cozy catastrophe | CW Hawes

Indie April Suggestions – Part 3

Matthew Cormack

My favorite form of the post-apocalyptic novel is the cozy catastrophe.

My introduction to this sub-sub-genre was with the classic novel Earth Abides by George R Stewart.

That introduction was 30+ years ago, and I immediately fell in love with the book. But at the time I was unaware that there were others like it. Because back then there was no internet and easy information.

Years later, I learned that Earth Abides was merely one example of an entire sub-genre of post-apocalyptic fiction called cozy catastrophes. And boy was I happy!

In my opinion, Matthew Cormack is the cozy catastrophe writer par excellence. His Piranha Pandemic universe is an awful place, but one filled with hope that a better world will eventually rise up and replace the one that died.

To date, there are 3 novels set in his post-apocalyptic world:

Don’t Dream It’s Over

Ganbaru

The Piranha Pandemic: From Small Acorns…

All three are superlative examples of the cozy catastrophe. They portray with stunning realism the collapse of society, and how people will react to the loss of everything. And in true cozy catastrophe fashion, he shows how people will try to re-organize and rebuild society.

The books are standalone, so you can read them in any order.

Don’t Dream It’s Over was the first book published. It’s the story of one survivor of the apocalypse. It is the best novel in epistolary form that I’ve read. It is also one of the best in-depth character studies I’ve read. The book, quite simply, is brilliant.

Ganbaru is the story of what happens when a small peace-oriented community comes into contact with an aggressive and belligerent group. The results aren’t pretty, to say the least. An exciting novel that will keep you on the edge of your chair.

The Piranha Pandemic: From Small Acorns… is a prequel novel, as it tells how the pandemic came about and describes, with horrifying realism, the collapse of civilization.

As the origin of the pandemic is hinted at in Don’t Dream It’s Over, I suggest you read the books in the order above. You’ll see the state of things after the collapse from two perspectives, and then read about the collapse as it happened.

As a writer, Mr Cormack is a master craftsman. He knows how to tell an exciting story. He knows how to create believable and realistic people. His world is well-thought out and hangs together.

I can’t say enough good things about this “Sunday writer”, as he refers to himself. All I can say is that I wish every day was Sunday.

Treat yourself to the best cozy catastrophes being written today. Heck, the best post-apocalyptic fiction being written today. This Indie April acquaint yourself with Matthew Cormack. You’ll be glad you did.

Comments are always welcome! And until next time, happy reading!

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The Piranha Pandemic

Matthew Cormack is one in a legion of virtually unknown writers who are producing excellent fiction. Much of it better than what the big corporate publishers are giving the public to read.

These independent author/publishers, indies for short, publish some doggone good stuff. Fiction that truly deserves a much wider audience. Fiction that is frequently far better than the best selling drivel being forced upon readers’s eyeballs.

Last week I introduced you to one such writer: Matthew Cormack. This week, I’d like to tell you a bit about two of his three books. Only two, because I haven’t read the third one yet.

The Piranha Pandemic Universe

Mr. Cormack has created a fictional universe that is incredibly believable. Starting with a mysterious and fast-acting virus that eventually wipes out most of humanity, Cormack then extrapolates what the world would be like for those who survived the pandemic — and, more importantly, how they would deal with being a survivor.

This form of the post-apocalyptic sub-genre is called a cozy catastrophe.

The term was coined by Brian Aldiss as a pejorative to describe the plot of Wyndham’s The Day of the Triffids.

In spite of Aldiss, the point of the cozy catastrophe is not a celebration of bourgeois values — it’s a celebration of hope in the indomitable human spirit.

Not dystopian in tone, the cozy catastrophe is utopian. Given the chance, we can indeed fix the mess we ourselves made of society and culture. At last, at long last, a broken world gets to be fixed.

The “fix”, of course, depends on the worldview of the writer of the story.

In my own cozy catastrophe, The Rocheport Saga, the protagonist, Bill Arthur, pursues his anarcho-capitalist libertarian dream. Very utopian indeed!

On the other hand, Matthew Cormack takes a much more realistic view of things: nothing will change, because people are people.

