Right now I’m up to my neck going through edits of my novella SUBMERGED CITY which is part of Aussie Speculative Fiction’s Drowned Earth series.
“So what is Drowned Earth?” You’re thinking. “Sounds wet.” You’d be right. After the ASF brains trust published BEGINNINGS, their first anthology, they decided they wanted to do something different. A series of standalone novellas in a shared world. Perhaps inspired by the environmental crises that we appear heading towards, perhaps by a desire to do something a bit different than the same old nuclear holocaust, they decided upon a world where the ice caps had melted, rising the sea levels drastically. Catastrophically.
Like many authors in the ASF facebook group, I pitched a story when submissions opened. And I was lucky enough for them to select my piece, SUBMERGED CITY, for the collection. Since then I’ve put several other projects on hold and focused on working on this watery apocalypse, and it’s been a lot of fun. A lot of work, a lot of early starts, but a lot of fun.
My story focuses on a small community that had made itself a home out of the remaining towers that have survived the tsunami, surrounded by waves. Many of them are refugees from the mainland, harassed and persecuted by the soldiers of General Messinger, a conservative christian who believes the destruction was God’s wrath at the sin and wretchedness of humanity.
The prequel to the Drowned Earth novellas is a short story, SHARDS OF SILVER, by Alanah Andrews. SHARDS OF SILVER is available here for free, right now!
I should also mention that Alanah Andrews has put all these covers together as well – don’t they look stunning?
In total there are eight standalone novellas. Even though they are all set in the one world, the concentrate on different groups of survivors, on different crises that effect the population in the aftermath of the watery apocalypse. On October 31st, my story SUBMERGED CITY will be released alongside THE RISE by Sue-Ellen Pashley and FIRE OVER TROUBLED WATER by Nick Marone. From there, a new title will be released at the end of each month; TIDES OF WAR by Marcus Turner in November, THE JINDABYNE SECRET by Jo Hart in December, RIVER OF DIAMONDS by S. M. Isaac in January, SALVAGED by C.A. Clark in February and EMOTO’S PROMISE by Shel Calopa in March.
Right now, the only way to pre-order these exciting novellas is through our kickstarter campaign, which just has five days left to run! Have a look at it here, and if you chose to support us everyone involved would be really appreciate it! We’ve almost doubled our target, and have loved the response we have received so far!
And thank you to everyone who had already contributed!
- Originally published September 2019
Austin P. Sheehan 