Author update: upcoming projects

2016 should be a very interesting year for me! I’ll have my first book in bookstores on March 22 with the release of Tears of Abraham, a novel about the next American Civil War. I hope to generate some press and buzz with this book, as the nation continues to rip itself apart with political vitriol. I hope people read the book and come away with the feeling that we as a nation are better than what we’ve turned into.

I’ve been working hard on Fate of the Fallen, and hope to self-publish this as a series. This novel has been extremely challenging to write because of the scale and the amount of research involved. The main character is an angel with limited abilities, and the novel follows his life, alternating between the past and present. He has been a monk, a gladiator, a crusader, a scholar, and a warrior. In the present, he is trying to prevent the next apocalypse. I’m planning on releasing this book next spring or early summer, and then following it with a series of novellas.

I’m outlining for my next full length novel, and this will be a big departure for me in terms of genre. I’ve been writing “thrillers with heart.” This next book is not a thriller, but straight forward literary fiction. I can’t wait to write it. It’s called Restoration. When  Arthur Glass’s wife asks for a divorce, he purchases a hundred-year-old house in historic Riverside, Florida. He forms a deep friendship with an old lady across the street, who tells him about the history of the house, and importantly, the stories that have unfolded within the walls.

The house has been an orphanage, brothel, speakeasy, and apartment during our nation’s great wars. Love, loss, hope, tragedy and miracles have lived here, and the stories Arthur hears mirror his own character arc, filling a need in him, reminding him of things he has forgotten and also teaching things he has never known.

Chapter One
Endings and Beginnings

Arthur Glass found the old house on Oak Street on the same afternoon his wife informed him that she was pregnant and wanted a divorce. He wasn’t ready for any of it.

He pulled his pick-up truck into the cracked concrete driveway and sat behind the wheel for a moment, gazing at the two story brick home before him, his thoughts a tangle of questions and despair. He needed a place to live, and he’d always liked old houses. He could do something with the place, as long as it had good bones.

How do people do this? How do you move on with your life when your life is destroyed, when everything you love is gone and your soul is peeled away? What is there to move on to? Why?

He picked his way around the overgrown yard, contemplating the exterior of the place. He guessed it was about a hundred years old, as many of the buildings in this part of Jacksonville were. “Historic Riverside,” was its moniker, an eclectic neighborhood where artists, professionals and vagabonds blended together. The streets were lined with majestic live oak trees, Spanish moss hanging down lush and lazy, a certain energy here he’d always liked.

The house sat on a dead end, and behind it was sprawling, shady Boone Park, the yard and park coming seamlessly together. The second floor boasted two columned porches overlooking the street and the park. Oaks, cedars, rose bushes and sago palms giving the grounds a wild, lush feel. Mocking birds twittered among the leaves, and on the steps a surly orange cat bestowed him with a baleful glare.

How did I not see this coming? Who is the father?

He used a credit card to pop the lock on the back door and stepped inside. The smell of mildew and age hit him and he took this in stride. Original hardwood floors, faded and worn creaked under his feet while he wandered from room to room. Plaster walls, some with ragged holes and all in dire need of paint. An old fireplace with a carved wooden mantle in the living room, two small bedrooms, a dining room, and a kitchen that looked like it popped out of Norman Rockwell’s imagination back in the fifties.

He wondered what stories had unfolded here over the years, what whispers these walls overheard.

He walked up a narrow staircase to the second floor, realizing that this was actually an apartment; each floor had a separate entrance. If he’d come here at any different time of day, perhaps things would have been different.
The late afternoon sun streamed through tall windows and filled the living room with golden October light, piercing the veil of decay and obsolescence with a kind of hope and warmth, inviting and serene. He could see this room filled with her canvasses and brushes and colors, alive with her laughter while she painted, dancing to Van Morrison, long dark hair cascading down her shoulders and blue eyes bright with creative mischief and something deeper, a peaceful sort of longing and truth. The way she used to look at him, but hadn’t in years.

She would love this room. Would have, he corrected himself. He had to think that way, and he knew it, but it was too soon and raw. He got it, though. Saw the truth even though it burned and always would and there was no way not to face it, here in that room with perfect light where the things he wished for were translucent dreams transposed onto empty spaces, emotional holograms bereft touch and feel. Delusions of simple grandeur that life boldly stated could never be.

Ghosts of tomorrow, that’s what they looked like to Arthur, and he could see them and it hurt to see.

