In post-apocalyptic Australia, the scientists known as Seeders have built a Citadel surrounded by food-producing regions and populated with refugees from the wars and famine. To maintain their control, the Seeders poisoned the land and outlawed the saving of seeds.
Description:
Release Date: September 1st, 2015
Since the night her mother was murdered, sixteen-year-old Rory Gray has known one truth: There are no good Seeders.
In post-apocalyptic Australia, the scientists known as Seeders have built a Citadel surrounded by food-producing regions and populated with refugees from the wars and famine. To maintain their control, the Seeders poisoned the land and outlawed the saving of seeds.
It’s been six years since Rory graced the Seeders’ circus stage as the Wind Dancer and still the scars on her body haven’t healed. Even worse are the scars on her heart, left by a Seeder boy who promised to protect her.
Now the Seeders are withholding supplies from Rory’s region for perceived disobedience. Utilising the Wanderer knowledge she received from her mother, Rory must journey to the Citadel through uninhabitable terrain to plead for mercy.
However, the Citadel isn’t as Rory remembered. The chief plant geneticist is dying and rumours fly that the store of viable seed is dwindling. The Seeders are desperate to find a seed bank they believe Rory can locate, and they will stop at nothing to get it.
To defy the Seeders means death. But Rory has been close to death before--this time she’s learned the value of poison.
Recommended for fans of The Hunger Games, strong protagonists, circuses and nature!
EXCERPT
I look down at my own body and cringe. Thanks to my mother, I’m slightly shorter than the girls my age, and not being on the right diet for the last six years has given me definition in some of the wrong places. I push the insecurities aside. Nothing I can do about them now. I’m the last one in the right wing and expect Crispin to call on me next, but then he says a name that sends a spike of anger through my rapidly beating heart.
“Skylar Devereux!”
The crowd roars as a girl in a black leotard and yellow skirt pirouettes across the stage. When she reaches my wing, she twists and does a series of back flips onto centre stage. Then she throws her arms up into the air.
“Skylark! Skylark! Skylark!” The crowd chants her stage name with the same fervour they used to chant mine. Skylar blows kisses to them. How did I forget about her? Watching her prance on stage for much longer than she should drives away my nerves and replaces them with revulsion. Would they cheer for her if they knew how she gets to be the star of every show? Does she still play the same tricks she used to on her fellow performers? The wide berth she gets when she finally decides to line up tells me she does.
Then suddenly, I’m blinded as the spotlight illuminates the wing. I throw up a hand to shield my eyes. All other lights in the arena turn off except for a small one aimed at Crispin. A drum beats and builds momentum into a steady roll.
“And now, the moment you’ve all been waiting for. She captured our hearts with her gravity-defying feats of flight. After six years’ absence, let’s welcome back to the Citadel, the one and only Aurora Gray!”
You can hear a pin drop. I exhale deeply and plaster a smile onto my face as waves of anxiety slam back into place. How am I going to top Skylar’s entrance without anything planned? I’ve waited too long and am just about to walk on stage when a steady wind whips through the stadium. The audience begins to murmur in excitement. A ring trapeze that’s big enough for me to stand in lowers from the ceiling. I don’t hesitate and step on, using my arms and bare feet for balance.
The ring carries me all the way to the ceiling and the spotlight follows. Hundreds of twinkling stars in the audience tell me I’m being recorded live. In the upper tiers of the stadium are two big jumbo screens that project my face to the crowd farthest away. It’s a full house tonight.
I’m unsure what to do, but I know not to let on to the audience. How am I going to get down from here? They can’t expect me to jump from this height without a net and nothing else to cling to? I’ll die for sure. And then the wind picks up so it’s more of a gale. My costume blows around to full effect. The other performers fall to their knees and hold on to each other so they won’t be blasted away.
Now I see what they want me to do. They want me to jump into the wind. I look to Crispin, who has retreated to the wing, and he makes two upwards motions with his arms. The universal performers’ code for play it up for the crowd. I nod and cling to the ring as though I’m afraid. It’s not all an act. I put one hand to my heart as the trapeze starts to swing from one side of the stage to the other. The earpiece crackles and Crispin’s voice rings over the powerful wind.
“Send them a little message,” he says. I know exactly what he wants me to say. I’ve said it hundreds of times before. Suddenly, everything else in the world falls away; all I can see is the drop before me, and all I can feel is the wind around me. My heart thuds, but this time with barely contained excitement. This is what I was born to do.
When the trapeze has gained enough momentum, I throw out both my arms as if pleading to the crowd. “Will you catch me if I fall?” I say. The earpiece must have a microphone, because my words are amplified throughout the stadium.
The crowd inhales as I jump.
