Guest Post by Lydia Baker: Writing an apocalyptic world and the theme of family

 Writing an apocalyptic world and the theme of family

Thank you so much for having me on your blog, Kate. My sci-fi novel, AVA, takes place in a futuristic city that mirrors London but could be any big city. Ava and her fellow humans have been trapped under an electrical barrier that appeared fourteen years ago when Ava was a child visiting the city with her father and brother. As a young adult, her determination to escape the barrier and discover if her family has survived drives her. But the things that wait for her on the outside are beyond anything she could have imagined. The novel follows the themes of family, self-sacrifice and self-discovery. 

One of the beauties of writing an apocalyptic world is that you can create a plethora of problems for your main characters so you can explore many different themes. Ava is separated from her mother and twin sister, something that her father struggles to deal with and eventually the grief of the loss and not knowing overcomes him. The loss of her father is detrimental to Ava. He was her protector and without him, Ava is left with her brother, who was adopted but is resentful of his sisters that are his parent's biological children. This theme of family plays out in the relationship between Ava and her brother with the distrust and betrayal that clouds their friendship and the abuse her brother deals out to her. 

Without giving too much away, Ava faces the ultimate betrayal from her brother when she escapes the barrier. On the other side, she is faced with the family she lost and struggles to work out her place with those she thought she had lost, as it had been fourteen years since they saw each other. 

Growing up inside the barrier, oppressed and hiding her gender to save it, has changed and warped Ava's character. Her loyalty is skewed and she struggles to accept that her family has moved on or to trust others. The family she left behind, that she has risked everything to find, isn't the one she has been imagining. Eventually, she comes to realise that the world is bigger than her, it is more than just her pain and she can make a difference—the most important difference.

Ava grows considerably during the novel. She goes from a somewhat immature young woman, only thinking of herself, to someone who knows that though it means giving up everything she can save those who mean the world to her, those she loves. I wanted to show the development of character through the growth of Ava and the shedding of her naivety. Something we all have to do as we grow and experience the world. I also wanted to explore how the world can shape us through Ava. There are some stark differences between her and the family she finds on the outside, who weren't oppressed by MTech (the controlling government) yet have still had to face equally terrifying dangers. Their attitudes are very different. 

As well as the more serious themes, AVA is full of twists and thrills, fighting and exploring. If you like a fast-paced, dystopian, sci-fi novel with a determined yet flawed female protagonist then please check out AVA! Thanks again, Kate, for having me on your blog. 

Lydia Baker is an author of science-fiction and fantasy, she loves to write novels you can escape into.

Her novel ‘The Return of the Queen’ won the Pink Heart Society Reviewers Choice Award for Best Paranormal/Fantasy Romance in 2019 and ‘Ava’ was Shortlisted for the Agora Books - Work in Progress Prize in 2019. Her short story A.R.C is featured in the Fantasy and Science Fiction Writers Alliance Anthology, 2023.

When she’s not writing she loves to read, run and crochet (not all at the same time though!). She lives in Crawley with her husband and four children.

AVA by Lydia Baker:

First, they came for the city, and we allowed it. They put up the Barrier and we stayed quiet, silenced by the fear of what was beyond. Our elderly were next and still, we didn’t cry out; then they came for the women, removed their fertility and stole our future, so I hid. I became Alec and I turned my back on my true self, Ava.

Ava can’t live as Alec any longer, the lie is killing her, destroying all that she is.

The world beyond MTech’s Barrier calls to her and she can’t ignore it. She has to know what, if anything, survived the terrible day that tore her family apart fourteen years ago.

But what if the Outside is far more dangerous than anything Ava has ever faced on the Inside?

Ava is set in a dystopian future, where individual rights are being eroded and the population live under a dome barrier that they have been told is for their protection. But, what is outside? Is escape possible? Even if it is, will it be a death sentence?

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The Arid Lands themes: Climate effects of a dried up sea.

As I have mentioned in a previous post, 6 million years ago (Ma) the Mediterranean Sea entered a phase of desiccation when it became cut off from the Atlantic, and almost completely dried up. This is the same scenario I have envisioned for the alternate future world of The Arid Lands, where Inez and her people struggle to survive, not knowing that everything is about to change.

The desiccation of the Mediterranean Sea would have a number of knock-on effects for the climate of the surrounding lands as well as creating a unique environment in the basin itself.

The climate of the basin can only be speculated for no equivalent environment exists on Earth today. But it is likely that as the depth of the basins increased so did the temperatures, possibly reaching summer midday highs of as much as 80C at its deepest points. This would not allow the existence of permanent life and it is likely that temperatures were nowhere near this extreme. But they would have been elevated enough to make life there extremely uncomfortable and difficult.

