Wednesday, May 22, 2013

A Quiet Apocalypse


Have you ever been to your local twenty-four hour super center late at night? I’m talking like 2 a.m. when most of the world is asleep. Somehow when this happens to me I find myself in the sporting goods section looking at tennis balls. I don’t play tennis.

Inevitably you wind up in a corner of the store and you are all alone. Not just alone in the aisle, alone in the whole store. You can’t hear anything and that white noise of a busy store we are all so used to is magically gone. I start to worry that maybe the store closed and they didn’t know I was in there. I missed the sign saying it was inventory night and they would be closed from two until six. 

As I walk through the store I peer down each aisle. I’m not sure if I want to see someone or if I fear seeing someone. I seriously consider putting my things down and just walking out of the store. Then the unknown causes my mind to race. What if the building was evacuated and in my tennis ball trance I missed the announcement? What if there are armed robbers rounding up the other shoppers and employees so they can steal anything of value? The possibilities of the unknown far more frightening than anything I can see with my eyes or hear with my ears.

This is the feeling that inspired me to write The Seamus Chronicles. I enjoy stories about asteroid impacts and nuclear Armageddon but what if it was a quiet apocalypse? No explosions, no epic battles and no widespread destruction. As the survivors travel around seeking resources and other survivors are they hopeful or fearful that they will find someone? As a stay at home dad I also wanted to write an exciting and suspenseful story that would still receive 5 stars on the +Alyssa Auch cleanliness scale.

A quiet apocalypse wouldn’t be boring. Even if the only survivors were scientists trying to rebuild the planet in a positive fashion they would have to deal with what the bad guys left behind. Even on their deathbed a bad guy could leave real problems that unsuspecting survivors need to deal with. Running, jumping and struggling to survive can happen without guns and violence appearing in every chapter. 

What do you think? Could a quiet apocalypse create a pit in your stomach?

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