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About the author:
Lan Chan is a writer, gardener and professional procrastinator based in Melbourne, Australia. She is still waiting for her super powers to manifest but until then she writes young adult novels featuring strong female protagonists, minority characters and has a particular interest in dystopias and urban fantasy. Lan’s debut novel POISON, the first in her WIND DANCER series is due for release in September 2015.
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Her luck takes an unexpected turn for the better when she meets a boy who shares her interest in video games and contempt for small town boredom. In him, she finds a kindred spirit who might just make the middle of nowhere tolerable.
Published: June 29th, 2015
As far as Riley McCullough is concerned, her best friend getting ‘dragged’ off to Puerto Vallarta for the first two weeks of summer vacation was the end of the world―at least until the bombs fell.
Life in suburban New Jersey with her mother has been comfortable, not to mention boring, to an introverted fourteen year old. As if her friend’s surprise trip wasn’t bad enough, her expectations for the ‘best summer ever’ disintegrate when she gets sent across the country to stay with a father she hasn’t seen in six years. Adjusting to a tiny, desert town where everyone stares at them like they don’t belong proves difficult, and leaves her feeling more isolated than ever. To make matters worse, her secretive father won’t tell the truth about why he left―or what he’s hiding.
Her luck takes an unexpected turn for the better when she meets a boy who shares her interest in video games and contempt for small town boredom. In him, she finds a kindred spirit who might just make the middle of nowhere tolerable.
Happiness is short lived; fleeing nuclear Armageddon, she takes shelter with her dad in an underground bunker he’d spent years preparing. After fourteen days without sun, Riley must overcome the sorrow of losing everything to save the one person she cares about most.
MB's INTERVIEW
1. From what I could see, all of your main characters are young woman/girls. Why so and what were the obstacles you met when you put yourself in the girl shoes?
A lot of my mains are female. I can’t really say why I have an easier time writing a woman/girl as a main character, but it feels easier for me to get into their heads. When I am writing a female character, I am thinking in terms of a character doing things who happens to be a female – not a ‘female character doing things.’ I don’t feel that I’ve hit too many huge obstacles to writing female characters, though if I were to – it would probably be for specific minutiae that I haven’t yet had a character go through (e.g. pregnancy, menopause, female-specific health problems… essentially things that are uniquely feminine and would be difficult to imagine my way into.)
2. What it takes to build an “attractive” post-apocalyptic world?
Attractive can mean so many things. Visual description, thorough detail about how the mechanisms of life and society continued or changed, or perhaps attractive in the sense of a ‘pleasant’ post-war society where humanity has learned from its past mistakes. I think the most important thing to consider when portraying a post apocalypse is to have a solid sense of the world as it exists in the fictional world, and stay true to that vision. I tend to see things happening in my head like a movie, and have been told that my descriptions often feel ‘cinematic’ to the reader. If a writer can make the reader feel like they are in the world, I think they’ve managed to create an ‘attractive’ setting.
3. There is any room for “emotional impact” in a post- apocalyptic story / The Summer the World Ended?
How I am writing an ‘emotional impact’ story in a post-apoc setting? Some writers bring their settings to the forefront, making the world itself a character. Sometimes that works, but it can backfire and make the reader weary of the technology in a sci fi setting or of the bleakness in a post-apoc world. Both for my sci fi stories, as well as this, I treat the setting as a backdrop for a character story. At its core, The Summer the World Ended is a story about Riley dealing with her disintegrating family. While integral to the plot, the post-apocalyptic elements could be edited into anything else from a colonized alien planet, to earth-normal-now to a far future sci fi setting and still work. The emotional impact comes from Riley’s journey through sorrow, fear, loneliness, hope, and maybe even love.
4. What are the specifics of the readers who read “post-apocalyptic” genre? To whom would you recommend The Summer the World Ended?
I got interested in post-apoc from being exposed to an old computer game back in the early-mid 1980s, Wasteland. In my opinion, the genre draws two primary types of fans. One group enjoys the bleakness, the explosions, the kill-or-be-killed Darwinism, and the over the top violence. Another group is attracted to the socio/political/environmental messages in these stories, and revels in the depiction of a world changed by the hand of humanity. As far as who I’d recommend The Summer the World Ended to, I’d say readers who like a deep character driven story with highs and lows of emotion, and a character that might have been them. I think the story appeals to teens, parents of teens, and those who might be considered ‘doomsday preppers.’ Also, I’m sure it will appeal to anyone who’s had to deal with the effects of mental illness and depression, or been uprooted from a comfortable life and thrust into an unknown world against their will. Anyone who wants to take this bumpy emotional ride with Riley, and keep their fingers crossed she gets through it with her body—and mind—intact.