Don’t Dream It’s Over

The first novel set in the Piranha Pandemic universe is Don’t Dream It’s Over. It’s the story of Peter, who is not the most savory of protagonists. He’s pretty much like everyone we know: he has good points and bad points and sometimes the bad points do outnumber the good points. Although, through the course of the story, we see the dross slowly burned away to reveal a pretty doggone good guy. A good guy who’d been corrupted by modern society.

Peter decides to leave London, leave England. At first, his only goal is to reach the Mediterranean. However, as he meets other survivors along the way, and sees how they are coping or not coping with the aftermath of the plague, his own goal begins to change. And by the end of the book, Peter truly is the hero of the story.

Cormack is a cracker jack writer. He makes the epistolary novel form come alive. And he does this by giving us real people in very lifelike situations. That is Cormack’s gift: an eye for people. He’s a canny observer of life and puts those observations into his books.

Don’t Dream It’s Over is a long book: over 250,000 words. Long books aren’t my cup of tea. Yet once I started Don’t Dream, I was hooked. The story was compelling and the book didn’t lag as so many long novels do.

Perhaps what I enjoyed most about Don’t Dream was the realism. No dystopia or utopia here. Although there are dystopian and utopian groups encountered by Peter on his journey to find himself. Which is just another way of saying that we find here real people in real situations.

As one reviewer wrote: “…boy does this book stay with you long after you have finally put it down.” And it does.

Ganbaru

Ganbaru is the second book set in the Piranha Pandemic universe. The story revolves around a completely different set of characters then we encountered in Don’t Dream.

The setting is England. Rural England. And here we have utopia meets dystopia. A small group of survivors intent on making the world a better place, collide with a much larger group led by a real bad egg named Baz. The story line revolves around how the small group can become free from the large group, after Baz’s group takes them over.

I don’t want to spoil the story. You’ll have to read it on your own — and I definitely encourage you to do so.

Once again, Cormack gives us real people in realistic settings which results in a very believable story. A story so believable you tend to forget you’re reading a novel.

Ganbaru is a cozy catastrophe that is largely a thriller laced with a heaping helping of suspense. In my opinion, Cormack has taken the cozy catastrophe and made it a genre for today, yet keeping true to the sub-genre’s roots.

Here’s my review from Amazon:

Matthew Cormack’s Piranha Pandemic Universe is a scary place. The survivors are fighting nature, dwindling resources, and themselves.

Don’t Dream It’s Over is the first book set in this universe. The story is superbly told, for Mr Cormack is a superb storyteller.

Ganbaru gives us a look at a different part of the Piranha Pandemic Universe. A small group of survivors, who are principled persons, want to start rebuilding a better world, and have begun their project in an old abandoned priory.

As fate would have it, they meet a larger group that is pragmatically ruthless. The clash of civilizations, as it were, makes for exciting reading.

Ganbaru is a realistic post-apocalyptic tale. There are no zombies or aliens or monsters — unless we, ourselves, qualify as the monsters.

The story is told well and peopled with real-life characters in real-life situations who must make difficult decisions.

A fabulous story by a fabulous writer.

A fabulous writer indeed.

In these days of pandemic, I encourage you to read Matthew Cormack’s books. Because, at the end of the day, he’ll give you hope — and that’s exactly what we need.

Don’t Dream It’s Over is available from Amazon US and UK.

Ganbaru is available from Amazon US and UK.

The Piranha Pandemic: From Small Acorns… is available from Amazon US and UK.

Comments are always welcome! And until next time, happy reading!

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After the Apocalypse

With Coronavirus cases now over 750,000 worldwide, deaths over 36,000, and many areas of the US and the world under stay at home orders or lockdown, it might seem like we are experiencing the Apocalypse.

Of course, as I pointed out last week, the Coronavirus while dangerous is nowhere near as deadly as the Spanish Flu of 1918. That bug was killing a million people a week and did so for 25 straight weeks.

But no one today remembers the Spanish Flu Pandemic of 102 years ago.

For that matter, no one remembers the Hong Kong Flu Pandemic of 1968, which killed from one to four million people worldwide. Nor does anyone remember the Asian Flu Pandemic of 1957, which also originated in China, and went on to kill from one to four million people worldwide.

