Portobello Road Publishing

Stanford-educated Evan Rand’s skills as a political fundraiser could help win Republican candidate Robert Wallis the Californian governorship-a tall order in a traditionally blue state, but Evan is known for his ability to produce results.

Most would say Evan is a driven, intense professional with a rock-solid grip on reality. They’re wrong. Beneath a rapidly crumbling façade lies the real Evan Rand-a man slowly slipping into insanity.

For Evan, political maneuvering and campaigning no longer hold any allure. He’s drifting away from people, including his longtime girlfriend, choosing instead the numbing effects of sedatives and pornography. Driving the hills of the Bay Area at night, listening to wild-voiced conspiracy theorists on late-night radio talk shows, Evan seeks insight and emotional fulfillment he cannot name-and worse, cannot find.

With his professional and personal life spiraling into hopelessness, Evan will have to choose between a seemingly empty, shallow world and the seductive allure of the darkness.

A powerful, reflective, character-driven piece, Concerning the Dust offers a portrait of a man on the precipice of despair and depravity, where the smallest misstep can prove fatal.

Raised in the San Francisco Bay Area, Corey Emory lived in Montana, Oregon, Colorado, and Sri Lanka before settling in a small California beach town. His work has appeared in ZYZZYVA, VietNow Magazine, Windhover Journal , and other literary publications.

As a writer, Emory credits the likes of Ernest Hemingway, Ayn Rand, Flannery O’Connor, and Sylvia Plath as influences, as well as Joan Didion, J. D. Salinger, S. E. Hinton, and Bret Easton Ellis.

Married since 2001, Emory shares his home with his wife and cats.