I'm super excited to share that I have a new novella available in the End of Days box set! My novella, Scorched: Sun Extinction is the prequel of a new series that will release this fall, The Burnt Earth Series. Take a look at the awesome cover for End of Days.
Collection Description
Dictators. Devices. Destruction.
With worlds fallen and tyrants rising in their wake, can these heroes and heroines survive the End of Days?
Uncover secrets and flirt with death when you immerse yourself in these 16 all-new, exclusive stories of economic collapse, war, disease, and disaster from today’s New York Times, USA Today, and award-winning authors.
Readers who love everything from The Maze Runner to The Handmaid's Tale will revel in the tension of sixteen underdogs fighting to beat the odds in their own gritty worlds.
Get your 1984 fix in this scorched earth dystopian collection sprinkled with romance and heavy with turmoil when you One Click today!
Scorched: Sun Extinction
My contribution to the collection is a prequel to my upcoming novel Scorched: The Last Nomads. This series is set in a future where civilization is devastated in the wake of a massive solar storm. Here is the cover for my novella included exclusively in End of Days.
Description of Scorched: Sun Extinction
To save her sister, Ash must travel
across the sunburnt earth through Hell’s Passage to learn the fate of the Low
Tide outpost.
One hundred and sixty-seven years ago, a solar
coronal mass ejection
devastated civilization. In the blink of
an eye, technology died. Destroying the grid
might not have brought about our end, but the solar superstorm blighted the
land and sickened mankind. In the wake of the crisis, lawlessness ruled, and
societies fell.
Now, The Park, one of the last communities,
teeters on the brink of extinction.
When the annual shipment of supplies from Low
Tide outpost fails to arrive, The Park’s survival is threatened. Ash and her
friends must trek across the sunburnt earth through Hell’s Passage, the ruins
of an abandoned city, to find out what
went wrong.
But the wasteland itself isn’t their biggest
problem. Her group must survive the night when the wailers, creatures born in the CME’s wake, stalk their prey. But
it’s worth the risk. Ash would do anything in order to ensure her sister,
Keyes, stays alive, even if it costs Ash her life.
Scorched: Sun Extinction is a prequel to The Burnt Earth Series.
Chapter 1 Sneak Peek
Chapter 1
Leaning
against the doorframe, I stared out at the yard. A stiff breeze blew, carrying the dust with it. I winced when the
grime gusted into my eyes. Even though the sun had just come up, it was already
burning hot. I swallowed hard, my mouth dry, and looked back at my sister, who
lay sleeping on her cot. She slept with both arms above her head.
“Dancing with angels,” my mother used to say when she saw her sleeping like that.
I remembered the line well because the
last time she’d said it, my sister was only two, and our father had just died
of solar sickness.
“There are no angels left,” I’d said.
“The sun scorched their wings off.” I was angry, and I thought I had a right to
be. But I didn’t have the right to hurt her.
My mother didn’t reply, merely gazed down at my little sister, but I’d
seen her dash the tears off her cheeks. What a horrible thing for a daughter to
say to her mother.
Carrington, my mother’s friend and one of our community elders, was right about
me. “You’re all mouth, impatience, and bravery. Think first, Ash. Always think
first.”
I sighed and looked back out across the
compound. Somewhere in the distance, a piece of metal slapped against a pole. Its banging kept time with my thoughts.
One: The number of times the delivery
from Low Tide had ever been late. Ever. And even that time, they’d arrived the next
day.
Two: The number of public conversations the
elders had held about what to do about the late delivery. The decision? Wait.
Do nothing. Just wait.
Two was also
the number of weeks the current delivery was late.
Three: The number of days since the
elders had last addressed the community.
Four: The number of times Faraday, Lordes, Nasir, and I had talked about what we
thought should be done.
Five: The number of minutes before we went
to speak to the elders. The time for waiting was done.