Will Coronavirus be as bad as those flu pandemics? At this stage, we don’t know. Sure experts make guesses — and I emphasize guesses — but even the experts don’t really know. No one will until it’s all over.

Pandemics are a staple in the post-apocalyptic writer’s arsenal of weapons available to wipe out humanity.

However, will a pandemic actually do so? That’s debatable. The Black Death, the most deadly disease to hit the Western world, wiped out 60% of Europe’s population — yet civilization marched on.

Personally, I don’t think a pandemic will be the end of the world as we know it. Not unless the bug that causes it is so foreign and fast acting that we won’t be able to respond in time. Something like the Andromeda Strain.

Be that as it may, pandemics have wiped out humanity in fiction many times over. There are those classics such as Earth Abides by George R Stewart, Empty World by John Christopher, I Am Legend by Richard Matheson, Terry Nation’s TV series and book Survivors, Mary Shelley’s The Last Man, and The Stand by Stephen King.

Indie authors have also jumped on the pandemic bandwagon. Authors such as AJ Newman, Ryan Casey, and AG Riddle.

But as you know, if you are a reader of this blog, I eschew bestsellers. IMO, they usually fail to live up to the hype.

Thus far, I’d have to say the most realistic post-apocalyptic pandemic novels I’ve read are those from the pen of Matthew Cormack.

If you’ve never heard of Matthew Cormack, that’s not surprising. He rather avoids the limelight. He labels himself a “Sunday writer”.

I ran across Mr Cormack in a Facebook writer’s group, where I was looking for some books to read. He offered his book Don’t Dream It’s Over. I read it and loved it. I mean I LOVED IT!!!

Matthew Cormack’s superb world building and very human characters and very realistic situations are what won the day for me.

Don’t Dream It’s Over is the initial novel set in the post-apocalyptic world of the Piranha Pandemic. Don’t Dream was followed by Ganbaru, and the just released The Piranha Pandemic: From Small Acorns… (which I’m very much looking forward to reading).

While the 3 novels are set in the same universe, each one is a standalone work.

Cormack writes about people. His books aren’t prepper manuals, or EMP exercises. They are books about people and how they act under extreme duress. His characters and the situations they get into are very real. These are people who could be your next door neighbor or your relatives.

If Coronavirus were to wipe out most of us who are breathing today, I think the world left behind would be very much like the one Matthew Cormack has created.

Next week, I’ll go into a bit more detail about the books themselves.

In the meantime, they’re only 99¢ each. Surely 3 bucks isn’t too much for some truly top-notch experiences in a world that might be. Experiences that will make you sit back and say, “Thank God I live in this world and not that one.”

Here are the links to the books:

Don’t Dream It’s Over

Ganbaru

The Piranha Pandemic: From Small Acorns…

Comments are always welcome! And until next time, happy reading!

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Don’t Dream It’s Over

Good Books You Probably Never Heard Of – Part 12

Don’t Dream It’s Over by Matthew Cormack

Every now and then we all come across a stellar book. One that grabs us and resonates with us like few others have.

Don’t Dream It’s Over is a hefty post-apocalyptic novel, coming in at over 700 pages. Such a length is not my normal cup of tea. I don’t particularly like long books. Inevitably there are parts that are just plain old boring and others that are tedious at best.

So imagine my surprise when I didn’t encounter any of those negatives in Mr Cormack’s book, and it grabbed me as few others have. It was a very pleasant and welcomed surprise.

There are many types of post-apocalyptic novels. There’s the very popular zombie apocalypse and it’s aftermath. There are the prepper PA novels. The EMP novels. The pandemics. Alien invasions. Cozy catastrophes (my favorite). And the list goes on.

However, Mr Cormack’s novel isn’t so easy to categorize. It comes closest to being a cozy catastrophe. A cozy is a PA novel that focuses on rebuilding the world to make it a better place than it was before the disaster. They are essentially utopian in character.

Classic examples of the cozy catastrophe are Earth Abides and The Day of the Triffids. Terry Nation’s BBC TV series, Survivors, and the book he wrote later on, also titled Survivors, fit nicely into the cozy catastrophe category, as well.

