Preorders are officially OPEN for Once They’re All Gone (formerly known as The Apocalypse Project) right here on the website! If you preorder a paperback with me … they come signed. Of course, you can also preorder it through Amazon or Barnes and Noble.
This one has been a fun journey from the start, as readers of the blog will be aware. I struggled with the concept for a LONG time before finally getting it just right. I just finished my final proof read, that arduous task of looking for missing commas or stray spaces, and I’m in a reflective mood. So let’s talk about how far this one has come.
This one started with a chaotic idea for a character, Ivy (her name never changed) who was one of the last people on earth. Over and over again this character would pop up in my idea journal in random places. She was entering into a sort of settlement to play poker where the stakes were meat and veggies (that scene never appears in the book) or drinking too much at the edge of a lake because there was nothing else to do (that one does) or raiding a grocery store for canned food that would still be viable (also still appears). I could never nail down the important questions of HOW she got here or what happened.
Over the years I did attempt to write this one from multiple angles. I’ve talked a lot about it on the blog. You can find most of them by searching APOCALYPSE project. Some of the early scenes even appear there. But it wasn’t until I decided this was a multi-POV novel that I really made good progress. There are, and always have been, multiple characters in this book. But it features 4 POV characters. I can’t get into all of their details but here are some of the important things:
- Ivy is in her thirties. She has a decent job as a manager of a retail store. She’s married to Nolan who also has a decent job working at a retirement community. They’re happy, have no children and no plans to have children, and sort of set in their routines.
- Polly is 17. A high school senior, Polly has her eye on escaping her house and getting into a college far from home. Her parents fight constantly and her neighbor, Kevin, is her best escape and closest friend.
- Zoey is in her forties. She’s married to Victoria and they have two beautiful children. Zoey works a high stress job that she loves and craves a promotion that would allow her to really show how well she works under pressure.
- Luke is a single dad in his forties. He’s Kevin’s father and lives directly next door to Polly and her family. He’s pretty engrained in a local restaurant business with multiple locations and regularly bops around between them filling all sorts of rolls. He’s constantly worried about money, despite his tendency to work long hours.
These four characters brought new life to the story and really helped it get off the ground in exciting ways.
Once They’re All Gone STARTED as an Apocalypse story about survival. It ended up as so much more. It’s speculative fiction (stories centered around a question) that explores the main question: what would you do if you woke up and everyone in the world was gone? Not missing. Not dead. Gone? It’s dystopian (think imperfect, literally the opposite of utopian) exploring a world where nothing has gone right. It’s psychological in nature, toying with the genre of thriller. And, like everything else I’ve written, there’s definitely secrets kept from you until the end.
I’m proud of this one and I’m excited for you all to read it. That’s always true when I bring a new book into the world but it’s especially true for this one because so many times over the years, I really thought it would never happen. I didn’t think it would find its place on store shelves. I didn’t think I’d ever come up with the ending. I’m glad I was wrong. More importantly, I’m grateful that Ivy refused to let her story die, that she kept turning up in my idea journal, and that she fought to have her story brought to life.
So get your preorders in. The story is finally told on October 13th.
