aurorawatcherak "I hold it, that a little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical."
The world as you knew it is gone. Who is your neighbor?
Isolated amid a crippled country, the people of Emmaus strive to survive through Midwestern grit and ingenuity as winter looms and desperate people threaten the town’s borders. Distant opportunities beckon, food and medicine dwindle, and disease flares. With starvation just around the corner, a time of gathering in begins. Not everyone’s going to live to spring.
Shane Delaney prides himself on his ability to stay cool in troubled times, but he can’t save everyone and now it becomes clear he may not even be able to save himself.
When the world as you knew it goes off the rails, who would you bring home?
Today is the launch of Gathering In (Book 5 of Transformation Project series).
I’ve put my characters through a lot (terrorist attacks,
radioactive rain, an air-handling system failure, a corn-field fire, confiscation
of crops by the USDA) and they’re going to lose big in this latest book. Such
is life for characters in an apocalyptic novel series.
Have you ever thought about how food gets to your local
grocery store? How would it get there if the major transportation hubs were
destroyed and rendered no-go zones?
Have you ever thought about where antibiotics come from and whether
those avenues would be available in an apocalyptic situation? What about heart
medications? Antidepressants? You name it. It’s unlikely it was made within a
few miles of your home. So what do you do if the apocalypse happens? What can
you do?
I live in Alaska, where everything comes through the Port of
Anchorage. In fact, Anchorage International Airport is the second-busiest cargo
airport in the United States. Last year Anchorage was hit by a 7.1 quake (which
is NOTHING compared to the Anchorage Quake of 1964 – 9.2 or the Denali Quake of
2002 – 7.9) and roadways collapsed all over town. The airport was closed for a
few hours. The railroad was offline for about 24 hours. The main road between
Anchorage and Fairbanks was fine, but there are three “structurally deficient”
bridges between here and there, so maybe it might not have been. So imagine
what happens here if the Port or the airport are rendered unusable? Starvation,
people without meds, no heating fuel which is a disaster if it’s winter.
I have to imagine that because I live at the end of a
tenuous supply chain in a place where certain kinds of natural disasters are
expected. We build for those disasters, but even then … roads collapsed all
over Anchorage.
You should imagine it for wherever you live because the time
for these thoughts is not after the damage has been done. It’s too late to do
anything about it then.
A Threatening Fragility, the third book in the Transformation Project series, will head to the beta readers next week. It should be published this fall. Soon, the cover will be ready for preview.
I recently took a couple of weeks mostly off social media to complete the working draft of the book. I reached a point where I recognized that maintaining my Twitter page was costing me time I needed to finish the book.
This book’s journey has been a more complicated than previous novels. When I published Objects in View (Book 2 of the same series) almost a year ago, I planned to turn my attention to the 3rd book in my fantasy series, Daermad Cycle, but I struggled to keep my attention on the project. I’m writing it and what I am producing is good, but I’ve had trouble concentrating on my stated primary project. I’ve written two short stories and revisited a literary fiction in my back catalog. Eventually, A Threatening Fragility won first place in this multi-pronged writing exploration. The point is to produce quality books, not to follow some predetermined publication schedule that risks causing writer’s block, which might impact my ability to produce quality books. This is the biggest advantage of being an independent author. My publishing cooperative doesn’t hold me to the same conditions a traditional publisher might.
If you’re a fan of Daermad Cycle, it’s likely you’ll need to wait until sometime in 2018 for Fount of Wraiths, but it will be good. Like fine wine, fine fantasy takes time.
If you’re a fan of the Transformation series, you can soon find out if Cai survives the Army’s search for him, if Shane kicks Rob’s butt for drugging him, if the farmers can hang onto their crops, and who is going to win the presidential wrestling match. Things are turning dark on the Kansas prairie. Come see how the people of Emmaus cope. For those unfamiliar with the series, it could be termed a libertarian apocalyptic. I don’t look for government to rescue people if society goes off the rails, but I believe powerfully in people being the heroes in their own story … individuals cooperating with other individuals to find their way to a better place. I also believe that human beings are varied in their skills and ability to cope. People who are nice in times of plenty may become evil when pressed by starvation or imbued with power. Come see how that works out in the book when it publishes sometime this fall.