Love is a contradiction, for it is beauty, promise and light until it turns, and when it turns, it’s quick and mean and dark and deadly and sucks everything in. A black hole birthed like an abomination from what was once a brilliant star, now hungry, relentless and devouring even the light which tries to escape it. Love is destruction. A force of nature implacable and cruel which obliterates what it does not tolerate: objects at rest, and things which have outlived their usefulness.

She says she loves me but isn’t ‘in love’ with me. What does that even mean? God, what happened to us?

Stepping into the room with the gold light spreading on empty spaces sealed his fate, for he knew at that moment that he was going to buy the place.

Love is restoration.

 

Other good news…

Children of Wrath and Wrath and Redemption have both been picked up by audible, so they will be available soon in audio format. That’s great news, because Objects of Wrath did pretty well as an audio book.

Also, the entire Wrath trilogy will be distributed by Simon & Schuster next year, meaning that I’ll have the ability to have that in bookstores around the country.http://www.amazon.com/Objects-Wrath-Volume-Sean-Smith/dp/1618682245

 

Jamie Mason’s Guest Blog: Canadian vs. American Post-Apocalyptic Visions

DEATH OF A NATION Canadian vs. American Post-Apocalyptic Visions

by Jamie Mason

Broken windows stretch to the horizon. A noxious twist of grimy smoke clutches the clouds and a stench of bodies – the piled carnage of the City’s dead, an odor to corkscrew even the heartiest stomachs – lies heavily on the street. A door opens in a darkened shop-front and a man swathed in camouflage steps into view carrying an automatic rifle. The pearl-colored light reflects in his mirrored shades and the red, white and blue of his shoulder patch provides the only flash of color in an afternoon the hue of gun-metal and sorrow. A noise. He spins, bringing the rifle to bear … and is brought up short by the sight of a young, unarmed woman with a backpack slung over one shoulder, a maple leaf sewn into its pocket flap. She grins and flashes a peace sign. 1. The journey inevitably influences the traveller. But it is equally true that the traveler defines the journey. This is never more true than in the post-apocalyptic genre. One of my favorite films is the oft-overlooked 1985 gem REVOLUTION, starring Al Pacino. When Tom Dobb, the illiterate fur trapper Pacino plays, sails into New York Harbor on the eve of the War of Independence, he sums up the chaos unfolding in the streets tersely: “New York, goin’ crazy.”

The opening scene of that film confounds every expectation by painting the launch of the American Revolution with images of unimaginable brutality and human ugliness. Mobs smash British shop-windows, tear down statues of the King and (sadly for Tom) confiscate boats for the cause. Although history has vindicated the wisdom of the American Revolution as a critical step in the advancement of human freedom, I can’t help believing that the film’s portrayal is likely accurate. Strip away the historical bunting, and America was basically a colony that revolted against its landlords. Its birth was midwifed in a blaze of gunfire and death. War is war and, no matter how noble the cause, it’s always certain to unleash a level of apocalyptic violence. Canada’s birth was more ambiguous. We came into existence two short years after the end of the American Civil War, the result of a process that began in direct response to that conflict. By the time the British North America Act was passed, Canada was a sprawl of disconnected communities, ripe for annexation by a vigorous and ambitious neighbor. Invasions had been attempted five times in two previous wars and there was no reason to expect it wouldn’t happen again. (Indeed, a few of Lincoln’s generals lobbied for it.) Independence from a war-weary Britain seemed the most prudent way to secure the national welfare. Negotiations were lengthy and complex, tangled in British legal red-tape and impeded by competing colonial claims. Sir John A. MacDonald, our first Prime Minister, rose to lead a nation that was still very much unexplored and only just beginning to understand itself. Canada very literally emerged, blinking and uncertain, from the mists of the historical wilderness into a deafening silence.

2. In our beginning lies our end. These two emergence narratives have served to shape, fundamentally, the contrasting American and Canadian visions of the post-apocalypse. I would hold that while television shows like THE WALKING DEAD and JERICHO and novels like WORLD WAR Z and THE PERSEID COLLAPSE portray a uniquely American apocalypse, Canadian equivalents such as ORYX & CRAKE, the collected stories of FRACTURED: TALES OF THE CANADIAN POST-APOCALYPSE and my own KEZZIE OF BABYLON (Permuted Press, March 2015) offer an equivalent Canadian vision unique in its own right. While there will always be an appetite for American entertainment north of the border, our American friends might be surprised to learn how our apocalyptic visions differ.

