Vladimir Manyuhin starts with real photographs, adding digital decay and overgrowth to create an eerily realistic sense of how the world might look long after most humans are gone.

Wonderful stuff, and very I Am Legend. And, if you like Vladimir’s idea of a world after humans have flicked the self-destuct switch, maybe you’ll enjoy my own take on a post apocalyptic world in Earth Day, my first novella.

Everything’s connected

What does that mean for projects moving forward? I have to create a several things:

1. Firstly, a time line into which each and every novel I write from now on will have to fit within.
2. Secondly, decide what technologies, scientific developments and social changes I intend dealing with, as continuous themes, interweaving and spanning the various novels.
3. Thirdly, which characters or families bestride these novels, why, and how they interact and intersect with the aforementioned.

Now, I know none of this is entirely new, but it’s something I feel needs to be done, rather than writing one-off, disparate and disconnected stories.

Aim high and be bold!

Instead, I want a narrative that spans decades, and towards the end, centuries:

• Earth Day, the first novel (or novella, if you like) is more of a fable than science fiction.
• Stunned (presently on pause), is a comedy thriller with a political slant.
• Wraith (also on pause and presently only provisionally titled), is a superhero story with a difference.
• Perditions End is a time travel saga, where our protagonist is attempting to solve a series of murders that implicate him as the aggressor.
• Ascending Angels (written but pending a complete re-write of Perditions End, the first, or “prequel”) is a very ambitious novel with several very well-defined threads, the first of which is a complex heist thriller, the second is a metaphysical exploration, including a search and rescue, while the third is a race against time scenario, to avert a global catastrophe, invoked by the a conflict between two alien races.
• An as-yet untitled and only provisionally understood novel, tying together Ascending Angels and Aeon, which will, amongst other things, provide the story behind Bingley and Forsyth.
• Aeon is something quite different and a departure from the usual science fiction subtleties, this time, we’re deep into the realms of science fiction proper.

Aim high and be bold! That is my mantra, and I shall not shy away from this agenda.

In the beginning, we broke our word, and then came the lights

“How might our quarrelsome and wasteful ways be seen through the gaze of more distant, different and dispassionate eyes? And how might a promise once made by the leaders of the world be re-paid having been broken by their successors?

30 years later, on a night whose dark skies were filled with a magical light show the world over, countless towns and cities, entire transport networks as well as billions of people begin to vanish without a trace. But out in the remote rural areas of the world, life goes on unaffected by the invasion, or the enigmatic “lights” that continue to appear out of nowhere, surveying the mundane routines of the survivors.

In the aftermath of this unstoppable invasion by an invincible alien force, one survivor wants more than mere survival; Leonora “Lenny” Dixon wants answers. Why are the invaders here, and what do they want of us?

In search of answers, Lenny and her boyfriend Jay leave the relative safety of Cumbria, a mountainous and rugged region of north-west England, and begin a journey south, through the ruined and abandoned urban sprawl of the great northern city of Manchester. On their way they discover the true and terrifying purpose of the invaders, finally revealing the horrifying truth behind the disappearing industry and civilization of man, and of mankind itself.”

Earth Day is available NOW on Amazon

Earth Day is available to buy right now for Amazon Kindle, as well as other formats on Lulu.