My Summer Of Hate.

My friend Evan Jacobs just released a book entitled “My Summer Of Hate.” Check it out…

Orange County Hardcore Punk Scene Gets Immortalized In My Summer Of Hate

What happens when a hardcore punk band from the suburbs of Orange County gets sucked into the White Power movement?

OC filmmaker Evan Jacobs examines this situation and more in his first young adult novel My Summer of Hate (155 pp., tpb, $10.00). The book will be available from Amazon and Createspace.com on January 6, 2009.

This story follows 4 friends in their early 20s who use their punk band to fight crime and vandalism in their neighborhood. What begins with the best of intentions ends up pulling the group into the White Power scene. Jacobs won a Golden Orb in 1999 at the No Dance Film Festival for his documentary Curse Of Instinct: 108’s Final Tour. He has also directed 8 low budget feature films and has had his screenplays produced and his movies distributed worldwide.

Mike Hartsfield, longtime owner of hardcore punk record label New Age Records, says “the Orange County punk scene has evolved a lot over the years. It was cool to read a story that captured that time and also looked into issues that were always just below the surface in the scene.”

Aside from tackling race, class, political and non-politically correct issues, My Summer Of Hate is a coming of age story that looks at what it’s like to be young and have the whole world in front of you but, at the same time, having to make a choice between doing what you love and doing what people expect you to do. “Often times, the best moments in our lives occur right before we make the biggest life changes,” Jacobs states. “My Summer Of Hate looks at how people see other people but it also examines growing up without even realizing it.”

Tim, Carlo, Russ and Adam are in Augmented, the most popular band in their local punk scene. Every show they play sells out, local music stores can’t keep their records in stock and they’re planning a tour with hopes of eventually doing the group full time. Slowly, they all start noticing changes in the safe neighborhood they’ve lived in all their lives. Parks are being vandalized, members of Augmented have confrontations with the “new” people living around them and it seems like a gradual ethnic and racial shift is leaving them out of the loop in their own community. The boys try to take a stand against the changes and what begins with the best of intentions ends up inadvertently pulling the members of Augmented into the White Power movement.

Evan Jacobs has directed 8 low budget films and he’s also had various screenplays produced and realized by other directors. He is currently hard at work on several movie and book projects. My Summer of Hate is his first novel. You can find out more about him at here.

CLICK HERE to purchase the book.