Published! Chaos of Hard Clay – An Anthology of Post-Apocalyptic Fiction

Chaos of Hard Clay is Published!

Somewhere within the fits of reason that assailed her, Sunny caught a glimpse of the boy. There, between the sleeping and the dreaming, she knew she always would.

“I saw him again.”

“Oh?” The nurse pulled a thin blanket over Sunny’s shoulders. Sunny lay in a deep chair, curled into a ball. Her hips ached and her back was tight. The nurse opened the curtains. The sun streaked in, lighting the bed in front of her. Instantly she felt the heat and pushed the blanket off and onto the floor. The bed was still empty. She’d hoped that, maybe, the bed wouldn’t be empty. She hoped that, maybe, it had all just been one long nightmare. She took a deep breath.

“Yes,” she said.

“Wait. Which boy?” The nurse was cautious.

“The one there on the docks.”

“Huh? Oh…Ok.” The nurse pulled at his blue scrubs, adjusted his surgical glass and sat down on the empty bed. He ran his fingers through his dark hair and sighed. “Do you want to tell me about him?”

“He’s gone. They’re all gone,” she said. “It hurts.”

“Nothing hurts forever.”

“A mother shouldn’t have to bury her own son.”

The nurse nodded. He didn’t know what to say to her.

“You remember the ferry that used to go out there?” She asked. “Do you remember? You could still see the island from shore that spring.”

“Not anymore.”

“No.”

“It wasn’t so far away then.”

“No…Of course it was actually there, then. And then it wasn’t.” Redoubt had reinforced the old ferry in the winter because of the waves. They’d grown so big out there almost anything would roll. They took out all the windows and welded in steel plates. The third deck was like a fortress. They reinforced the hull and put in padded chairs and seat belts. It wasn’t supposed to be fun. Just transportation. “Do you remember?”

He didn’t. He was too young. The ferry hadn’t run for years.

“I had to get out there to the island to get back. But I was afraid to go home…..”

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So begins my short story  Hanging, Just Outside the World published last week in Chaos of Hard Clay: An Anthology of Post-Apocalyptic Fiction, a 348 page anthology that imagines a world gone horribly wrong. Nuclear war. Climate Change. Zombies. Aliens. Science Gone Mad. Twenty authors present twenty horrific scenarios detailing the end of society. The good guys, the bad guys, and the murderers are all here, eking out a scant survival…or destroying all they come across. Who will live? Who will die? And will there be an Earth left when they do?  AHHHHH!  Its all too much!!!

Well, actually its pretty fun. These stories range from thought-provoking to adventurous to horrifying to silly. This is a really fun collection of stories. My story is, of course, is a climate fiction or “CLI-FI” story. What happens to a woman whose community is about to drown?

I wrote about climate fiction in my article “Getting to Utopia” a few months back.

You seriously need to get a copy of this book. It would also be really helpful if – AFTER you read it – you would review the book on Amazon. It’s fine and all to buy and read it…but reviews sale more books (even when they’re negative). Chaos of Hard Clay is a fun read and you’ll be supporting a bunch of up and coming authors.

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