Dewey resident publishes new edition of book

Dewey Beach resident Alex Csedrik recently released “Mars is for Millenials - New Glow-Up Edition,” the second edition of his collection of satirical, science-fiction short stories.

Csedrik, a marketer, writer, stand-up comedian and former Dewey Beach Marketing Committee chair, described it as a more polished edition with several new pieces that he wrote within the past couple years. He said he was going for a “South Park meets Kurt Vonnegut” kind of feel.

“The main focus is what life is like for people going through those critical ages, transitioning from your teens to your 20s, from your 20s to your 30s, and what that’s like, whether it’s finding a job, romantic relationships, dealing with the world and your elders or other generational challenges like that,” he said.

One of the stories, titled “Invasion,” is about Dewey and Rehoboth.

“It talks about the irony of people like me moving down to Delaware and the beaches,” said Csedrik, a New Jersey native who moved to Dewey in 2020 after many years of vacationing there. “So I get to poke fun at myself a bit for being one of those people.”

He has been writing since he was a young teenager and published his first novella by the age of 18.

The first edition of “Mars is for Millennials” came out in 2022, but he started writing it over a decade prior, while he was pursuing his MFA in creative writing. At the time, he was writing a novel about the war in Iraq, dealing with very heavy subject matter. 

“I wrote the first two stories in the collection as palate cleansers,” he said. “And then it just took off from there.”

By the time he got to the fourth or fifth short story, he realized that all of it was centered around the same theme: growing up and experiencing a quarter-life crisis. Thus came the collection.

“I continued to write as things in my life happened, as things in society happened,” he said. “Hopefully I’m able to capture reflections of what’s happening in a humorous way that makes people think, but more importantly, makes people laugh.”

As a reader and writer, he tends to gravitate toward a genre known as dramedy, which combines drama and comedy. His artistic process has been shaped by a number of authors, books, movies and TV shows, particularly South Park.

“I love how a piece of art, a piece of content, can have you experience almost all human emotions in a very short amount of time,” he said. “When you’re able to make someone laugh, and then whether it’s the next scene or the next line, you’re able to make them cry, I think that’s so incredibly powerful. It’s really challenging to do, and I really enjoy that process.”

The new edition of his book is now available for purchase in all major online retailers. He also hopes to get it onto the shelves of local bookstores.