SUNNYVALE, Calif., Sept. 18, 2013 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Cogswell College, today, announced that Bret Sweet, director of the Digital Media Management program, has released his first book, "Among the Veils," an urban science fiction thriller. Cogswell College is one of the world's leading regionally-accredited institutions offering a unique curriculum that fuses digital arts, engineering and entrepreneurship. Sweet is the college's first entrepreneurship professor and director of the recently-launched Digital Media Management program.
Among the Veils (Lexingford Publishing 2013) was released in paperback on August 30 and is the first book in the Paper Throne series. Dubbed by Sweet's wife, 'Harry Potter meets The Wire,' the book was conceived during the dark time in his life when his father suffered from Alzheimer's and was hospitalized.
"I wrote this story in my mind while watching over my father—I wanted to create an interactive experience for the reader and really involve them in every aspect of the story," says Sweet. "I call this genre, 'urban sci-fi' or 'street sword and sorcery.'"
Among the Veils' plot follows Clay Durward, an urban social worker psychiatrist who works in San Francisco's most depressed neighborhoods. When called to a crime scene to protect a 6 year old boy, he finds he carries the spirits of 10,000-year-old Ancient Egyptian deities. A mythical civil war then ensues on the darkest streets of America's crumbling cities.
Sweet, like his character, has a history of inspiring and helping young people and those at risk. He is certified by the National Foundation for Teaching Entrepreneurship (NFTE), and has taught business building strategies to thousands of Bay Area low-income youths and their families. An educational innovator, Sweet used the PC game Civilization as a teaching metaphor in his business entrepreneurship class, Building Blocks Of Entrepreneurship: Civ Edition, and created Hip Hop: America's Narrative Platform, an exploration of the historical context of hip hop culture as the first interactive media platform in America. Formerly, Sweet managed artists for PolyGram and Island Def Jam before starting his own label, House Kemetic Suns. Sweet has keynoted at national and regional NAACP conventions.
His San Francisco book launch, with a public signing and reading, will be held Saturday, October 5, 2013, at the Excelsior Branch YMCA. Other events are scheduled throughout the Bay Area.
About Cogswell College
Located in Sunnyvale, California, in the heart of the Silicon Valley, Cogswell College is a WASC accredited four-year institution of higher education with a curriculum that fuses art, engineering and entrepreneurship (http://www.cogswell.edu/index.php). As one of the Bay Area's premier colleges, its novel academic approach offers an integrated model that emulates the industry environment—a collaborative, project-based, learning experience that uses multidisciplinary teams to take projects from concept through the delivery pipeline.