Over the weekend my debut novella SUBMERGED CITY was launched. That’s super-exciting for me, and I am ecstatic with all the wonderful support that the story has received.
Today I’d like to share with you all a little bit behind the story and how it all came to be, because it wasn’t the typical write, edit, query, receive a rejection, cry, try again process. SUBMERGED CITY is a standalone novella in a shared world with other stories in the Drowned Earth series, published by Deadset Press. And each of those separate stories are written by different authors.
The concept of the Drowned Earth series came from the brains trust of Aussie Speculative Fiction, an online group which supports speculative fiction writers from Australia and New Zealand, and often have open submission calls for various anthologies.
So I pitched a half-baked idea, and they liked it. Then I submitted a sample of my writing, and they liked that too. For I-don’t-even-want-to-know-how-many months I worked on this story, bringing the characters to life, researching the elevation levels and topographic maps of Melbourne, finding out what effect a rise in water levels would have.
Did my story turn out the way I intended it to? No. My writing style is that of a planner. I have an idea of what’s going to happen, and I just sit down and make up what has to happen next in order to get the characters from point A to point B. And as I went through that process, the story got darker, characters grew and changed in ways that I didn’t expect when I originally pitched it.
And here is the final product, a story of finding courage and hope amidst disaster.
Here is the purchase link if you want your own copy! – Let’s just hope that this disaster never comes true.
This had been a really exciting project to be a part of, and I cannot thank the folk at Aussie Speculative Fiction enough! Of course, I must also thank anyone who buys a copy of SUBMERGED CITY, it really means a lot to me that you’re choosing to support a brand new indie author like myself, and I hope you enjoy my book!
- Originally published November 2019
Austin P. Sheehan 