Nuclear Terror Collides With NorCal Lineups in Steve Hawk’s Surf Thriller ‘Nearshore’

Steve Hawk stands as one of surfing’s most prominent scribes, renowned for his tenure at SURFER Magazine during, arguably, the pinnacle of print media from 1990 to 1998.

Now, the veteran journalist makes his literary fiction debut with Nearshore – a gripping, adrenaline-fueled thriller set against the cold, rugged coastline of Northern California.

The novel follows Jamie Palmer, a former World Tour professional surfer turned Half Moon Bay lifeguard, whose quiet life on the coast is upended when he inadvertently stumbles into a terrifying world of domestic nuclear terrorism and nefarious plots orchestrated by rogue Silicon Valley tech gurus. Through every pulse-pounding twist, Hawk masterfully ties the high-stakes thrill of the bombs and billionaires back to Palmer’s roots in the lineup.

Surfing’s resident historian Matt Warshaw called the novel:

“A smart, fun, thrilling read. The characters pop and the story moves like a barreling full-speed point wave.”

As Nearshore officially hits bookstores on August 18th – you can order your copy here – readers can dive into an exclusive sneak peek snippet from the book, a compelling monologue delivered by main character Jamie Palmer himself. Read on below for a first look at one of the summer’s most anticipated surf-inspired thrillers; glimpse photos of Hawk from famed surf artist Thomas Campbell; and keep scrolling all the way to the bottom for a list of meet-and-great events, celebrating the release of Nearshore.

‘Nearshore’ by Steve Hawk, available for purchase on August 18th.

Viking

CHAPTER 16

People ask if I’m scared of sharks. White sharks in particular. Every surfer around here gets asked that. For me the answer is no. Rather go out as part of the food chain than end up in a bed sucking ice chips while some nurse wipes my ass.

I’ll tell you what scares me. Boneyard used to talk a lot about something called superabundant data. How it changed the way people like him do their work. How if a social scientist these days wants to know what people are really thinking he doesn’t have them answer questions on some true-false questionnaire. That’s a slow way to gather data. And unreliable. Because most people fib when the questions get personal.

Instead researchers just track what people do online when they think no one’s watching. Write a program that noses through their social media and emails and browser searches and all the other digital footprints they leave behind all day every day. All that secret late-night web-crawling shit that shows you who they really are. What they jerk off to. What pisses them off. What scares them.

One time he grabbed my phone and said check this out. He opened some random news site and showed me how all the ads that popped up had been customized just for me. Wetsuits and binoculars and crap like that. All based on my search and email history.

The author, Steve Hawk.

Thomas Campbell

I told him I already knew about that stuff and was pretty much okay with it. But here’s what I didn’t know. He said that right before the ads bubbled into my feed there’d been this hidden lightning-fast bidding war between all the companies that wanted to get my attention. And that’s how it works for everybody all the time. It’s this race for profits that happens in microseconds and finishes before the page loads so you have no idea it’s going on.

Already there are more bytes of information on the internet than there are stars in the universe. At least that’s what Boneyard told me and Boneyard knew his shit. Which is scary as hell if you think about it. All some evil asshole has to do is build the right program to suss out the right patterns and he’ll rule the world. Algorithms writing algorithms. Machines building machines. Keeping everybody angry and terrified all day every day so you never log off and the ad revenue flows on and on and on.

One fall I had a part-time gig skippering day charters out to the Farallones with these two scientists who were researching white sharks. This was on a Radon that a friend of mine kept at Pillar Point but almost never used. These guys had been studying the Farallon sharks forever. Like forty years. Smart motherfuckers and seaworthy as hell. We had some cold wet nasty days out there and the dudes never blinked.

We’d motor out of the harbor at first light and get home around sunset. Spend the day adrift near the islands watching this floating seal decoy they had tethered astern. Waiting for a shark to come investigate. They took photos and logged a record of every shark that showed itself. Used the notches on the trailing edge of their dorsal fins for identification. Some of those fish had been feeding at the Farallones for almost forty years. The researchers treated ’em like old friends. Even gave ’em names. Yvon. Duke. RBG.

Every now and then we’d see birds swarming in the distance and we’d speed over to catch the tail end of a predation event. That’s what they called it. An event. The word still makes me smile. An event is a wedding or a concert. It’s not when a white shark blasts up from the bottom and guts a two-ton elephant seal. Or takes a half-moon bite out of a snorkeler that goes from hip to breastbone. Which I’ve seen.

Hawk.

Thomas Campbell

We’d be on the water from dawn to dusk and most days count only a handful of sharks or sometimes just one or maybe even none. Twelve or fifteen hours at sea for a single entry in their records. Once after a long bad day when we got back to the dock the older of the two dudes smiled at me and said he worked in a data-poor environment.

Turns out there’ve been more research papers written about whites than any other shark species but scientists still don’t know the answers to a lot of basic questions about them. No one’s ever seen a pair mate. No one’s ever seen a female give birth. No one’s even sure how long they live.

All of which means some random machine somewhere knows more about me and my private habits than anybody on earth knows about the ocean’s deadliest predator.

So no. Sharks don’t worry me. There’s nothing crooked or slick behind what they do. They’re just hungry and they don’t hide it. They come right at you.

But billionaires writing codes that worm through the personal lives of every person with a phone? Making sure we all stay angry and glued to our screens so they can quietly cash in on the rage? That’s the scary shit.

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