I headed back inside and knelt beside my
sister’s bed. She sighed in her sleep, winced, and then relaxed again. I
listened to her steady breathing. She
looked beautiful when she slept. Her red hair framed her face. Her brow,
perpetually scrunched in concentration when she was awake, was relaxed and
smooth. While asleep, she looked younger than sixteen. In her teenaged face, I
saw the shadow of the little baby she once was. I also saw my family. Her
eyebrows arched just like Mom’s used to. She had Dad’s perfectly shaped lips.
And her eyes, hidden behind those long lashes, were exactly the same kaleidoscope
of colors as mine: a storm of green, brown, gray,
and gold. We were more alike than either of us cared to admit. And right now,
we were all each other had.
And if the supplies from Low Tide never
arrived, we’d both be dead within the year.
That was the reality.
I needed to do something.
“Ash?” someone whispered.
Nasir’s silhouette reflected against the
door.
Time to go.
I rose and set my sister’s canteen on
top of the table beside her bed. Leaning over, I kissed her lightly on the
forehead. She stirred but didn’t wake. She’d probably be mad if she knew I’d
done that. At sixteen, my sister was young enough to be willfully independent
and not yet old enough to be sentimental. At twenty-five,
having seen a quarter of the people in our community die, I knew the value of
sentiment.
I grabbed my bag and headed outside,
closing the door behind me.
Nasir, Lordes, and Faraday were waiting.
Nasir looked over my shoulder. “Where’s
Keyes?” he asked.
“Sleeping.”
He nodded then motioned to all of us to
follow him as we headed toward Park Building.
“Think they’ll listen?” Lordes asked as
she yanked her long hair into a tight braid.
“Listen, yes,” Nasir said. “Agree? No.”
“Then we need to make them agree,” I
said.
The others nodded but said nothing else.
Faraday held the door open as we entered
Park Building. The cracked marble floor and old
reception area were covered in dust. A faded sigil on the wall, half broken,
read National Park Ser—the rest had fractured
apart long ago. The little image at the center depicted a lush green tree and a
river. Like always, I paused to study the image
carefully.
“Ash?” Nasir called.
He and the others waited at the door to
the stairs.
I turned and joined them.
Faraday and Lordes went ahead.
“Something wrong?” Nasir asked.
I shook my head. “No, it’s just…the tree,”
I said, looking back over my shoulder.
“The tree?”
“On the image on the wall.”
Nasir looked behind me. His eyes got a
faraway look, but he didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to. I understood his
expression. It was mourning for something we never had, something that felt
like one of the old fairy tales Mrs. Lowe used to tell until the solar sickness
took her too.
“Let’s go,” Nasir said, reaching for my
hand.
His hand was warm and strong. His calloused fingers, dry and damaged
from hard labor, slipped between mine. I gave him a soft smile. We bypassed the
second floor where the infirmary and school were housed and made our way to the
third-floor landing. Before we reached
the others, Nasir kissed my hand quickly then let me go. I tried not to be
distracted by the flip my stomach did in response.
Faraday and Lordes waited for us. When
we arrived, Lordes reached for the door handle, but paused, her hand resting on
the lever.
“Don’t worry. They’ll agree,” I
reassured her and the others.
“They have too or else…” Lordes said,
trailing off.
She didn’t have to finish. We all knew
the costs. The supplies from Low Tide
were essential to life.
Lordes pushed the door open.
We walked down the long hallway. Here,
on the third floor, we kept the last remnants of civilization safe, sacred. This
floor was reserved for the books people had managed to scavenge, stores of medicine
and weapons, both of which were kept under lock and key, and other pieces of
the lost world. I looked into the library. Behind the door, shelf after shelf
was lined with books. The room was empty, and no doubt it would stay like that
until Keyes got there.
I followed the others as we approached
the double wooden doors at the end of the hallway. It had been one hundred and
sixty-seven years since the solar superstorm, one hundred and sixty-seven years
since a coronal mass ejection—ten times bigger than any in recorded history—had
erupted from the sun and forever changed our world. While it had started with
the sun, years of decay, disease, and death followed. When I was a kid, I would
sit among the books and read all day long about trees, and oceans, and cars,
and cities, and movies, and ice cream. The world described in the pages of those books sat in ruins around me. Eventually, I stopped
reading. What was the use?
