Aftermath: Glass & Dust

A Novel by Tom Cash

The first in a planned series, Aftermath: Glass and Dust chronicles the journeys of Mykal Cakron, a young man in search of his younger sister in the blasted deserts of the Western Crumble.  Along the way he befriends a talking skull named Carl and a grizzled veteran named Commander Farley, captain of a massive sailing vessel with chain-wrapped wagon wheels and a diesel engine, which he calls the Land Shark. 

When a freak storm made of a razor sharp needles of glass threatens to destroy everything within miles, Mykal must venture into a nearby town to find supplies to the get the Land Shark running.  In the bustling marketplace of Nurino, he meets Nix, a local merchant, and his cyborg slave, Wendy.

After learning that Nix does not have what he needs to repair the Land Shark, Mykal travels to the Iron Graveyard, an ancient, pre-Collapse dumping ground in the middle of the desert.  There, underneath the sand, Mykal finds something impossible, and it fuses itself with his arm.  Now, in addition to finding his sister, he must find a way to remove it, or at least control it.

Aftermath: Glass and Dust is a thrilling, fast-paced science fantasy genre-bender with the makings of a blockbuster film.  It conjures up aspects of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road and Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves, and blends them with cosmic horror.  It’s a trippy, gruesome, hallucinogenic carnival ride from beginning to end.

Finally, Aftermath: Glass and Dust is a trojan horse; literary fiction disguised as science fantasy.  Certainly there are aliens, robots, mutants, and monsters, but  the themes explored in this run much deeper; loss, madness, redemption, addiction, hope, divinity.

Aftermath: Glass and Dust is currently nearing the end of its first draft.  Watch this space for updates.