Neon Blue: Girl, Unlocked: 20th Anniversary Edition - first true ebook online to read in HTML 1996 - Softcover

Argo, John

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0743319524 ISBN 13: 9780743319522

Publisher: Clocktower Books, 2016

Synopsis

If you liked cozying up with Stieg Larssen's Lisbeth Salander, you'll love Laurel 'Blue' Humboldt - except Blue was on the scene 25 years earlier. In this steamy, intriguing suspense novel from the very dawn of Internet publishing, attractive young punk DEA agent, martial artist, and grunge musician Laurel ‘Blue’ Humboldt must unravel not only the deadly secrets of an international drug cartel, but also the unusual love triangle in which she finds herself. Not only was Neon Blue a radically innovative digital novel in 1996, but the heroine is a young bisexual woman (DEA agent) struggling with her love life amid murder, mayhem, and desperate detective work. Young DEA Special Agent Blue’s first case becomes intensely personal not just with the assassination of a key witness she is transporting in Manhattan, but the cartel-related murder of her dear friend, a married detective named Eddie Stosik in a small Connecticut town. Propelled by fury, she pursues the killers to San Diego, where two different showdowns must occur. One is her final, deadly confrontation with a creepy European slasher who is out-badding the Colombians. The other showdown is inside her heart, and love waits for no killer, agent, or detective. As the case takes her from coast to coast, with a climax in sunny San Diego, does her heart yearn more for beautiful Chinese American detective Martha Yee, or handsome millionaire importer and ex-model John Connor? She can't think too long, because the cartel's ruthless assassin is closing in. Skilled in karate - a statement in punk, rock, tattoos, and art - new 23-year-old college grad and training academy sprout Blue is tricked out with a 9 mm Glock, waving a DEA badge, as she tracks down a trail of corruption involving church officials, Colombian drug mobsters, and other crooks. Things go from personal, when the slasher who is on her trail starts brutally murdering her friends - to desperate when both John Connor and Martha Yee are targets on a murderous path that leads directly to Blue. Neon Blue by John Argo was the world’s first true online e-book at first publication in 1996. This novel attracted world-wide attention in the 1990s, and was a bestseller on line during the early days of Web publishing and e-commerce. Publishing note about this book and Clocktower Books (publisher): Neon Blue by John Argo was the world’s first true online e-book. Originally published in 1996, this was history’s first novel ever published online for reading in HTML - proprietary, not public domain (Gutenberg-type programs not applicable). Full criteria listed in the interior text of the book and at the Clocktower Books website and museum pages. Neon Blue was a bestseller on line in the original Rocket eBook and Barnes & Noble e-book markets 1999-2001. Our publishing program branched into print on demand while our primary e-book platform in the early 2000s was Fictionwise (2001-2012). We continue to publish titles in POD and e-book formats, with our vision for a synthesized, digital-first future where content is all the meaning, not the container, and especially not obsolete, desperately struggling delivery systems.

About this title

About the Author

John Argo published the world's first true e-books for reading online in HTML, in 1996. These included Neon Blue (suspense thriller) and This Shoal of Space (SF). Criteria include (1) proprietary, not public domain (knocks out the Gutenberg trope); (2) read directly online in HTML, not on portable media like CD-ROM or floppies; (3) alternatively, download TXT to read or print at home; (4) standard industrial format (linear plot, not hypertext); (5) complete, not sample chapters or teasers; (6) standard length (90-130k). In addition, he released these pioneering novels online in innovative weekly serial chapters. Full information at Clocktower Books and its museum and heritage websites. John Argo (John T. Cullen, Jean-Thomas Cullen) is the author of more than forty books and many articles and short stories (fiction and nonfiction). He holds degrees in English (BA, University of Connecticut) and Business Administration (MS, Boston University) plus Accounting and Computer Information Systems (BBA, National University). He has been a professional author, editor, and journalist for decades, and one of the world's first digital publishers (starting 1996). He lives in San Diego, California with his wife, son, and cat.

About this edition

• Publisher: Clocktower Books
• Publication date: 2016
• ISBN 10: 0743319524
• ISBN 13: 9780743319522
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 196