Frank Gogol and Nenad Cviticanin will team up once again for Dead End Kids: The Suburban Job, a sequel to the previous Dead End Kids series about teens who searched for the killer of one of their friends in the late 1990s. This new series follows the kids into the 2000s as they deal with their trauma following the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in New York.
“At first, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to write more Dead End Kids, but with the success of the first book, I started to wonder if there was more to say,” said Frank Gogol. “I decided to go back to the core concept of the original series — childhood trauma and how it affects us as we get older — and I kept coming back to this idea of September 11th.”
Here’s a description of the new series:
Seven years after the deadly events of September 11th, three teens struggle with the long-term fallout of that tragic day. But these former friends are brought back together when they find themselves in the crosshairs of a local drug dealer who’s out for blood. Can they put their personal traumas aside long enough to work together and survive?
Here’s a preview:
“I grew up in New Jersey, across the Raritan Bay from lower Manhattan, and on clearer days I could see the World Trade Center,” Gogol said. “I remember standing on our beachfront on 9/11, watching the smoke billow up from the wreckage. I remember looking around and seeing everyone there with me, the horror and pain in their faces. It’s something I’ve literally thought about every day since. At the end of the day, my biggest priority is to tell stories that are about something that people can connect with. With Dead End Kids: The Suburban Job — I think we’ve created something that will connect with so many people. These kids are so real and what they’re going through is so raw. I can’t wait for people to be able to read it.”
The new series kicks off in January from Source Point Press.