Yet, Don’t Dream It’s Over isn’t 100% cozy catastrophe either, because there isn’t a lot of focus placed on rebuilding the world. In fact, there is an interesting section where a wise old thinker postulates that the visionaries will die out and it will be the ones who think of nothing but expansion that will survive. A touch of dystopia there.

What Don’t Dream It’s Over primarily is, is an extended character study. A character study of the narrator as he goes about his business of day-to-day survival and trying to figure out what to do with his life. Don’t Dream It’s Over is primarily a novel of self-discovery and personal growth.

Mr Cormack’s book is an engaging story. He grabs your attention, holds it, and doesn’t let it go.

The format is that of the epistolary novel, using journal entries instead of letters. What can be a difficult format, Mr Cormack handles exceedingly well. He knows how to pace the story and knows when to introduce thrills and spills to keep the narrative from getting boring.

I’ve read the book twice, and I don’t usually re-read novels. And I thoroughly enjoyed it both times.

I encourage you to buy a copy (it’s only 99¢ as of this writing and is in Kindle Unlimited). Support this fabulously talented indie author. He has another novel set in the same universe: Ganbaru. It is on my reading list.

Don’t Dream It’s Over is very highly recommended. Don’t miss this one.

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The Rocheport Saga-Part 2

Last week I talked a bit about my post-apocalyptic series The Rocheport Saga. I said it was part philosophy, part family saga, part satire, part libertarian thought, part action/adventure novel, and all post-apocalyptic speculation. I also noted that the series is written in epistolary form; that is, as diary entries. I’m very fond of the epistolary format because of the intimate picture it can give us of the main character’s thoughts. Provided of course he or she is a reliable narrator. If not, then we enter a mystery world of trying to figure what is real and what is not. Either way, the epistolary novel is an ideal vehicle.

The Saga is written in story arcs, not unlike television writing, and the first seven novels form the first arc. The arc itself is divided into three parts.

Part I comprises the first two books: The Morning Star and The Shining City. And might be called “Beginnings”. This is where the story begins. Where we learn about Bill Arthur’s dream and how he intends to go about it. His dream of creating a libertarian utopia and of returning to the 21st Century’s technology.

Love Is Little, The Troubled City, and By Leaps and Bounds form Part II. The little community of Rocheport faces enemies from without and within. Our hero, Bill Arthur, is struggling to hold it all together and to do so faces the ugly reality that he will have to betray a few of his most cherished beliefs.

Nevertheless, in By Leaps and Bounds we begin to see that it does indeed look as though the community has turned a corner and will in fact survive.

Part III comprises Freedom’s Freehold and the soon to be published Take to the Sky. Whereas Part II might be titled “Conflict”, Part III could be called “Hope”. The corner has been turned and Bill Arthur feels confident the people of Rocheport will usher in a new era of peace, freedom, and technological advancement.

While The Rocheport Saga is many things, it is all post-apocalyptic speculation. The series is a realistic attempt, I think, at speculating how civilization might come back from a massive catastrophic event — and come back better than it was before the disaster. Therefore there are no zombies or other monsters in the story. Nor are there aliens from space. This is a human story of human dreams and aspirations.

The Marquis de Sade wrote philosophy in the form of pornography. And pornography was a suitable format for him to present his philosophy.

The post-apocalyptic cozy catastrophe, I found, was the most suitable format for me to express my philosophy and social views. Because, at base, the cozy catastrophe is about building a better world.

Which makes it a vehicle by which the author can criticize the current world in which he or she lives and present a model of how the problems can be solved.

S. Fowler Wright used Deluge and Dawn to portray the legal injustices against the labor class and to challenge certain social assumptions. John Wyndham used The Day of the Triffids to hint at the dangers associated with bio-engineering and to point out the dangers of military weapons orbiting the planet. In Earth Abides, George R Stewart points out how a poor black rural working family would be much more capable of surviving, than a white urban couple in New York City. Pointing out how fragile our urban worlds are. Stewart also pointed out that when push comes to shove, we are all equal by having his white protagonist marry a woman who wasn’t white. All that in a book written in the late ‘40s.

