Contemporary Fiction
Date Published: 9/26/24
The Underdogs was inspired by my time building a tech startup during the golden era of San Francisco, when Uber and Lyft were just getting started and battling it out. It’s a coming-of-age, immigrant story following a set of characters who are all trying to create a better future for themselves, for society, and escape their pasts.
Readers have shared that this story reminds them of The Prestige. Two geniuses, who came from nothing, competing against each other in a market that preys upon those who also come from nothing. Others have reflected on the story as a cautionary tale that stands the test of time — How “the few, the chosen” may end up taking advantage of the very same people who they grew up with.
EXCERPT
”You’re the star…let them be struck.”
”How bout I sell my Twitter shares and buy you an island?” her date said. A few wrinkles on his forehead and abused nostrils hinted he was at least half a decade older than his match for the evening. Matching on any one of the host of dating apps they both downloaded.”
”An optimistic blue sky with scattered clouds above the Golden Gate and Marin County. Groups of friends assembling on rooftops, uncorking bottles of wine from Napa or Sonoma. Deals being made in coffee shops, angel investors trying their best to convince an entrepreneur to let them into their funding round. Disruption, convertible notes, paper millionaires, Rwandan coffee poured with surgical precision. This was where the world’s problems were being solved. Where fortunes were made, seemingly overnight, and the best and brightest flocked to. This was Silicon Valley.”
”For Pablo, these five-hundred square feet, bursting at the seams, were all they had. The cast floated in and out... more out than in... and most of the cast members didn’t really care. If he didn’t have these walls, then what? These were his roots, his foundation. Even if the real foundation was cracked with the linoleum peeling and cockroaches in bathroom.”
“Where are all the career-driven men in this town?” Jae pondered this question night after night the past two weeks. She would show all the skeletons in her closet. This was where you could have it all—ambition, beautiful children, a nanny, and a chef. San Francisco. This is where her type belonged. Not back in lifeless Gangnam, where her wretched cousins from the wealthy side of the family married Samsung and Hyundai Executives’ sons.”
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