Meet Quinn Lake of Dantès Unglued

Meet our Quinn Lake of Dantès Unglued. While this guy resembles our Quinn, our actual inspiration for this character is Blake Steven. We Tumble images of him on our Tumblr. 

Quinn Lake loves computers. He’s been digging around in the guts of computers for almost as long as he can remember. He loves them because they make sense. Computers follow the rules of their programming and they are predictable, even when they break down.

They’re certainly a lot easier to deal with than people.

His start with people wasn’t so great. His dad left when he was a baby, and his mom was stuck trying to raise him while working low-paying jobs to help make ends meet. To fill the voids in his life, he taught himself how to build computers, write code…and hack into other computer programs.

Of course, that’s when all the trouble started.

He hacked into the Department of Defense when he was only 13. But he didn’t get caught. No, that came when he was 14 and he hacked into the Federal Reserve. He’d gotten cocky.

He spent some years in a juvenile detention center and was banned from computers until he was 17. He tried to go to college, but his mom was involved in a car accident. She suffered brain damage that resulted in her being unable to care for herself. She lives in a long-term care facility. Quinn visits her at least once a week, but she doesn’t always remember him.

His maternal grandparents are dead and he knows nothing of his father’s side of the family. Other than his mom, he is alone in the world. And sometimes, that knowledge presses down on him, trying to crush him. There is a desperate part of him that is terrified of being forgotten. Of dying and no one caring, no one remembering that he ever existed. Time will simply swallow him up and all memory of him will be obliterated. He wants someone to care that he lived.

Working at Ward Security is a big step toward achieving that.

To keep his mom in the nice care facility that he’s found, Quinn has to direct the majority of his paycheck toward his mother. As a result, he lives with two other guys in a two-bedroom apartment on the West Side of town. The neighborhood isn’t great and the apartment is run down. The heat isn’t reliable and there’s no air conditioning in the summer. He’s also afraid of getting kicked out if he tells his roommates that he’s gay. He can’t afford to get kicked out. The rent is just too damn cheap.

To avoid the uncomfortable living conditions, he spends most of his time in the office. But that’s not the only reason why. The other employees of Ward Security feel like family to him.

Dantès Unglued is not up for pre-order this time. We are changing up how we publish our books for this one. A test, so to speak. We’ll share more on that in another post. But keep an eye out, because our date for release right now is January 26th!

In the meantime, have you read book one in our Ward Security series? No? Psycho Romeo is available now!