“A strange exploration of the college party scene.”

“Captivating and painfully honest.”

“A new, unique voice in American literature.”

In an unruly Midwest town, Tristan – a college fraternity president – pinballs between failed relationships in an unholy battle with depression. Locked in savage self-abuse at the hands of booze and cigarettes – and surrounded by a collection of part-time degenerates he calls, “Brothers” – Tristan must confront his own inner turmoil, as he searches desperately for some main vein of American life in the swirling backdrop of mental illness.

Debut author Justin Zyla brings a unique voice to contemporary literature, carving out a place in New Adult fiction. He comes from a lineage of beat era writers like William S. Burroughs and Hunter S. Thompson. With Twisting in Headstands and Heavy Drinking a mixture between Jack Kerouac’s On the Road, Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar, S. E. Hinton’s The Outsiders, and J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye.* With all the keg stands and indoor bottle rocket fights necessary to make a half-way interesting novel.

You can contact the author directly at justin.zyla@gmail.com or @justin_zyla on Instagram. He’d love to connect with book clubs / reading groups, high school or college classes, and just anyone wanting to share their thoughts about the novel.

*Disclaimer: Justin doesn’t think he’s actually as talented as any of the above-listed authors. But including them in this description helps connect the book with all the tech-type algorithm search and indexing stuff, so it’s all a ruse to sell copies. Another example of this type-of-marketing is when a description says a book’s a #1 New York Times Bestseller, which this book definitely isn’t. Basically, he just wanted to write something that is, “Half-way decent. That I hope people enjoy or find meaningful or whatever.” He apologizes for the subterfuge.