A story years in the making: The journey behind ‘The Fallout’
VOL I of the much anticipated sequel to The Enigma is finally here, giving a first look at what happened next.
Two years ago this month, I released my first ever fiction novel named The Enigma. It was such a profound moment for me, as I had only been writing books for just over a year at that point, releasing my first two books as autobiographical novels. This was a whole different can of worms, creating the world from scratch, characters from scratch. It was a long and changing process which eventually became the novel it become. Once I launched it, the world had then become embroiled in a global pandemic. My story was dark, it was about a virus decimating the world and the individual stories that it affected. The Fallout was planned before The Enigma had come out. The cover was designed and ready in waiting.
I had planned to start writing it right after the launch of The Enigma, starting at the end of August. The Fallout would be a year old if I had my original plan come through, but these things sometimes don’t work out the way you plan. I had become drained from the constant press coverage of the pandemic, it started off as inspiring to see how the world would react to a pandemic, whilst I wrote about a world coming to terms with a much deadlier pandemic. However, it then became draining, so I decided to shelve The Fallout.
It sat in my folders for a long time, the cover the same. The cover it has today was the same one I made before The Enigma came out, I just needed to turn my ideas into a story. I wanted to write about something moe uplifiting to help me get through the pandemic, which I why the Muse series was created. Everything happens for a reason, if I hadn’t decided that it wasnt the time for The Fallout, The Painter’s Muse and Journey’s Begin may not have even existed, and I love them both dearly. I think now it is the right time, two years the story has been hiding away, and with the Brandon’s Books app, and more things happening in the horizon, this is the time of the Fallout. I hope you enjoy it as much as I am. Writing is still happening, rolling out unconventially and playing around and evolving my Journey’s Begin rollout. Playing with different ways I can convey stories onto the app. I think it means the era can be extended, and that instead of lumping the whole book out, it allows mystery right to the very end. The book will come out in paperback and hardback and the same for Journey’s Begin. However, only once they have been fully rolled out on the app.
I hope you like VOL I, this is very much a set of chapters that allows The Fallout to hit the ground running. Answer those, what happened next questions. Here is some background and information about some of the key chapters in this crucial first volume.
‘The Game’
The enigma was such a huge book for me. Being the first fictional novel universe I had created it holds a special place in my heart. When it came to its sequel, in the midst of the pandemic I wanted to pause and have a break from this darker story. Not only because I didn’t want it to be labelled a story inspired by the pandemic, but just to clear my head and focus on something more positive in general. However, as we are came out of the pandemic, early late 2021 I had the idea of how I wanted The Fallout to go, but it wasn’t until early 2022 around February time when I really put pen to paper and created Genesis. This chapter is very much a reflection chapter, reminding old and new readers of what happened at the end of The Enigma. It also marks a new beginning, characters are revealed, the future is determined and although there are many questions left unanswered, things quickly show a shift in where the world is headed after this awful disaster.
‘Will This Nightmare Ever End?’
With the first book, I wanted to delve into darkness. The bad side of the human race even though in the first ever chapter it described a world that was perfect, at peace, and at the golden age of technical evolution. However, The Fallout begins one year into the downfall of mankind, so this book had to be darker. I was inspired slightly by things I had watched such as the hunger games and a few others, in which made horror into sport. So, that made me think that somewhere in this awful world I had made, it would be normal for some upper echelons who had survived so far, to make sport of those survivors wishing to take refuge. Tease them with the water that had bought the human race to its knees. This is the first chapter in which really reveals The Fallout and the darkness that may lay within, and how can Charles and Veronica survive this and yet again, fight on for survival. The virus is no longer the sole enemy.
The Fallout is OUT NOW, alongside the brand new Brandon’s Books for iPad app!