The cozy catastrophe is the perfect vehicle for world building. For creating our utopias. I’m surprised that few writers see this and utilize this form. For in the end, all writers are philosophers. Our books are either our ideal worlds or a graphic picture of what we think is wrong with the current world.

And so, in The Rocheport Saga, I present my version of what utopia would be like. No government. Sovereign and self-responsible individuals. Family centered. Social and intellectual freedom. A place where people follow the Golden Rule, respect each other, and help each other. I think it’s a vision that is very appealing and attainable.

As always, comments are welcome! Let me know your thoughts. And until next time, happy reading!

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The Rocheport Saga

The Rocheport Saga is part philosophy, part family saga, part satire, part libertarian thought, part action/adventure novel, and all post-apocalyptic speculation. It is my contribution to the cozy catastrophe sub-genre of post-apocalyptic fiction.

The story structure is that of one of my favorite forms: the epistolary novel. The story is told by means of diary entries from a man named Bill Arthur, with occasional diary entries from other characters.

Bill’s diary begins eight months after the cataclysm that kills off most of humanity, the event he simply calls “That Day”. The first sentence he writes is “Today I killed a man and a woman.” He follows that sentence with a brief explanation of what life is like in the new world where everyone is faced with a daily struggle to survive and where some do not make it.

Today I killed a man and a woman. I didn’t want to, but I had no choice. It was me or them. This is how it is now. How it has been for not quite eight months. Everyone on his or her own. The quick or the dead. It wasn’t how it used to be, though. We complained about the old days. Now anyone who remains would do anything to return to even the worst of the old days. But they are gone and will not return for a very long time. Maybe never.

The focus in the cozy catastrophe is on building a better world out of the ashes of the old one. And The Rocheport Saga is no different.

There is no focus on and very little discussion of the disaster. It happened. It was horrible. And now we must move on. The milk is spilt. No sense crying over it.

And Bill Arthur doesn’t. His quest is to preserve as much knowledge as possible and bring the Twenty-first Century back on line as soon as possible.

Of course no story, even one that is essentially “plotless”, can survive without conflict, and Bill has plenty of conflict in Rocheport. All the way from the silly and inane to the deadly serious and life threatening.

Next week we’ll take a look at the books published thus far in the series and provide a synopsis of each.

Until then, happy reading!

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A Message of Hope

Post-apocalyptic literature addresses the question: what would life be like if the world as we know it came to an end?

The answer can be dark or light, dystopian or utopian. All depending on how the author wants to play the game. For now, the dark, dystopian answer seems to be what everyone wants. Hence the popularity of all the various iterations of the zombie apocalypse, and such books as The Hunger Games, or such TV series as The 100.

The end of the world as we know it ushered in Hell on Earth. In most cases, this approach to the post-apocalyptic story is survivalist in tone. The main character or characters are in a fight for their lives from beginning to end, with little relief in the middle.

However, the apocalypse, if we survive it and depending on the state of the world if we do, doesn’t have to be a hopeless cesspool. It can be a time of starting over and hopefully making things better. Everything depends ultimately on the author’s Weltanschauung, or worldview.

That is why I like the cozy catastrophe. At the end of the day, it offers us hope. It offers us a vision of the world where our better side triumphs. In the midst of disaster and its aftermath, the best of what makes us human comes to the fore.

The cozy catastrophe may have a battle for survival as part of the storyline, but the main emphasis is on rebuilding the world. And hopefully make it better than it was before the catastrophe.

S. Fowler Wright in Deluge and Dawn, classic cozy catastrophes (you can read for free at http://www.sfw.org), spends little time on the catastrophe and no time on why it happened. The bulk of the story in both books is allotted to how Martin Webster is going to create a new society without the flaws of the old one and how he will deal with the opposition to his leadership.

The ending of his 2-part saga in Dawn is somewhat bittersweet, and yet the world goes on. In spite of everything it goes on and humanity will survive.

In The Day of the Triffids, the book closes on a note of profound hope. Hope that all will become better for the human race, we’ll learn, and that humanity’s mucking around with nature won’t be the end of the human race.

