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"A rock-n-roll thrill ride... Heavy Metal icon Rikki Thunder's satirical memoir is sweeter than Cherry Pie and better than a prescription from Dr. Feelgood! You need to read it."-Ernest Cline • Rikki Thunder, godlike drummer for the world-famous 80's metal band Whyte Python, is about to have everything: global fame... a dream girlfriend-and an unwitting role in a government plot to bring down the Eastern Bloc.
Welcome to 1986 Los Angeles, where hair metal is religion, and the devout rage until dawn. For Rikki Thunder, down-on-his-luck rock drummer, life is good, even if he is sleeping in a condemned paint store and playing with a band that's going nowhere. But when he gets a shot to join LA's hottest up-and-coming band, Whyte Python, Rikki's young life takes a turn toward awesome. Opening for Guns N' Roses, with a new single scorching the charts, and an incredible blonde bombshell girlfriend, Rikki would have a hard time wanting anything more.
But good fortune can be deceiving. With the last gasps of the Cold War, American music is blasting across borders and a youth revolution is taking hold in Eastern Europe. It turns out that an upcoming LA hair band is the perfect vehicle for fomenting change behind the Iron Curtain. Rikki Thunder, percussion god of the stage, soon realizes there are deeper influences propelling Whyte Python, and the stakes for spreading their rock n' roll message are vastly more dangerous than he had ever imagined.
Raucously funny and refreshing, The Whyte Python World Tour is a head-banger of a debut, steeped in '80s hair band nostalgia and international suspense. TRAVIS KENNEDY is the grand prize winner of Screencraft's 2021 Cinematic Book Contest for Sharks in the Valley, to be published as Welcome to Redemption (William Morrow, 2026) and adapted for television by Netflix/Universal. His work has been recognized in the Best American Mystery Stories anthology (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2019). He has been featured in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, McSweeney's Internet Tendency, and multiple editions of the Best New England Crime Stories anthology, among other publications. He lives in Scarborough, Maine, with his wife and their two children.
Welcome to 1986 Los Angeles, where hair metal is religion, and the devout rage until dawn. For Rikki Thunder, down-on-his-luck rock drummer, life is good, even if he is sleeping in a condemned paint store and playing with a band that's going nowhere. But when he gets a shot to join LA's hottest up-and-coming band, Whyte Python, Rikki's young life takes a turn toward awesome. Opening for Guns N' Roses, with a new single scorching the charts, and an incredible blonde bombshell girlfriend, Rikki would have a hard time wanting anything more.
But good fortune can be deceiving. With the last gasps of the Cold War, American music is blasting across borders and a youth revolution is taking hold in Eastern Europe. It turns out that an upcoming LA hair band is the perfect vehicle for fomenting change behind the Iron Curtain. Rikki Thunder, percussion god of the stage, soon realizes there are deeper influences propelling Whyte Python, and the stakes for spreading their rock n' roll message are vastly more dangerous than he had ever imagined.
Raucously funny and refreshing, The Whyte Python World Tour is a head-banger of a debut, steeped in '80s hair band nostalgia and international suspense. TRAVIS KENNEDY is the grand prize winner of Screencraft's 2021 Cinematic Book Contest for Sharks in the Valley, to be published as Welcome to Redemption (William Morrow, 2026) and adapted for television by Netflix/Universal. His work has been recognized in the Best American Mystery Stories anthology (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2019). He has been featured in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, McSweeney's Internet Tendency, and multiple editions of the Best New England Crime Stories anthology, among other publications. He lives in Scarborough, Maine, with his wife and their two children.