3. ENEMIES & ANTAGONISTS Every good post-apocalyptic tale needs an enemy, and in American stories that enemy is usually a group or (in the case of zombies) a faceless horde which must be attacked and defeated militarily. THE WALKING DEAD handles this trope well, providing combat engagements pitting the protagonists against legions of zombies as well as human threats like the Governor and his dystopian serfs. WALKING DEAD s/heroes pack guns and katanas and these tools are always the go-to choice when trouble comes. This is not to dismiss other points of tension in the show (exploration, parlay with bad guys, character arcs), but to highlight the uniquely weaponized nature of the American post-collapse world. In a nation where the right to own firearms is enshrined in law and whose birth occurred in a storm of violence, it is logical that its death-throes would subside to the howl of gunfire. By contrast, the “enemy” faced by the main characters of Morgan M. Page’s poignant “City Noise” (FRACTURED: TALES OF THE CANADIAN POST-APOCALYPSE) is of an entirely different order. In Morgan’s vision, Toronto smoulders in the aftermath of a nebulous event known only as “The Crash” (an end every bit as ambiguous as our nation’s founding). The protagonists, Sarah and Johnny, are both transsexuals caught in the mid-point of transition when The Crash occurs, leaving them to scavenge in a blighted city for the drugs their bodies need in order to continue their biological migration. Instead of hordes of zombies to be vaporized by gunfire, the enemies Johnny and Sarah face are the ticking time-bombs of their own medically-altered biology, caught mid-way through a complex and transformative procedure

INDIVIDUAL VS. GROUP The cult of individualism is strongly rooted in the American consciousness and, for this reason, plays a titular role in any American post-apocalyptic story. The tendency for people to coalesce in a crisis is a historical given. But in American PA tales like OBJECTS OF WRATH (Permuted Press, 2014) the need for individualism sometimes leads to tragic results. One of the most poignant scenes in the novel involves a group of military first-responders flying into a remote encampment to offer aid to some backwoods survivalists. The unit’s doctor is turned away from caring for the group’s terminally-ill children because he is black. Here, hyper-individualism – the determination to survive with or without assistance from others, despite all logic – plays out in the ideology of a group existing in opposition to mainstream values of racial equality. Contrast this with the plot of my own novel, KEZZIE OF BABYLON (Permuted Press, 2015) wherein the Canadian tendency to seek accord and accommodation within groups – however dysfunctional – leads to disaster. A commune of biker outlaws, sheltered in the sanctuary of a remote grow-op in the hinterlands of Vancouver Island has, within its ranks, a deranged psychopath determined to impose her religious vision upon the group. The reluctance of the collective’s leaders to confront and disempower this person leads to murder, imposition of a form of worship that involves zombie crucifixion and (ultimately) destruction of the commune itself. Like those whose appeasement of the Quebecois nationalists resulted in the Meech Lake debacle, the reluctance of Buzz and Deacon to act allows Kezzie to take over and slaughter any who oppose her.

RELATIONSHIP TO NATURE Although environmental devastation often triggers the apocalyptic moment in American PA stories, it is rarely an ongoing threat as the plot progresses (THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW and Cormac McCarthy’s THE ROAD being the only exceptions that spring to mind). By way of final example, I contrast two short stories with the same title, one American, one Canadian. In Eric Del Carlo’s fascinating and brilliantly-rendered tale “The Herd” (OG’s Speculative Fiction, Issue #11), the Earth’s collapsing environment unleashes a series of devastating storms, driving a mass migration of human refugees ahead of them. Because I have spoken with Eric about the story’s origins, I can reveal that “The Herd” is based on his own experiences during Hurricane Katrina. Former residents of New Orleans, Eric’s family joined the stream of refugees clogging the highways just like the characters of “The Herd”. But it is what the storms cause people to do to each other as opposed to the storms themselves that form the real basis of Eric’s story. This in contrast to its Canadian counterpart. “The Herd” written by Tyler Keevil is first up in Exile Edition’s 2013 DEAD NORTH: CANADIAN ZOMBIE FICTION. In this unique twist on the zombie trope, Tyler presents us with a zombie horde migrating across the tundra, shadowed by an Inuit hunter. At play in this crisp, visually-evocative tale are all the elements of the classic Canadian wilderness survival story. It is Man against the elements as much as it is Man against … whatever. “A heaviness is in the air, a change in temperature, the wind, the look of the clouds. I know it is going to snow, and it comes in the early morning, just after the herd has set out. It arrives first, as a brief sprinkle … Then a lull, the air charged with a static crackle … Some of the deadheads stop, confused, and look up at this white confetti raining down …” – “The Herd”, Tyler Keevil, DEAD NORTH (Exile Editions, 2013) 4. And so we can see: the post-apocalyptic visions of both Canadian and American writers are informed by the human experience and social dimensions of the writers’ host countries. But it is in our origins, I think, that we find the defining characteristics of each country’s post-apocalyptic vision. We must remember that America and Canada are both nations engaged in the ongoing process of democratic evolution. Societies in both countries adapt to prevailing circumstances, learning from their mistakes, making mid-course corrections and each working to preserve the ongoing experiment that is any free society. We are unique, yes. But we influence each other enormously and are mutually fascinated by visions of the apocalypse. Americans, robust and individualistic, fight each other over possession of the wasteland while Canadians, willing to pay almost any price to remain within a group – however dysfunctional – seek to survive its ambiguous wilderness. As both nations emerge from history and grow toward self-actualization, we both imagine our own demise only to discover that we die very much the way we were born.

