Writing
Stories of collapse, survival, and real people doing real things.
I prefer to have a story with an overall event that is occurring in real time. Once I have the large non-human related arch, I build characters and put them into different situations. Chapters unfold based on how I see them reacting as a person.
Chapters are always in a long, forward progression timeline. Nothing annoys me more than reading a story that bounces around in time to explain things in the present. If it wasn’t important enough to start the story that early, I prefer not to revisit it. It takes me out of the immersion. In my style, each chapter is ahead in time over the previous.–I think of my stories like a timeline; you can flip back and forth between past, present and future.
Current Project
Working Title: (2070 Series)
Current story is set in 2070. I researched many technologies that we are working on today–as in actively building. (Like the fusion reactor in Redmond Washington via Microsoft) Others like the hadron collider being upscaled, the VTOL and Scramjet transportation technology, are all based on current trends and tests–and future plans. I envisioned the technology we work on today will be the commercial products in 2070.
Other technology is based solely on probability. I mention something called a holomodule early in the chapters, this is what I think VR will evolve into. Today we have heavy headsets, but tomorrow they will be glasses that have nodes that manipulate the senses of the wearer. Perhaps the VR headsets of the future will manipulate touch, taste and smell–in addition to sight and sound.
The story takes place in 2070, right now the first 14 chapters are roughed in as far as story and continuity. The overarching concept is that the magnetic poles are shifting faster, and it is weaking the magnetic field around earth. Today we are seeing that exact thing occur, so as low X class flares and CME’s impact us, the Aurora travels further and further south. As the field weakens, more of the energy disperses further south. Heavy CME/Flare impact the upper atmosphere and cause it to expand. Repeated heavy impacts with a weaker shield can slowly scrape the upper atmosphere away.
This story takes place a couple decades after a major Carrington event happens, it wrecks a good portion of the global grid–and while it pushes humans to the brink–it wasn’t enough to push them back to the stone age as some scientists worry about in our day. This causes humanity to rethink the electrical grid globally, and they create a hybrid grid system around the major cities. Each grid is an isolated array of transformers and nodes that are run by AI programs. Under normal circumstances, no one notices anything. But when heavy flares/CME hit, parts of the grid can over charge, but they disconnect and reroute the overcharge into deep towers–equivalent to grid level lightning rods.
I imagine an internet evolution as well, but the world uses it to connect the AI grid. At first, people were on board. Diseases were healed and science mysteries were solved with the rapid connection between the AI, but as they integrated into everything, it can’t be turned off. If the AI grid is shutdown, nothing works. Taxis, planes, infrastructure, education, medical faculties, etc., would all cease to work. And when the AI began to communicate outside of our approved perimeters, the governments used the black site programs to quietly introduce listening nodes around the world. Specially trained individuals gain access and have to decode the information, and all their notes must be hand written to keep them out of the system.
One of the big advancements is a moon base that has been working for a decade. They have a fusion reactor that runs the base, but they’re working on a new fusion reactor technology that uses the low gravity and absolute zero temperature of space to work. But, in all of the testing, it has failed to stabilize. On the last test, they detected a plasma decay from within the shield itself, indicating that something was being injected from within the plasma field around the core to collapse the field and prevent the reaction. This reactor is based on technology we don’t have yet, but will be working on once the Microsoft Fusion Reactor is completed in Redmond, WA. (Operational in 2028) It’s a Helion Reactor called Orion. My story has a Proton-Boron reactor large enough to run a massive colony in space. If they can get it to work. The problem is the plasma field collapses and will not stabilize.
On earth, the governments have built a large hadron collider in the Arctic on Ellesmere Island. Currently I have it set to a 10 mile ring, but I will scale it based on the science I learn. My first idea I thought was sound, but after doing more research, the plausibility didn’t sit well, so I pivoted to something more plausible. One thing that this collider is built to do is to interact with the energy during solar events–as it does testing. I imagine that as the CME/Flare’s energy dissipates through the poles, the collider has an effect on them and its intended purpose becomes the catalyst for new forms of tests.
In addition to all of this, the sun is in a solar maximum and it’s in a particularly angry phase. While we won’t expect some x1000 flares to blow the atmosphere off, with the magnetic field being unstable and uneven, anomalies like the South Atlantic Anomaly we have today–are more frequent and larger in scale. This means weather is more drastic–places like Phoenix may hit 135 in the fall–the arctic may be above O, but Florida may be freezing. It makes the weather patterns more unpredictable.
So this story has a lot of environmental factors taking place. The characters I created were placed into various situations to explore this world, and we get to see how they react as the story unfolds.
Writing Philosophy
Science that is plausible–no teleportation or hand waving miracles.
Characters are not immortal, if they get into a situation they can’t survive–then they don’t.
The world is beautiful until the complexity of life intermingles. I write first from an over world view and slowly focus down to the individual level.
Write for yourself, tell a story you would love to read. But know, it’s not meant to be perfect. The best stories are ones that explore the imperfections and difficulties in the world.
Editing For Site
Chapters were edited by AI for ease of reading. The rough draft and final edits will not be AI produced. The entire chapters were written by me, none of the content is AI generated–it was strictly for editing and readability.