(Note: This post was supposed to appear on another blog as part of the Withered + Sere blog tour, but since the blog never wrote me back and never posted it, I'm doing it here. What can you do?)
I did something no one else has ever
done.
I wrote a book set in a
post-apocalyptic future.
I know, I know.
You’re in awe.
Tj!
you’re thinking. How did you come up with
such a novel idea?
And therein lies the problem.
Post-apocalyptic, dystopian futures,
all of this has been done before. It’s like that saying goes, that there’s
nothing new under the sun. Tropes are tropes for a reason. Look at The Hunger Games. Look at the video game
series Fallout. Look at Mad Max. Or I Am Legend. Or The 100.
Or Book of Eli. Dawn of the Dead. Battle
Royale. The Road (which, if you haven’t read this book by Cormac McCarthy,
do it. It’s one of the best things ever). 28 Days Later. The Stand (Stephen King’s best work, in my opinion). Resident Evil. The Last of Us.
Whether it be nuclear bombs, or
disease, or zombies, or humanity’s rage, the world falls, civilization
crumbles, and we are left with little pockets of humanity across a scarred
landscape who are usually embroiled in a battle against Forces of Evil (i.e.
new government, old government, crazy motherfuckers, zombies, crazy
motherfucking zombies).
So it’s all be done before. It
really, really has.
And here I was, a writer of cracky
man love who sometimes who could write angst, comedy, drama, and who
occasionally dabbled into something darker. Here I was, thinking, okay, but if it’s all been done before,
could I actually do something that was any different?
I knew, going into writing Withered + Sere, that it was going to be
a massive undertaking. This world I created would be large, and would be
populated by good people and evil people, and people whose moral compasses were
firmly planted in the gray. I also knew going into it, that the only way I’d
actually be able to do this
post-apocalyptic story would be if I could put my own unique spin on it.
Let’s be real. There are people out
there who’ve written stories about the end of the world that are far better
writers than I could ever hope to be. I know this. I understand this. I don’t
know if I could ever even be even remotely close to their level. But it didn’t
stop me from trying.
I wanted to see what happened if I
ended the world. If civilization did
crumble, if billions of people did
die, what would I do with what remained? Would I have anything new to add?
I think I did. I hoped I did. I
don’t mean that to sound conceited or self-involved, either. Honestly. Given
that this was so far from anything I’d ever done before, I knew that I needed
to end the world in a way that was distinctly Klune but not devolving into the
crack that I’m known to write. The dialogue here is sparse because the main
character, Cavalo, doesn’t like to talk much. He doesn’t want to talk much. The other main character, Lucas, can’t talk, given some mysterious injury
he’d sustained sometime in the past.
I love dialogue. I love writing
people talking and snarking back and forth.
I love it so much, that to make this
story different than anything I’d done before, I didn’t allow myself to fall
back into the slinging of words. By taking away one character’s ability to
speak at all, it forced me to find other ways to communicate, to relay the
story without the crutch of vocalizing my point. And I did, though it was in
ways I wasn’t expecting when I first started, and I like to think it adds
another layer to the story, that it leaves it up to the reader to decide if
Cavalo is actually having the conversations he thinks he’s having, or if it’s
just a product of his imagination, that he’s getting response he’s thinking he should get.
And, of course, there’s the end of
the world. The landscape, the remains of what once was. When you have a
post-apocalyptic story, one of the most important characters you can have is
the landscape. Is there the futuristic sheen of a dystopian society? Or is
there the grunge and grime of a ravaged society?
I wanted to go with the grunge and
the grime. I wanted to get motherfucking dirty
in this book. By the time the W+S and its sequel, Crisped + Sere, are finished, I wanted the reader to feel the dirt
under their fingernails, the dust in their throat. The setting is as important
as the main characters, because if the setting isn’t believable, then it runs
the risk of ruining the story as a whole.
I had fun with this, creating this
dirty, dirty world. The landscape is dotted with hints of the past, from burn
out husks of cars and billboards for personal injury attorneys, to the way the
people who remain live their lives.
And that, to me, is the crux of
these two books. The reader is told at the beginning that a hundred years have
passed since the world ended. The idea that I couldn’t shake while writing this
would be how would those people live
their lives? Would they act completely different than we do today? Or would
they still cling to what they’d been taught by those who came before them? We
are ingrained with years on how a
human being should act. I find it fascinating to think about how people would
attempt to go on with business as usual, even if they don’t necessarily
understand why they think that. It’s
what they were taught by those who came before them. Those people were taught
by those who came before them, and
those are the ones that lived and loved in a bright and shiny world, and they
passed down their traditions and mannerisms, and I think that those things
would continue, even after the world ended. We act as we were taught. Yes, we
learn from new experiences, but we are still human, and there are centuries of
life before us that we draw from. We do the things we do because we were taught how to do them, even if we don’t
realize it.
So. I hope you’re ready to get down
and dirty with me. Because we’re about to crawl through the mud.
Withered
+ Sere Blurb:
Once
upon a time, humanity could no longer contain the rage that swelled within, and
the world ended in a wave of fire.
One hundred years later, in the wasteland formerly known as America, a broken man who goes only by the name of Cavalo survives. Purposefully cutting himself off from what remains of civilization, Cavalo resides in the crumbling ruins of the North Idaho Correctional Institution. A mutt called Bad Dog and a robot on the verge of insanity comprise his only companions. Cavalo himself is deteriorating, his memories rising like ghosts and haunting the prison cells.
It’s not until he makes the dangerous choice of crossing into the irradiated Deadlands that Cavalo comes into contact with a mute psychopath, one who belongs to the murderous group of people known as the Dead Rabbits. Taking the man prisoner, Cavalo is forced not only to face the horrors of his past, but the ramifications of the choices made for his stark present. And it is in the prisoner that he will find a possible future where redemption is but a glimmer that darkly shines.
The world has died.
This is the story of its remains.
One hundred years later, in the wasteland formerly known as America, a broken man who goes only by the name of Cavalo survives. Purposefully cutting himself off from what remains of civilization, Cavalo resides in the crumbling ruins of the North Idaho Correctional Institution. A mutt called Bad Dog and a robot on the verge of insanity comprise his only companions. Cavalo himself is deteriorating, his memories rising like ghosts and haunting the prison cells.
It’s not until he makes the dangerous choice of crossing into the irradiated Deadlands that Cavalo comes into contact with a mute psychopath, one who belongs to the murderous group of people known as the Dead Rabbits. Taking the man prisoner, Cavalo is forced not only to face the horrors of his past, but the ramifications of the choices made for his stark present. And it is in the prisoner that he will find a possible future where redemption is but a glimmer that darkly shines.
The world has died.
This is the story of its remains.
Available
at:
Dreamspinner
Press Publications: https://www.dsppublications.com/books/withered-sere-by-tj-klune-240-b
Barnes and Noble: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/withered-sere-tj-klune/1123602027?ean=2940157776459
Withered + Sere Blog
Tour:
April 12 - MM Good Book Reviews
April 13- My Fiction Nook
April 18 - Just Love Romance
April 19 - Divine Magazine
April 19 - Scattered Thoughts and Rogue Words
April 19 - The Novel Approach
April 21 - It's About the Book
April 21 - Love Bytes
April 22 - Prism Book Alliance
Already bought the book, but need peace and quiet time to read it so we'll see. You're not competing with anyone else and, well, I bought it because it's you: TJ Klune, and imho anything you write is worth reading *fangirling*. Post apocalyptic world's not my normal thing but I'm looking forward to a change.
ReplyDeleteAfter reading this blog I'm also a bit scared...