My friend Jamie Mason is a Canadian writer of dark fiction whose stories have appeared in On Spec, Abyss & Apex, White Cat and the Canadian Science Fiction Review. His zombie novel KEZZIE OF BABYLON was published in March of this year by Permuted Press. He lives on Vancouver Island. Learn more at www.jamiescribbles.com

Jupiter Ascending Review: Nerd Heaven!

Jupiter Ascending is a movie I’ve looked forward to since I saw the first trailer for it more than a year ago. I’m a huge science fiction fan, and within the last twelve months, there have been some excellent films released: Gravity, The Edge of Tomorrow, Guardians of the Galaxy, and Jupiter Ascending, which is my favorite of the bunch.

This isn’t hard sci-fi and makes no pretense of being so. It’s a fully realized space opera, original and visually breathtaking. I saw it in 3-D, and I highly recommend enjoying the film in that format.The CGI is stunning, and there are some extended set-piece scenes that put my jaw on the floor.

There is an intricate back story, one which the film makers no doubt paired down for the sake of pacing, but I was impressed, nonetheless. There is a Shakespearean feel to the film (if the Bard wrote about guys in gravity boots with spaceships and super-cool light shields) with this family who has no sense of humanity juxtaposed with a well and truly grounded heroine.

There is a good bit of humor in the film, which I appreciated, including a long scene reminiscent of a trip to the DMV that had me in stitches. The acting was solid, and some of the performances were deliciously over the top. The film makers put a great deal of effort into the details of the world building, from the opulent living quarters these advanced humans enjoy to a wide variety of aliens and genetically altered species that populate the film.

Overall, this is now one of my all-time favorite science fiction movies. I hope they make a sequel

Interstellar: Review

I grew up reading science fiction, and it remains my favorite genre of film and books. Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle, Robert Silverberg, Rober Zelazny, Heinlein, Azimov, and Greg Bear remain some of my favorite authors. I enjoy the hard-sci fi as well as more playful space opera. I love the first Star Wars movies, and I also really like Contact. I loved The Edge of Tomorrow. Heck, I even liked Riddick.

So it was with great anticipation I forked out the extra bucks to see Interstellar on a super-big screen. I’d been looking forward to this one since I’d seen the trailer for it last year.

Of course, I was doomed to disappointment. It’s a rare thing when lofty expectations are met. It’s a decent movie, but I was hoping for something, well, stellar.

I liked the premise, the idea that the Earth had turned against humanity, leaving mankind no choice but to reach for the stars. The scenes of cars and trucks laden with people migrating to anywhere else were reminiscent of the Dust Bowl and Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath.

The acting was good, with Michael Cane and Mathew McConaughey delivering solid performances. The special effects were excellent, and there were some breathtaking scenes in space.

But there were too many moments where I scratched my head and said “What???” I had to resist the urge to turn to my wife and criticize the movie, risking the wrath of fellow movie goers, and I didn’t want to be THAT guy. So I sipped my drink and simmered.

My issue with this movie is that it pretends to be smarter than it actually is. Had I gone into the movie with a different set of expectations, I think I would have enjoyed the film much more.

SPOILER ALERT

When the crew is on the planet with the massive tidal surge and a character drags her feet instead of returning to the ship, I cringed.

When they decide to investigate planets orbiting a black hole, I thought, why the hell would they do that. Black holes are inherently unstable, dangerous things you stay away from.

When the survivors leave a planet and within ten seconds are drawn into the black hole’s gravitational pull, I rolled my eyes. When they arrive at this black hole minutes later, not crushed by the gravity, I squirmed in my seat.

In the library of time, where past and present are laid out in extra dimensional space, I wondered what the hell was going on.