Lordes knocked on the door.
“Come,” a voice called.
As I entered the meeting room, I wondered
what people had once discussed there. What important issues had they debated?
Had they sat there doing nothing as the sun warned them that she was about to undo
our world? Had they sat there doing nothing when the riots began? What did they
do to stop it when diseases ran rampant, unimpeded by modern medicines? And
when it became evident that the solar ejection had done more than knock out our
electronics, that it had brought a disease along with it that devoured mankind
from the inside, what had they done?
The answer was clear.
Nothing.
What we knew about what had happened
came to us through people’s memories. The sun had orbed bright. The sky all
around the globe had illuminated in a swirl of colors: green, indigo, violet,
and yellow. Then, planes fell out of the sky.
Cars crashed. The lights went out. The planet went silent. People’s ears buzzed
and rang for weeks. Those who’d been outside at the moment of the solar
ejection got sick and died within a matter of days. And then, mankind fell
apart.
I sighed. The past didn’t matter. What
mattered now was the future. And without the supplies from Low Tide, there was
no future. Getting my thoughts in check, I followed the others into the room.
The elders sat on the old furniture
looking out into the distance. Ramsey and Carrington sat on a wooden bench,
Gutierrez on an old leather-covered
chair, its material cracked and faded.
Ramsey looked up at us from under his
bushy white eyebrows. His hands folded in his lap, he looked like he was ready
to say no. But the dark spots on his cheek looked bigger than they had last time I’d seen him, and he was thinner than I remembered. I realized
then that he had not addressed the community in months. Only Carrington and
Gutierrez had shared the elders’ decisions. Now I knew why. Ramsey had the
solar sickness.
Carrington, who’d been close to my
mother, lifted her gaze to me and gave me a reassuring smile.
Gutierrez motioned to some wooden
chairs. “Sit, if you like,” he said.
I shook my head. “No. Thank you. What we
have to ask won’t take long.”
Gutierrez nodded.
“Out with it then,” Ramsey said in a
gruff voice.
I took a deep breath. “We want to travel
to Low Tide. Something’s wrong. Their shipment is never this late. The
midsummer window is the best chance we have. If the delivery never comes, we all know what that means—”
“It means we’ll have to innovate,”
Gutierrez said. “We’ll have to make do.”
“Make do?” Nasir asked, his voice thick
with frustration. “There is not a single person in this community who doesn’t
know what Low Tide’s absence means. We need their supplies. They need ours. If
they didn’t make the trip through Hell’s Passage, either something went wrong
in their community or—” he said then broke off, unable to speak the
unthinkable.
“Or the wailers
overtook them,” I finished for him. The wailers.
No one knew for sure if they were man or animal, but what we did know was that
they were monsters. Twisted creatures born of radiation, disease, and
starvation, they lived beyond our walls in the wastelands and only came out at
night. They had not existed in the world that once was. They’d been born out of
its death.
“And
if they are simply late?” Carrington asked.
“Then we’ll know. If there is a problem
with the trade, we need to know. If they’re just late, we’ll bring the supplies
back with us,” Lordes said.
“We depend
on them. Maybe they got sick. Maybe someone attacked them. We need to find
out,” Faraday added.
“You make it sound so easy,” Ramsey
said, stretching out the words with disdain as he spoke. “Just a quick run
between communities. And what about the wailers?
Night comes without fail.”
“That’s why we must go now,” I said.
“The days are longest now. We need to go before midsummer passes. We can make
it to the lighthouse on the first day and to Low Tide by the second, but only
if we go now.”
“I’ve been to the lighthouse and back
before,” Faraday said. “I didn’t go as far as Low Tide, but I know at least part
of the way. I know how to get into the lighthouse and secure it for the night.
The others here are fast, smart, and capable,” he said, motioning to us. “We
can make the trip. We’ll take the land ships part of the way. Ronan and Keyes
have two of them in working order.”
Gutierrez nodded in agreement then
looked at Ramsey.
“And what happens if the ships break
down? Or you have an accident? Or
something goes wrong?” Ramsey asked, frowning.