Writers of cozy catastrophes, for the most part, see the catastrophe as wiping the slate clean. Then, if the survivors are up to it, they can build utopia.

In Dean Wesley Smith’s Dust and Kisses, the enterprising main characters are doing alright on their own when they run into each other. And then trouble comes to town. But is it? Again, hope wins the day.

Not all cozy catastrophes have a happy ending. Some are bittersweet. Fowler’s above mentioned Dawn. Earth Abides. Terry Nation’s book Survivors. But generally they are on the whole upbeat.

My own The Rocheport Saga is part philosophy, part family saga, part satire, and part action/adventure. And all about one man’s quest to fulfill his dream for a new world, a better world. In other words, utopia.

Perhaps it’s painting with too broad a brush to say writers of dark dystopian post-apocalyptic books are pessimists and cozy catastrophe writers are optimists. Nevertheless, the unrelenting darkness of something like The Hunger Games trilogy stands in stark contrast to the optimism expressed in The Day of the Triffids. Or even Earth Abides, where the main character doesn’t get what he had hoped for and yet the human race will survive and perhaps end up better than before.

Pessimistic or optimistic. Dystopia or utopia. Which is your preference?

Until next time, happy reading!

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Cozy Catastrophe Review: Deluge

In some ways, Noah’s flood could qualify as a cozy catastrophe — made all the more cozy by divine revelation informing Noah of the impending disaster and telling him how best to survive it. However, I don’t know anyone who classifies the story as one.

On the other hand, God deigned not to intervene in S. Fowler Wright’s 1928 novel Deluge and it is an excellent example of the cozy catastrophe.

We’ve already observed that the cozy is not a recent phenomenon as some would suggest. It goes as far back as 1885 with Richard Jefferies’ After London; or, Wild England. And perhaps further. Especially if we include Noah.

Wright is a new author to me. He was very popular in his day. Unfortunately, he is faded into oblivion. There is a website dedicated to him — www.sfw.org — which includes nearly all of his works.

I was very impressed with Deluge and am currently reading the sequel, Dawn. The characters are well-drawn and believable, at least believable given the standards of 1928. Which means there is a definite class structure as well as a definite sexual divide between men and women, something some modern readers might have trouble with. However, Wright includes strong leaders among the lower class and includes two very strong female leads, which shows Wright to have been an author ahead of his time.

The novel is a wonderful blend of survival, love triangle, and nascent future building. Wright knew how to keep the tension mounting. His hero and heroines don’t have an easy time of it.

If the novel has any flaws it is that Wright tells the story in the third person omniscient. We learn everything about everything, which at times I felt bogged down the story with information I didn’t think necessary or that could have been given to me through some other form, such as conversation.

Engaging in descriptions of sex was taboo back then and I found amusing some of Wright’s circumlocutions to get around the subject and say what couldn’t be said. One involves one of the character’s claim she could be pregnant. Having only been with the man for five days and not intimate for most of those days makes pregnancy unlikely. However, Wright couldn’t come right out with the couple engaging in sex. So he uses the euphemism of pregnancy to tell the reader they were indeed getting it on!

Aside from the third person omniscient point of view and subject taboos we might find resulting in odd circumlocutions and euphemisms, the book is eminently readable.

The story tells us first of Martin and Helen, husband and wife, who get separated by the overnight catastrophe, and of Martin’s subsequent attempts to survive. The story then shifts to Claire, her survival, and her eventual meeting up with Martin. And because writers must make their characters suffer… Well, Gentle Reader, I’ll leave it there. You will need to read this tale to find out how it ends. The ending, I will say, is a satisfying surprise.

The cozy catastrophe is alive and well. There are many wonderful examples out there waiting to be discovered. Examples of human courage, hope, and ingenuity. For me, that is what makes the cozy catastrophe so enjoyable. It gives me hope the good within us all will win out over the evil.

Comments are always welcome. Until next time, happy reading!

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Cozy Catastrophe Review: The Rocheport Saga

The Rocheport Saga is my contribution to the cozy catastrophe subgenre. Freedom’s Freehold, the sixth book in the series, is available for pre-order, and the entire series is on sale for 99¢ per book until the 13th of June. Do get your copies now, if you haven’t already. They are available at the retailer of your choice.