And the ending, where our hero decides to return, somehow without any time distortion, drove me nuts.

So there it is. I found the movie to be visually stunning, and emotional, but the massive plot holes and shoddy science detracted from the overall experience. If I’d known going in that the movie was essentially silly, I could have rolled with the inexplicable twists and turns and made up physics.

It’s worth watching on the big screen, just be prepared.

Sneak Peek… Children of Wrath

Being a hero in the eyes of my children was far more important to me than the adulation I’ve received over the years for getting shot and stabbed and being any sort of a leader. The memories that keep me warm on snowy winter nights here in Yellowstone are of times when I was a real hero. I remember my son Ryder and his little sister Grace on Christmas morning gazing with wide eyed wonder at the presents under the tree while a fire cracked and popped in a log cabin steeped to the roof in drifts. I hold those perfect moments close to me, those fleeting times that were really gifts my children gave to me. I can now open them like a book, and I turn back the years to see that look of amazement they rewarded me with when I lifted a heavy log, carved a bow, or brought home a wolf cub. I wrap myself in those precious memories like a warm bison blanket to keep the cold at bay and stave off the lingering chill of things I would rather forget.

The winter Ryder turned nine, Grace was six, and the cold was bitter and long. Maybe with the telling of it, these many years later, forgiveness will find me and I can draw close and smile.

The Fall obliterated humanity about sixteen years before that season; the bombs and pestilence that followed The Fall pushed us to the brink of the abyss, but we managed to survive. In the nine years we had been in the west, the scattered groups of survivors inhabiting the region enjoyed relative peace and security. It was a time of rebirth and renewal, and my best memories live there still. The weaponized fungus we had come to call Tarantula still thrived in the warmer regions, but the cold of the north kept it at bay. We were full of hope, though we bore the wounds of the past. We believed we had made it through the worst of it.

I was then not yet thirty, and still very much in my prime, my hair dark and short, with not a hint of the white beard and long mane I now wear. “You look like Noah,” Crystal jokes these days. “What happened to my sculpted David, my Greek hero?” She laughs and there is no malice in it; the gray is earned and I wear it with the cantankerousness of an old Grizzly baring his yellowed fangs over a kill, long of tooth and the gold fading, but still dangerous. I was much more dangerous then. I stood six feet four inches, was broad of shoulder and narrow of hip, and I was strong. Hazel eyes, still bright with hope then, before they were faded and dimmed by sadness, which still burned with a zest for life.

“You’re old beyond your years,” I recall Crystal saying back then. “Such an old soul.” But really, I think that was all of us.

Great early reviews for Objects of Wrath

Wrath is coming….February 25 from Permuted Press

Paul Mannering, the highly acclaimed Australian author of Tankbread calls Objects of Wrath

“A nuclear apocalypse coming of age story that is destined to be a classic.”

From the brilliant Craig Dilouie, Author of Suffer the Children, The Retreat, and many more novels:”For the few who do what it takes, the end of the world will be a new beginning … With Objects of Wrath, SeanT. Smith offers a fresh take in survivalist fiction.”

 :

Fantastic writer and Editor James Crawford had this to say:

“Objects of Wrath is disturbing. The end of the world shouldn’t be so plausible. Sean Smith’s new book squats in the heart twisting intersection of “Full Metal Jacket” and Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road.“.

Thank you,  Paul, Craig, and James!!

Coud Atlas… Review

I just finished watching one of the best films I’ve seen in years, Cloud Atlas. Some folks did not like the convoluted structure of the film, which features six story-lines over hundreds of years. After about twenty minutes, I was still confused, but glued to the screen. By the time the credits rolled, I did not want the film to end.

 

The acting is perfect, with Tom Hanks and Halle Berry standing out in an ensemble cast. The film covers hundreds of years, with interweaving story lines and connections between each piece in history, from the mid-nineteenth century to the distant post-apocalyptic future.

 

I do not in any way believe in reincarnation, and you don’t need to in order to enjoy this movie, which is really about redemption, love, and freedom. The way our actions impact those around us, and how our decisions for better or worse can ripple through the generations.  The special effects were excellent, and not over-done in the way of most science fiction movies.

 

Every now and then, Hollywood surprises me by producing something cerebral and true; at a time when the box office is flooded by bombastic fluff and when the television is full of shows with zero substance, Cloud Atlas is like a cool drink of water on a hot day. It felt like I was reading a superb novel, layered and subtle, with engaging characters who grew over time.

 

I’ll be watching this one again soon.