The surrounding areas would also experience climatic changes. Currently evaporation from the Mediterranean Sea provides moisture to the atmosphere which drives rainfall across much of the surrounding areas. With the Sea drying up there would be no input of moisture to the atmosphere and these rains would fail, resulting in a significantly drier climate over most of the central and eastern mediterranean belt.

In fact, the Mediterranean climate that we associate with Greece, Italy and the Levant would exist only in the Iberian Peninsula and NW Africa.

The desiccation would result in the extinction of much of the marine flora and fauna native to the basins, but the fusing of the two land masses would allow dispersal of terrestrial animals across the region.

Inez’s people survive by fishing for shrimp in the brine pools. In truth such a hypersaline environment would be hostile to life, but life is adaptable and my poor basin dwelling people have to eat something. Hence the shrimp. But apart from that I’ve tried to keep the environment in which they live as plausible as possible.

So how did this scenario arise in the world I have created? That will be the subject of a future post on this blog.

The Arid Lands is available from Amazon in both kindle and print format.

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Review: Hot Ash and the Oasis Defect by Philip Wyeth

The Book

Welcome to 2045. Automation has freed humanity from the drudgery and limitations of blue-collar labor. For twenty years, a remarkable group of female bureaucrats has overseen an ambitious construction program that is spreading equity, prosperity, and peace worldwide.

But Detective Ashley Westgard of the Jacksonville Police Corps senses that beneath all the glimmer and shine, a new malaise has taken root in society. From brazen acts of criminality and rampant party pill abuse, to her own insatiable desires... All is not well on the road to paradise.

Ash is beautiful, vain, headstrong, and erratic. A symbol of her time as she careens from impulsive shopping sprees to drunken fights to escapades of sin. But now that a methodical killer is on the loose, she must rise above apathy and doubt in order to forge her raging inner fire into a fearsome weapon of justice.

My Thoughts

This is a futuristic detective story with a pulpy feel and a noir vibe. The story charges along at pace and the twists and turns keep you guessing. I read it in one sitting. The world the author has created is immersive and there is a strong sense of place.

The only criticism I have is Ash herself. This book is clearly written by a man from a female POV. At times I felt that Ash was more of a man’s ideal of what a feisty woman should be like, rather than someone who, as a female myself, I could relate to.

But unless that really bothers you it won’t distract from what is at heart a fun romp. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this. It’s short, but it’s entertaining.

The Arid Lands themes: The Messinian Salinity Crisis

My newly released SF novel, The Arid Lands is set some 600 years from now, in an alternate future when the Mediterranean has almost completely dried out. It is in this inhospitable landscape of salt flats and occasional pools of hypersaline brine that Inez and her people struggle to survive. Inez knows no other existence. But all that is about to change.

You may think that the idea of a vast sea such as the Mediterranean almost completely evaporating is pure fiction, but let me tell you, it is not. For the Mediterranean Sea did indeed dry out, albeit a long time ago.

About 6 Million years ago (Ma) the Mediterranean Sea became disconnected from the Atlantic Ocean. During the period that followed, known as the Messinian Salinity Crisis the sea almost completely evaporated.

The closing of the connections between the Mediterranean and the Atlantic Ocean, which is now the Straits of Gibraltar, was caused by the shifting tectonics in this region. This isolation of the Mediterranean from the main inflow happened several times, between 6 and 5.3 Ma.

The initial phase was one of repeated cycles of evaporation and replenishment which led to the formation of thick sequences of evaporite deposits, minerals such as halite and gypsum, deposited from the evaporating seawater.

The connection was then cut off for a prolonged period of time. During this later episode of desiccation, the Mediterranean became a dry basin, as much as 5 km deep, with only a few hypersaline pockets of water remaining. This process of drying out the Mediterranean Sea is estimated to have taken about 1000 years.

The Mediterranean remained dry until 5.3 Ma when the Straits of Gibraltar were finally breached, and water flooded back into the Mediterranean basin in the form of a cataclysmic flood, and so the Mediterranean Sea as we know it today was formed.

But the thick evaporite deposits and the presence of deep canyons in the seabed which cut down into the abyssal plains as water returned to the sea are testament to this arid phase in the Mediterranean Sea’s history.

This is the setting for The Arid Lands. A hostile environment that once really existed. I will talk more about this geological event and how it inspired the world I describe in The Arid Lands in future posts on this blog.

The Arid Lands is available from Amazon in both kindle and print format.

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Review: Zen Dynamics – Putting Buddhist theory into practice by Andrew May

The Book

Buddhism can sometimes come across as abstract and philosophical, but it has a strongly practical side too – and that’s what this book is all about. It focuses on four areas in particular:

– The analysis of personality types, both in Buddhism and traditional Chinese medicine, showing how this can enhance self-awareness and personal development.