5. There are several themes for Post-apocalyptic, for example: cooperation vs. competition, adaptation to vs. disappearance, trust, difficult choices etc. What themes we will find in The Summer and how could they be braided?
The story focuses more on the microcosm of Riley, her family, and how she interacts with the world around her before and after surviving the bombs. The narrative follows her close, and doesn’t so much dwell on a post-apocalyptic society as a whole. (I do hit some of those notes in a different upcoming novel.) Of the themes you mentioned above, I’d have to say difficult choices, issues of trust, and adaptation are the most prevalent.
A lot of my mains are female. I can’t really say why I have an easier time writing a woman/girl as a main character, but it feels easier for me to get into their heads. When I am writing a female character, I am thinking in terms of a character doing things who happens to be a female – not a ‘female character doing things.’ I don’t feel that I’ve hit too many huge obstacles to writing female characters, though if I were to – it would probably be for specific minutiae that I haven’t yet had a character go through (e.g. pregnancy, menopause, female-specific health problems… essentially things that are uniquely feminine and would be difficult to imagine my way into.)
2. What it takes to build an “attractive” post-apocalyptic world?
Attractive can mean so many things. Visual description, thorough detail about how the mechanisms of life and society continued or changed, or perhaps attractive in the sense of a ‘pleasant’ post-war society where humanity has learned from its past mistakes. I think the most important thing to consider when portraying a post apocalypse is to have a solid sense of the world as it exists in the fictional world, and stay true to that vision. I tend to see things happening in my head like a movie, and have been told that my descriptions often feel ‘cinematic’ to the reader. If a writer can make the reader feel like they are in the world, I think they’ve managed to create an ‘attractive’ setting.
3. There is any room for “emotional impact” in a post- apocalyptic story / The Summer the World Ended? How I am writing an ‘emotional impact’ story in a post-apoc setting? Some writers bring their settings to the forefront, making the world itself a character. Sometimes that works, but it can backfire and make the reader weary of the technology in a sci fi setting or of the bleakness in a post-apoc world. Both for my sci fi stories, as well as this, I treat the setting as a backdrop for a character story. At its core, The Summer the World Ended is a story about Riley dealing with her disintegrating family. While integral to the plot, the post-apocalyptic elements could be edited into anything else from a colonized alien planet, to earth-normal-now to a far future sci fi setting and still work. The emotional impact comes from Riley’s journey through sorrow, fear, loneliness, hope, and maybe even love.
4. What are the specifics of the readers who read “post-apocalyptic” genre? To whom would you recommend The Summer the World Ended?
I got interested in post-apoc from being exposed to an old computer game back in the early-mid 1980s, Wasteland. In my opinion, the genre draws two primary types of fans. One group enjoys the bleakness, the explosions, the kill-or-be-killed Darwinism, and the over the top violence. Another group is attracted to the socio/political/environmental messages in these stories, and revels in the depiction of a world changed by the hand of humanity. As far as who I’d recommend The Summer the World Ended to, I’d say readers who like a deep character driven story with highs and lows of emotion, and a character that might have been them. I think the story appeals to teens, parents of teens, and those who might be considered ‘doomsday preppers.’ Also, I’m sure it will appeal to anyone who’s had to deal with the effects of mental illness and depression, or been uprooted from a comfortable life and thrust into an unknown world against their will. Anyone who wants to take this bumpy emotional ride with Riley, and keep their fingers crossed she gets through it with her body—and mind—intact.
5. There are several themes for Post-apocalyptic, for example: cooperation vs. competition, adaptation to vs. disappearance, trust, difficult choices etc. What themes we will find in The Summer and how could they be braided?
The story focuses more on the microcosm of Riley, her family, and how she interacts with the world around her before and after surviving the bombs. The narrative follows her close, and doesn’t so much dwell on a post-apocalyptic society as a whole. (I do hit some of those notes in a different upcoming novel.) Of the themes you mentioned above, I’d have to say difficult choices, issues of trust, and adaptation are the most prevalent.
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About the author:
Born in a little town known as South Amboy NJ in 1973, Matthew has been creating science fiction and fantasy worlds for most of his reasoning life. Somewhere between fifteen to eighteen of them spent developing the world in which Division Zero, Virtual Immortality, and The Awakened Series take place. He has several other projects in the works as well as a collaborative science fiction endeavor with author Tony Healey.Hobbies and Interests:
Matthew is an avid gamer, a recovered WoW addict, Gamemaster for two custom systems (Chronicles of Eldrinaath [Fantasy] and Divergent Fates [Sci Fi], and a fan of anime, British humour (<- deliberate), and intellectual science fiction that questions the nature of reality, life, and what happens after it.
He is also fond of cats.
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