I finished Doomsday Serenity, the second book in my Doomsday Chronicles Series.
In this world, there's a faction called the Insurgence--a nationwide network of doomsday preppers who all stay in contact VIA phone or the Insurgence website, not to mention family and friend gatherings and cross-country road trips between states. Every state has one Insurgence town, and the Insurgence members in that state all shave off a little from their paychecks to keep their growing doomsday sanctuary town afloat. Homes, institutions, bunkers, guns, crops, marketplaces--you name it, they have it. Anything and everything they'd possibly need if they ever, for whatever wild reason, needed to rebuild America after doomsday.
Each Insurgence town has a special name, usually involving Latin, and each town has its own symbol relating to whatever state they're in--like in Doomsday by Design, the Nevada Insurgence have a black spade as their symbol. Get it? Spade? Ace-of-spades? Vegas? Gambling? Aaah... I'm tired.
Each book will follow a different set of main characters in different states, all involving different branches of the Insurgence as well as the ability of normal people to survive a sudden apocalypse. God, it felt so good (and slightly heart-wrenching) to finish Doomsday by Design, but good old Dorian Levi left me with plenty to work with--hell, I've got 49 other states to cover, not to mention plenty of other straggling survivors out there. Thank God he founded the Insurgence. Fuck, I'm talking like he's my real uncle... that'd be so freaking cool...
Contrary to Dorian Levi, the ultimate doomsday prepper, and his niece Sandra Levi, the main character in Doomsday Serenity isn't affiliated with preppers or the Insurgence. In fact, he's just a regular guy, your average Joe stuck in a monotonous life of routines and loneliness, working an office job and coming home to no one each day. The more I wrote him, the more I absolutely loved him--he fights with depression and displacement, and the poor guy just wants to find his purpose in life--a thing that, for ten years, he thought didn't exist. He keeps a pistol in his desk, just in case--on a bad day, when he finally summons the nerve--he decides to turn the gun on himself and pull the trigger.
This man's name is Asher Cullen.
And let me tell you--doomsday doesn't affect this guy the way it affects most. After all, like that awesome song in the God Bless America movie, Asher isn't like everyone else.
I'll spare you the spoilers, but pay close attention to the title of this book--Doomsday Serenity. Look at the guy's face. Do the words "Doomsday" and "Serenity" usually go together? They do now--because Asher Cullen's story is being told.
See that cool building in the background? That's the Sunsphere in the Tennessee city of Knoxville. Unlike any of my stories before, I chose to use my hometown for this one. Asher is special to me, after all.
After he meets Olivia, an eccentric woman from the local loony bin, the two of them become partners in crime, and he uses that gun for anything and everything but suicide. Yes--he finds his purpose, but only in the wake of the US holocaust. Of all the characters I've ever written, he's absolutely one of the most relatable and realistic people I've ever created--and he becomes something extraordinary. There's lots of friendship, romance, action, and betrayal. Yes, the Insurgence plays a part in this story--but this isn't the tale of preppers and theorists speculating about how doomsday was designed.
This is the story of a man finally finding serenity in doomsday's aftermath.
Halfway-edited and soon to be published, Doomsday Serenity stands as my newest accomplishment, and I do hope you'll give it a read. National Novel Writing Month was a success indeed.