– How “karma”, or the law of cause-and-effect applied on a personal scale, functions in an entirely non-mystical, non-supernatural way within the flow of human thoughts and emotions.

– How meditation techniques are used in different schools of Buddhism to calm the mind and provide insight into its inner workings.

– A “demystification” of Zen Buddhism, showing how its seeming illogicality and iconoclasm actually serve a serious practical purpose in developing the human mind.

My Thoughts

Andrew is probably best known for his science books, but has also written on a wide range of subjects, from the mysterious to the historical, so it comes as no surprise to find this little gem about Buddhism among his latest work.

Buddhism is something which has fascinated me for a long time, but I sadly don’t know as much about it as I would like, so I came to this book with eager interest and I wasn’t disappointed.

I found this book to be a fascinating introduction to the practical aspects of Buddhism. As is always the case with Andrew’s books the topic was discussed in an approachable and accessible way, clearly laid out, and themes that might have at first seemed complex were explained in a way that made them easy to understand. I was left feeling that I’d been given a really solid introduction to a subject that was quite new to me and have come away with a far better understanding of Buddhism in general. I certainly feel inspired to read more on this topic.

Review: Embargo on Hope by Justin Doyle

The Book

Even gods have secrets...

On planet Vastire, worth is set by the sins of one's ancestors. Good families rise to the elite and the wicked fall into poverty. Unfortunately for sixteen-year-old Darynn Mark, his father incited a revolution. Now, Darynn scrounges his way through life in the slums. When Vastire is surrounded by an embargo, it gets even harder to survive.

That all changes when an alien ship slips through the embargo, seeking Darynn with an offer: finish the revolution and the embargo ends. He might have a chance thanks to mysterious magic powers, and his two companions: clairvoyant crush Fyra and soldierly alien Kaylaa.

Cutthroat killers, mystical beasts, Vampires, power-hungry priests and lords, and self-serving spies stand in their way. If the three of them can crack his father's secret, maybe they can end the embargo and save the poor. If not, another poor orphan will be added to the growing piles of dead.

My Thoughts

This was a thoroughly enjoyable book with lots of great action, wonderful world building and engaging characters. I enjoyed it immensely. It’s the first of a trilogy but wraps up nicely in its own right while still leaving the reader eager to know more. It put me in mind of books I’ve read by Adrian Tchaikovsky and China Meiville so if you enjoy those authors you will probably enjoy this. The main character, Darynn, was engaging and easy to connect with. I’m looking forward to seeing where his adventures lead. There are still so many questions he needs to answer.

This book is a fellow SPSFC3 entry although not in the same group as Red Rock. I expect it to do well.

Strongly recommended.

The Arid Lands and Red Rock promotion update:

Here is my latest update on the various promotional activities I have undertaken to try to spread the word about my self-published books, and how successful or otherwise these activities have been.

1. Social Media

I continued to promote Red Rock and The Arid Lands on Twitter/X, IG, my Facebook/Meta page, Threads and Discord. I did pick up sales of The Arid Lands on preorder and downloads of Red Rock from my free promotions, as well as the occasional sale of both outside of promotion.

2. Red Rock free kindle deals

The first free deal which ran for 3 days to coincide with the ten-year anniversary of Red Rock first being published resulted in a modest number of downloads but at least I was reaching potential new readers. I will have to wait and see how many of these translate into reviews.

The second 2 day free deal for Red Rock was run to coincide with the launch of The Arid Lands and produced a similar result.

3. SPSFC3

This contest (The Self Published SF Competition) will run for a year and the first phase, where I fully expect to get culled judging by the quality of some of the other contestants in my group, will run for 5 months. Initially there was no uptick in sales but it is likely that this is where my new downloads during the free offers came from. However, the contest did enable me to gain more visibility for my writing, which is always a good thing, and may well have contributed to those sales I did gain.

4. Review bloggers

I started approaching reviewers with The Arid Lands as soon as it was live for preorder on Amazon and I had set it up on Goodreads. My first observation was how many are asking for money for reviews. I’m not interested in paying but it’s clearly a lucrative industry. I passed over these guys and pitched the book to anyone who looked as if it would be a good fit. It takes a long time to thoroughly check out each review site so I sent these out in dribs and drabs throughout the preorder period. At launch date I had pitched/submitted to 20 reviewers. It is impossible to tell how many, if any, will result in reviews at this stage.

So in conclusion, of all the activities so far, it looks like free deals and participation in SPSFC3 have been the most worthwhile. I will have to look out for more opportunities like this.