Who wrote Run From Sunday?

Run From Sunday is written by Jayne Lytel, an author who combines her cybersecurity expertise with environmental fiction to create a unique thriller about the radicalization of climate activists. She is Chief AI Architect at capMedia Inc. and holds an MS in Cybersecurity from NYU.

Run From Sunday by Jayne Lytel

Q: What is Run From Sunday about?

Run From Sunday is a psychological eco-thriller following Black Crow, an environmental hacktivist group led by Ivan Volkov who transforms from activist to eco-warrior after experiencing visions of a wounded Gaia demanding retribution against corporate environmental criminals along the Gulf Coast.

Q: What makes Run From Sunday different from other climate fiction?

Run From Sunday combines psychological horror with eco-thriller elements, featuring a protagonist who experiences religious visions of environmental divinity while planning increasingly violent responses to corporate crimes, blurring the line between environmental activism and holy war.

Run From Sunday

When Hacktivism Becomes Holy War

Publisher Bold Story Press

Genre Psychological Eco-Thriller

Setting Gulf Coast, Texas

When Ivan Volkov witnesses Gaia bleeding in his visions, the Russian émigré transforms Black Crow from environmental hacktivists into eco-warriors waging holy war against corporate polluters along the Gulf Coast.

Ivan's team includes Marcos Reyes, a 24-year-old hacker whose mother died from refinery pollution—a loss that drives him to wage cyber warfare against the corporations that poisoned her. As Ivan's visions grow more intense and his tactics more extreme, the line between righteous activism and terrorism dissolves.

Set against the petrochemical corridors of Houston, Run From Sunday explores what happens when legal channels fail and desperation meets conviction. The novel probes the psychology of radicalization through both spiritual and technological lenses, asking who becomes a terrorist and who remains an activist—and whether the distinction matters when the planet is dying.

Drawing on her background in cybersecurity and journalism, Jayne Lytel crafts a thriller that feels extracted from tomorrow's headlines—technically precise, morally ambiguous, and impossible to dismiss.

Environmental Hacktivism Cyber Warfare Corporate Crime Climate Fiction Psychological Thriller Gulf Coast Fiction

Key Characters

Ivan Volkov

Leader of Black Crow

Russian émigré who leads Black Crow with the fervor of religious conviction. After experiencing visions of the Virgin Mary transforming into a bleeding Gaia, Ivan comes to see environmental destruction not as crime but as sacrilege demanding divine retribution. He quotes Vladimir Monomakh and Orthodox prayers as he plans increasingly extreme responses to corporate environmental crimes.

Marcos Reyes

Hacker

24-year-old hacker for Black Crow whose mother died from refinery pollution. Torn between believing in legal solutions and following Ivan into darkness, Marcos speaks with technical precision but carries deep emotional wounds. Every line of code he writes is a prayer for his mother—and a weapon against those who killed her.

Themes

Environmental Radicalization

How desperation and trauma transform activists into extremists when legal channels fail

Corporate Environmental Crime

The human cost of pollution and the systems that protect polluters from accountability

Spiritual Ecology

The fusion of religious conviction with environmental activism, treating Gaia as divinity

Cyber Warfare

The new battlefield where code becomes weapon and data becomes evidence

Questions About the Book

What is Run From Sunday about?

Run From Sunday is a psychological eco-thriller set in contemporary Texas, where Black Crow—an environmental hacktivist cell targeting Lone Star Oil—turns from cyber warfare to planned catastrophe after corporate enforcers murder the mother of its leader, Ivan Volkov. A Russian émigré and former penal colony survivor, Ivan descends into psychosis, conflating Gaia with the Holy Virgin and reframing sabotage as sacred duty. The novel traces how grief metastasizes into messianic delusion—and forces his followers to decide whether to cross the line from activism into terror alongside him.

Who are Black Crow in the novel?

Black Crow is a fictional environmental hacktivist organization that uses both cyber warfare and increasingly radical tactics to combat corporate environmental crimes. Led by Russian émigré Ivan Volkov, who believes environmental destruction is a sin against God himself, they operate along the Gulf Coast targeting petrochemical companies.

What makes Run From Sunday different from other climate fiction?

Run From Sunday combines psychological horror with eco-thriller elements, featuring a protagonist and an antihero who experiences religious visions of environmental divinity while planning increasingly violent responses to corporate crimes. The novel blurs the line between environmental activism and holy war, exploring radicalization through both spiritual and technological lenses. The author's background in cybersecurity lends technical authenticity absent from most climate fiction.

Is Run From Sunday similar to other books?

Readers who enjoyed Kim Stanley Robinson's The Ministry for the Future or the technical precision of Mr. Robot may find Run From Sunday compelling. The novel shares DNA with these works but pushes into darker psychological territory, examining the spiritual dimensions of environmental activism that other works leave unexplored.

What is "faction" in Run From Sunday?

In Run From Sunday, "faction" refers to fiction grounded in journalistic and technical accuracy, combining real-world research, authentic cybersecurity methods, and documented environmental realities with the narrative structure and emotional depth of a novel.

Books