The Half Dead Surf Club

The Half Dead Surf Club's

A Battle for Born Knee Koho

by RC Phillips

  Vowing never to become pizza garnish, a tiny anchovy with big dreams rebels against conformity and discovers a life he never dreamed of in my fantasy novel, The Half Dead Surf Club: A Battle For Born Knee Koho.

  Ridiculed by his “school” mates because he’s a square peg in the round hole of the group mindset, the Lone Anchovy sets off on his own after a gang of yellow fin tuna attacks his school. “Chovy” ends up near a South Pacific island and is befriended by the island’s inhabitants, a group of surfers and musicians who are literally skeletons of their former selves. But an evil presence on the island nearly shatters their serene, happy-go-lucky lives and results in a fierce battle of who will win control the island.

About the Author . . .

   Richard C. Phillips has been a California surfer since 1959. One of the guys in his surfer group mentioned that he had just bought some life insurance. “After all,” he said, “we are all half dead.” Phillips quickly labeled the group The Half Dead Surf Club.

   When Phillips returned home, he couldn’t get The Half Dead Surf Club idea out of his mind. He sketched out a skeleton surfer riding a coffin lid. His sister, a graphic artist, created the first color rendition of Bones with five toes over the nose of his Kustom Koffin Lidd shaped by his best friend, Ribbs.

   Phillips printed T-shirts with a colorful hang tag depicting a little story about Bones. It sold well enough to design the entire family of skeleton surfer characters, each with a name of a bone suited to their personality: Bones, Fibulorous, Tibula, Humorous, Ribbs, and Skully, the surf dog. He gave them all little stories to go with the T-shirt design and sold them at car shows, surfing events, and online. His customers loved the T-shirts and encouraged him to write a book that could also be an animated film. At that point, the fictional Half Dead Surf Club story began to grow.

   With his lifetime surfer background, Phillips had plenty of experience to support his story. After the story was written, he engaged a former Disney artist to illustrate the characters.

Contact: (805) 545-9190  rcphillips20@gmail.com halfdeadsurfclub@gmail.com