Without even knowing what a cozy catastrophe was, I wrote about Bill Arthur’s attempt to preserve the accumulated knowledge of the human race in the wake of an overnight virtual annihilation of humanity. Taking as a general guide Stewart’s Earth Abides. And so it was quite by accident I incorporated all the features that make a cozy a cozy.

The Rocheport Saga is a sprawling work. It covers one man’s lifetime: from his late 50s to his death at 103. It is the second “novel” I wrote and the first after I came to the realization I was a pantser who had a liking for the “plotless” novel. By which I mean to say, The Rocheport Saga is very much like most of our lives: we have story arcs, picaresque adventures, but very little in the way of plot. Most of us, myself included, live from day to day. We don’t plot out our lives. Sure we have our plans. Most of those end up as merely wishes.

Kazuo Ishiguro, in his novel An Artist of the Floating World, summed it up quite well, I think. Most of us, at the end of the day, find ourselves to be, for all our dreams and efforts, ordinary people in extraordinary times. We give it our best to be great and usually fall far short.

That is why virtual life is so popular. Whether that virtual life be novels, games, TV, movies, social media, or a façade carefully maintained as though we were actors and actresses on a stage. Virtual life allows us to be great. It gives us the chance to be winners.

All literature, in my opinion, is ultimately fantasy. It is wish fulfillment. We want to be the hero who succeeds at the quest. Or to be the man or woman who finds true love. Or perhaps that one person to succeed where others can’t and thereby receive the recognition and adulation we know we are all entitled to.

The Rocheport Saga is no different. It is fantasy masquerading as science fiction. Because, let’s face it, what are the odds of a Bill Arthur surviving such a cataclysm and being able to guide and hold together such a rag tag group as that in Rocheport? Probably nil. And yet, we all would like to be Bill Arthur. I know I would.

Why? Because he is not like us. He is underneath it all an extraordinary man who gets to live in extraordinary times. He is the quintessential nobody who rises to the occasion when the occasion presents itself. Which is a key feature of the cozy catastrophe. He and he alone is capable of leading the people of Rocheport and ultimately of Missouri. The stuff of which dreams are made.

In The Morning Star, we meet Bill Arthur. He is searching for a home. The urban areas are too dangerous for his liking. Along the way, he meets Mert, Mel, and Sally. They are the beginning of his blended family through which his dream eventually comes to fruition.

Book 2, The Shining City, finds the inhabitants of Rocheport doing what it seems people do best: fighting. There is war and Bill’s group eventually wins, but not without loss. For war only comes with loss.

The losers of the civil war in Rocheport are very poor sports and in the next two books, Love is Little and The Troubled City, our hero has no end of grief in his attempt to ensure the group’s survival and accomplish his dream of a return to high technology and for everyone to live by the Golden Rule.

By Leaps and Bounds, Book 5, sees a turn. On his way to a libertarian republic and living by the Golden Rule, Bill disbands Rocheport’s communal way of life and makes everyone responsible for his or her success or failure.

In Book 6, Freedom’s Freehold, Bill, in the face of dangerous external and internal forces, as well as personal crises, continues his technological advance and his desire to implement a libertarian republic — that best form of government which governs not at all, as Thoreau wrote.

Just as Europe emerged from the Dark Ages to realize the world was a very large place, so too does Rocheport emerge from its isolation to find there are many little communities like itself.

Bill embarks on building a telegraph network to link together likeminded cities. He builds steam-powered cars and trucks for travel and trade. And for long distance exploration and trade, he builds a steam-powered airship.

The forthcoming books will chronicle the ever growing world in which Rocheport finds itself. The question always being will Bill and his dream remain in the center of that world and will Rocheport truly become the shining city set upon the hill.

The Rocheport Saga is the cozy catastrophe on a grand scale. I hope you enjoy it.

Comments are welcome, as always. Until next time, happy reading!

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Category: cozy catastrophe

Indie April Suggestions – Part 3

The Piranha Pandemic

After the Apocalypse

More Suggested Reads

Don’t Dream It’s Over

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