“Then we’ll make the trip by foot. It’s
a risk we are all willing to take,” I replied.
The others nodded.
Carrington shook her head. “And if
something goes wrong, how will you
survive the night?”
“The Dead Troupe survives the night,”
Lordes said, referring to the last nomads who traveled
between the districts. Half warriors, half-entertainers, the Dead Troupe came
to our community once a year. They were the only people who knew how to make it
in the wasteland after the sun went down. And they were the only ones, besides
Low Tide, we ever saw. All the other communities were too far away.
“You are not the Dead Troupe,”
Carrington said. “You are our community members, and your safety is in our
hands.”
“Yes, but if we don’t go, you risk the
safety of everyone here,” Nasir said.
Ramsey frowned. Without his approval,
we’d never be able to go.
“Mister Ramsey,” I said softly. “Please forgive me for mentioning
it, sir. I can see you are not well. If we don’t get the shipment from Low
Tide, we won’t be able to make the medicine you need—you and all the others
with the solar sickness. For your sake, and for the sake of all the others,
please.”
I watched Ramsey’s expression as I spoke.
He went from rage to embarrassment to
acceptance. He knew I was right. We had two months’ worth, maybe less, of the supplies
Low Tide harvested from the sea floor. We needed them to make medicine. Without
them, we were in trouble.
Gutierrez and Carrington looked at him.
Ramsey stared out the window.
I followed his gaze across the yard,
beyond the wall, and across the wasteland
we called Hell’s Passage. Broken buildings, metal, and glass gleamed in the
distance. Beyond that, where the land and sea met, was the community of Low
Tide.
“When do you want to leave?” Ramsey
finally asked.
“Tomorrow at dawn,” Lordes answered.
Ramsey exhaled slowly and deeply. “Take what
you need.”
Nasir smiled at me.
“Thank you, sir,” I said to Mister
Ramsey who nodded. “Thank you all,” I said, turning to Carrington and
Gutierrez.
With a nod, Lordes motioned for us to
go.
Carrington rose and followed us to the
door. When the others exited, she took me gently by the arm.
“Ash, are you sure? If something happens
to you, Keyes will—”
“I’m going to be all right. And I have
to go. If I don’t, none of us will survive the coming months…including Keyes.”
“Let the others go,” she said, jerking
her chin toward Nasir and the others. Her eyes pleaded with mine.
I shook my head. “I can’t. They need me.”
“And Keyes?”
“She’ll understand.”
Carrington smirked. “You sure about
that?”
I definitely was not sure about that. And if I knew my sister, more
than being mad, she’d want to come, and that couldn’t happen.
“Well…”
Carrington nodded. “Just think about
it,” she said then let me go.
I turned and joined the others. We
headed down the hallway.
“I’ll go to the well house, see what can be spared,” Lordes said.
Nasir nodded. “Faraday and I will find
Daniel, get the key to the armory.”
I exhaled deeply. “I’ll go get Keyes out
of bed. When we’re done arguing, we’ll see about the land ships.”
“Sure you’ll be ready by tomorrow then?”
Lordes asked.
Despite the tension, we all chuckled.
When we reached the lobby, everyone
headed back outside. I paused once again as I passed the sigil.
“See you later,” I called to the others.
Nasir looked back.
I gave him a soft smile which he
returned.
He nodded then headed outside.
I turned back to the image. How peaceful
it looked. The thick green leaves seemed
to wave in the breeze, the blue brook tumbling over the rocks. Everything
looked so alive. So fresh. I closed my eyes and imagined the place. I could
envision the people dancing like angels, their bare toes on the soft green
grass, moisture on their lips. I tried to inhale the freshness of the image,
but only dust, grime, and dry air filled my nostrils, choking me as I took a
breath. The solar storm had forever damaged our planet. Now it was hot, and
dry, and barren. The damp green earth was long gone, just like the angels.
I turned away from the image and headed
back outside.
I hope you've enjoyed a look at Scorched: Sun Extinction. I'm really excited to start rolling out this series this fall! Until then, it's the end of the world as we know it--again!
