoples' behavior... and bodies. Based upon a completely untrue story, Arizona Free will have you wondering if artificial DNA transcription is really all it's cracked up to be, and just how far you'd go to serve your corporate masters. For an energy drink experience that's out of this world, a little mayhem is in order. Caution: it's a trip. Right to Distribute in the US, Worldwide Rights

Genres: Fiction

170 pages, Paperback

First published July 25, 2010

About the author

Doug Martin’s poetry, fiction, reviews, and interviews have appeared in Double Room, elimae, Nimrod, 5_trope, Third Coast, Brooklyn Rail, The New York Quarterly, Gauntlet, and others. A past poetry editor of Mid-American Review and founder of the online journal, Snow*Vigate, Martin has been a recipient of a Theodore Morrison Scholarship in Poetry from the Breadloaf Writers’ Conference, an Academy of American Poets Award, and a Randi Eldevik Award in Old English Prosody. His A Survey of Walt Whitman’s Mimetic Prosody was published by Edwin Mellen in 2004. Online Writing: The Best of the First Ten Years (edited with Kim Chinquee, with an Introduction by Brian Evenson) will be published in 2009. He lives in Universal, a town of 100 in Indiana.

Reviews

[Grady]

It's Not So Much the Story, It's the Style

ARIZONA FREE is a little quick-read book that is meant to be a diversion, a comedy along the lines of so many of the films that blossom in summer: get to know a band of characters, follow them through a bonding, and then find them entrapped in a situation that on the surface seems a bit foolish but one that ends up having some interpersonal relationship statements that are solid and constructive. It may not fall into the category of 'all that glisters is not gold' stories, but in Doug Martin's talented hands it is a breath of fresh air. Even the cover of this book lends information that assures the reader that there is more to the story inside than expected: 'ARIZONA FREE _ The Energy Drink Wars Have Reached New Heights - This time the people are getting ugly', the words placed above and below what appears to be an extraterrestrial hour glass running out of sand....

Jason and Troy are 'good buds' who are out to find away to crawl out from under the demeaning corporate world and find riches and fame and fortune. Tony is the more adventurous of the two, at first buying into a auto additive GasMax, talking Jason into being his fellow entrepreneur, and then failing to find buyers for the product that is to make the planet more green while saving on gas, etc. The lads banter back and forth about women: their attempts to put the make on a fellow corporate type over tennis leads us into the ever popular battle to win over the opposite sex while introducing subtle hints that same sex experiences are not out of the question. Eventually they team with a weird appearing girl, Cloe, and the three of them become involved in another possible scam - a new energy drink called DiNAmite, the ultimate 'power drink' in an age where these artificial sources of energy of every description pack the shelves. But DiNAmite is different - the secret ingredient being dinosaur DNA (now stay with me on this one) and that 'secret' opens the doors to the second half of the book, introducing aliens, graft, corruption and changes in the consumer's personality AND appearance that opens doors to one of the greatest huckster tales on paper!

Doug Martin has not written a deep book (or has he?), but the manner in which he relates his flaky tale is so endearingly written that no reader will regret the time spent passing this little tome of thoughts and entertainment and philosophy through their brains. It is funny, it has a moral, and it shares a lot of thought about the level of commercial and philosophical consciousness in which we tread.

Grady Harp

[Kimm]

There are so many negative reviews out there for this book, I almost didn't bother with it, but the premise interested me so I gave it a try. I found myself captivated instantly and wasn't able to put the book down until I finished it. I frequently found myself giggling. No, this isn't "Hitchhiker's" and it's not Shakespeare, but it's been a long time since I was able to enjoy a comical sci-fi novel and I did enjoy this quite a bit. The end seems to predict a sequel, which I will be watching for and reading if it does appear. Many reviewers complain about this story being dialogue driven. Why is that bad? It kept me in the present and so I went with the flow of things pretty much as the main character did. I don't need to have endless pages of description of the clouds moving over the desert or boring passages of the history of the town in order to find the tale exciting. I didn't notice all the errors that an editor should have corrected as reported by many other reviewers either. Commas were missing at the ends of quotations, but so what? It wasn't like I couldn't understand what was being said and I quickly adapted to ignoring that and enjoying the story. Perhaps it's part of the plot. :) If you like Douglas Adams, Spider Robinson, Steven Brust, Robert Asprin, and movies like Buckaroo Banzai or The Big Empty, I think you'll like this little gem.

