exploring the end of the world on a dare
A new, chaotic, deranged, post-apocalyptic adventure is coming to a cyberpunk and future-oriented newsletter near you...
Imagine a world that looks an awful lot like ours, but the continents are not quite right, with seas, deserts, forests, and giant lakes you can't recall seeing on any world map or model. Nature is lush and thriving. But if you look for major cities, you won't find any, just tiny settlements scattered across the planet with maybe a few analogs to what we'd call a large town. Even the ruins of old sprawling megapolises are long gone, buried by erosion and the elements.
Something awful happened here a long time ago, but no one seems to know what that was anymore. Weirder still, they don't know why humanity hasn't bounced back, or to what it was supposed to bounce back in the first place. So much is lost, it seems absurd to even think it can be rebuilt, and technology that feels like magic and still works as if it's new is there for the taking, but almost no one knows how to do anything more than basic maintenance. Production and innovation are long gone, just a fantasy of hopeless utopian dreamers and nostalgiacs.
In this world, Martin, a former street urchin from a barren region known as The Wastes, is living out what looks to be the end of his days in a citadel that exists at the service of inscrutable forces still steering humanity’s scattered remnants from the shadows. His bizarre work requires many questions to go unanswered while he, and others like him, must carry out odd, unsavory orders to earn their next meal, as answers and morality are luxuries no one can afford anymore.
On an ordinary morning, he encounters a strange woman named Neva, who might just hold the keys to some of this new world’s biggest secrets and give him a new lease on life. All he has to do is take a chance and join her on a wild, unhinged adventure to the ends of the Earth while facing off with some of humanity’s most vicious and dangerous mistakes, and come face to face with its abandoned mysteries and bizarre conspiracies that strain the imagination.
This is the setting for When All The World Dissolves, a dark post-apocalyptic adventure that holds nothing back, exploring the cultures, myth, legends, and secrets of an Earth destroyed by wars everyone has more or less forgotten, and a strange disease everyone still fears. It doesn't take place in the grim darkness of a certain year, but where the only thing that really matters is survival by any means.
It may be strength, it may be wits, it may be by trading something you never thought you'd trade, as long as you make it to the next day, you're doing well. And this oddball adventure only exists because I lost a bet. I know this may not sound like your typical pitch for a book, which usually starts with "this is the story that I've always wanted to bring to life and share with the world," but this sort of book tends to be its own, very special kind of fun driven by spite and determination, which I think is a perfect mood for a post-apocalyptic setting.
My grandfather used to say that there are two people involved in a bet: the bastard and the fool. The fool has no clue they're going to lose and shakes on it with a false sense of confidence. The bastard knows they're going to win, and yet allows the fool to make the bet. Whenever I'd try to make a bad bet with him, he'd laugh, shake his head with a wry smile, and tell me that no, he had no intention of being the bastard that day.
He's been gone for a long time now, but seldom does a day go by that I don't miss his wisdom. Maybe he could've warned me that I was about to be the fool and no one was going save me. Although, in the grand scheme of things, my loss wasn't going to cost me much. Just one book. The catch is that it was a book I wasn't sure about writing and for which I had to learn an awful lot as it developed.
Like most people who write and talk about science and technology, I've had the all too frequent urge to turn some of the most common ideas and threads I see into a vast, sprawling sci-fi epic, which I realized was my first mistake. It's like learning to fly on a fully loaded A380 instead of a small puddle jumper, and it takes great skill and talent to pull that off in your first effort. My editor Leslie very politely and patiently pointed that out, and gave me a different challenge.
She wanted me to do something where I could really let loose and get creative, but at the same time, stay focused on a smaller cast of characters. My first idea was along the lines of Mad Max meets Dune, an oxymoronic blend of high tech in the distant future and the wilderness and chaos that came after the civilization that invented it fell part in a spectacular, and most importantly, realistic fashion, and along with it, all the rules we take for granted fell away.
Conceptually, that sounded pretty good, but it was really hard to flesh out into a story until I thought about some of my favorite Eastern European books and traumatic reads growing up, and heard some bits of research lore from my friends Trace and Julian over at the That's Absurd, Please Elaborate podcast that really made the logic and the rules of this world finally click into place for me.
I started off with four very raw drafts that went over well with Leslie and beta readers she picked out for me, but my mind was still stuck in the previous idea. As she edited the epic, she kept coming back to this Max Dune prototype until finally, I made a bet. I would post what I had with a random Reddit account and if it manages to get 50,000 reads, then I will waive the white flag and develop the rest of the plot into a full story. And as you already know, I lost, badly.
Fast forward six months of writing in whatever time I could spare, a number of delays since this is not my full time job, nor my editor's, some saving up to at least start on a more immersive and fun audiobook version, and there's finally some finished work to present. Starting Friday, I'll be posting the first three chapters, the first arc that sets up the main characters and gives you a good taste of the kind of world they occupy, and how quickly their adventures can, and do, go off the rails.
It is at this point that I'm obligated to point out that if I was being just a little too subtle about this, When All The World Dissolves, or WATWD, as we've nicknamed it, has picked up trigger warnings like they're Pokemon. This is what happens when your editor tells you to go wild and you were raised on classic sci-fi epics and gritty crime novels set in the chaos and lawlessness of Eastern Europe after the implosion of the Soviet Union, a.k.a. your childhood.
There will also be an immersive audio version – or, at least an attempt at one – to go along with the chapter with yours truly, my editor Leslie, and voice actress Ivy Wilde, who was very much down for some post-apocalyptic shenanigans with a post-Soviet flare and cyberpunk twist. Each episode was recorded live, in front of an audience of very confused pets and overheard by bewildered, but intrigued, families and friends.
If you are also bewildered but intrigued, you can enjoy these chapters in both text and audio format at your leisure. And if you want to keep going, the rest will be available in installments for a nominal fee because, well, have you seen the prices of everything in our late stage hyper-capitalist nightmare lately?
We want to make sure you get a quality product, with human grade humans, and your support is critical to making that happen, so if there's enough interest, we will make it worth your while with extras like Q&A sessions, world-building chats, and maybe even some live recordings so you can be part of the fun. And if you would like to support us without signing up for a subscription, and are just interested in getting the full book and audiobook when it's done, we'll figure that out as well.
If you've read this far, my bet is that this is up your alley, so if you're not already signed up to get posts delivered right to your inbox, you probably should, and stay tuned. The first chapter will be dropping into your digital lap very soon...