[Tad]

I received this book as part of an early reviewer program. Arizona Free is a quick, fun read about energy drink wars, aliens, dinosaurs, time travel, and get rich quick schemes that are seldom either. The story moved along quickly, but the character development was too light. It was hard to get too invested in any of the characters because they didn't have a lot of depth. The story attempts to be quirky in a Douglas Adams sort of way, but the major problem was that all of the characters accepted nearly without any reservation bizarre and extraordinary events. It needed someone to have the sense of incredulousness that the reader was experiencing.

The story itself has several twists and turns that keep you on your toes, although the twists start coming so fast at the end that they begin to screw themselves into the ground. The final "action sequence" was a bit of a let down as it played too serious if it was intended to be comical and too comical if it was supposed to be serious.

Overall the book was entertaining, but with some flaws. If you are looking for a quick, lite read, you'll enjoy the story.

[Rebecca]

A book about an energy drink that contains dinosaur DNA and has unexpected effects on the people who drink it sounded quirky and fun. And in some ways it is. But in other ways it falls flat. Such as the characters, which are all rather underdeveloped. And I found myself distracted by the odd dialogue that didn’t sound natural. And once the aliens showed up I realized that is was not the book I was expecting. It reads like a bad sci-fi movie where everyone is running around doing things that don’t make any logical sense. The twist at the end helps to explain this somewhat and it also helps itself by the fact that it knows it reads like a bad sci-fi movie and keeps reminding us of the fact, making it evident that that is the intent but at times it is too self-aware of the fact and makes the point a little too blatantly. And poking fun at itself can only go so far and it isn’t quite enough here since it failed to make me laugh more often than not. It had its moments of wit and cheesy sci-fi goodness but in the end there just were not enough of them to pull this up to a good book.

[Liz]

I received Arizona Free from Kanspira and was asked to write a review when I finished the book. Arizona Free is about best buds Jason and Tony looking for a way to make more money to get out of their job where they currently worked. Tony comes upon a product called DiNAmite and wants Jason to get involved. Jason is however skeptical because of the past experiences in trying to sell things with Tony but takes Tony up on his offer to go to a meeting about DiNAmite. Jason, Tony and Cloe start making sales for the DiNAmite and later find out that it is transforming people in weird unknown ways that according to everyone else are "good" changes in the people. Jason was chosen by an Arizonan to help bring down the creators of the DiNAmite before they took over the world. All in all I thought it was a decent read mainly for young adults. Doug Martin has a funny style of writing in this book and even as an adult it kept me reading so I feel that this book may not only be for young readers. It was entertaining and a fast pace read.

[Erika]

I'm not quite sure what to make of this book. It's clearly meant to be a satire, I'm just not sure what exactly the author was trying to satirize, the sports drink/health drink craze, our commercialized culture or what.

It's a rather short book of 164 pages but it took me a long time to read it, it was hard to get engaged with it.
The humor was rather over the top and extremely hit or miss, usually missing for me and the dialog was so over the top and cheesy that it really distracted from the story for me.

However, when he was writing action scenes, descriptive scenes or when the characters were thinking vs. talking to each other, the I found the writing quite engaging and interesting. It made for a frustrating reading experience.

The plot holes were huge and a detraction from the story over all, the ending didn't make much sense, the dialog was awkward and yet the rest of the non-dialog writing was actually enjoyable enough that if there were a sequel, I would be willing to read it.

[Les Gehman]

Arizona Free by Doug Martin is a short, fun, bizarre book about an energy drink with a secret ingredient, dinosaur DNA. This irresistible drink, DiNAmite, becomes wildly popular although it has a few bizarre side effects. Jason and Tony, who start selling DiNAmite end up having to save the world from the effects of DiNAmite. The book gets more bizarre from there. It's got everything: energy drinks, multi-level marketing, Hooters waitresses, aliens, space ships, and of course, tennis racket brawls.

[Kylara Jensen]

Many years ago I received this book as a first reads opportunity from Library Thing.

Because I'm a horrible person, I only now got around to reading it.

I was looking forward to it, because you have to admit, the premise is awesome.

Unfortunately, the main characters are not only unlikable, they are downright contemptible. And pathetic. I derived no joy from reading about them. The writings not great. I read about 50 pages and then just gave up.

Honestly it's just so meh, it's not worth my time.

I'm just sorry it took me like 4 or 5 years to figure that out.

[Thomas R. Keel]

Arizona Different

It was interesting to read. Had no idea where it was going. Why didn't Jason have the chip until he went back to the shelter after blow up at the convention? Was the odd punctuation planned or because of the digital publishing?