Judgment (47 page)

As you likely know by now, Johnny writes the rough drafts for Realm & Sands. These nutty ideas usually start as some
brain-fart-what-if
that Johnny likes enough (or at least laughs at enough) for me to massage the concept into a more fleshed-out idea, and then eventually a fully realized outline.
 

But
Invasion
was different.
 

This series was born several years ago as a pitch that Dave (my partner at Collective Inkwell, where we write horror and sci-fi, and the children are always in jeopardy) and I gave to Amazon’s 47North, before they published our two series,
Z2134
and
Monstrous
. The pitch then was reasonably close to what the book eventually turned out to be.
 

What if we had some rich guy living in New York when news broke that alien ships were approaching Earth? So, like, he’d have to get his family from NYC to some bunker in Colorado. Then at the very end the aliens could come. Like, on the very last page.
 

Dave didn’t hate the idea (like he hates most things), but he wasn’t too keen on writing an “on the run” book, nor did he have any interest in writing anything called
Invasion
if the narrative didn’t have any actual invasions. So yeah, he hated the two things I loved about the idea, which also happened to be the entire idea at the time.

But that right there is why I love the Realm & Sands audience so much. Writing books for
you
is FUN. R&S stories are like no others in the world. I know that the crazy concepts conjured up by Johnny and myself, from unicorn-riding gunslingers to robots who are more human than the humans who surround them, to a broken man who flees to a childhood refuge to keep himself from falling apart, only to have his world crumble around him, we’ll unflinchingly find the truth in every story we tell.
 

We write inquisitive fiction. Johnny made that term up last year, and I LOVE it. Inquisitive Fiction is EXACTLY what Realm & Sands is all about. Johnny and I tell stories to answer questions about the world, how it works and hopefully why it works that way. We answer these questions for ourselves, using story as our fulcrum, and then we share those answers with you.
 

We always, stubbornly, tell
our
story the way we want to tell it. We’re not obtuse, and we do know that the best way to gather an eager reading audience is to choose a single genre then repeatedly tell gripping stories in that genre, steadily gaining readership with every new release. But Realm & Sands isn’t, nor will it ever be, a single-genre imprint. And even within our chosen genres we’re always going to push ourselves, because you deserve nothing less as a reader.
 

Just as there are countless robot revolution stories, but none like
Robot Proletariat
, sci-fi is cluttered with alien invasion stories, and we wanted ours to be different. So we told a slower, more methodical tale, as much about (missing) human history and who we are as a people as it was about motherships hovering over capitals and blasting the populace into submission.
 

Invasion
changed a lot from sketch to conception, mostly in the details. Meyer, his family, the Axis Mundi, Mother Ayahuasca, those were all particulars that weren’t born in the original pitch, and never would have made it into an Inkwell title.
Invasion’s
DNA ended up specific to Realm & Sands. Yet even within the basic framework we knew that there would be seven books in this series, and we always had a solid idea of where that seventh book would go.
 

Until now.
 

Through the end of
Annihilation
, everything went according to plan. Then during
Judgment
, everything started to change. Story direction that we’d taken for granted suddenly seemed like the opposite of where we wanted to go. And we had to keep things tidy because after
Judgment
, we only have another two books to close the saga. And in that time we need to answer every question while delivering an unforgettable yet unexpected ending.
 

That’s a tall order, and we
thought
we had it.
 

But as with most of our projects, our characters and the realities of their world led us in a different direction.
 

So while the
Invasion
saga takes a sharp left about halfway through
Judgment
and will continue the twist and turn through the end of the series, we’re thrilled with where it’s now going, and think that you will be, too. One thing that
hasn’t
changed, staying right at the beating heart of this series as it’s been from word one, is all of the ancient aliens stuff.
 

Because Johnny and I find this
fascinating
.
 

Our human need for mystery and wonder runs marrow deep, which is one of the reasons that stories are so enduring, and why sci-fi and fantasy have remained at the tip of that interest. So adding intrigue to everyday history has a lot of appeal.
 

This interest is naturally stoked by the reality that
it’s all
technically possible
. Likely? Maybe not. But mathematically, there’s an excellent chance that extraterrestrial life does exist. If scientists didn’t believe in that cosmic possibility, there would be no SETI or Kepler satellite-telescope.
 

There’s so much in our collective amnesia that we don’t understand. Why were megalithic structures built using rocks weighing multiple tons, and what purpose could they have possibly served? What about the strange structures only fully visible from high in the air? Human civilization and technology seemed to be on a decidedly slow growth curv, until its sudden explosion in the final few moments on mankind’s clock. Humans are
at least
two hundred thousand years old, but for nearly two hundred millennia we lived as simple Neanderthals. Then, two thousand years ago, the Colosseum, and now the iPhone.
 

Ancient aliens theory is like any religion — based on deductive reasoning and the interpretation of primitive drawings, texts, and objects, with no hard facts or testimony that hasn’t been diluted by millennia of constantly decaying oral and written tradition.

Getting all of this stuff into the
Invasion
series has been a blast. It’s a totally different type of writing, world building, and story construction than anything we’ve done thus far.
Invasion
was written as a page turner, and
Contact, Colonization,
and
Annihilation
all followed suit to varying degrees. Same with
Judgment
. But now things are getting … complicated.
 

Now, a series that felt like it was perhaps the
least
Realm & Sands of everything we’ve written has caught up with the rest of our catalogue. Our questions are bigger, the answers more complex, and despite our best planning the story has decided to
zig
even after we were determined to make it
zag.
 

And we can’t fall short or leave our answers for the next book. My favorite among our sci-fi stories so far is
The Beam,
but we get to cheat with that series because we can always delay answers until the next book in our serial. We can’t do that with
Invasion
, especially not now with only two books to go.
 

Judgment
had the most surprises for us out of any entry in this series so far. We knew the book was about judgment (obviously), but didn’t know that Peers had called the Astrals early, how exactly the aliens were going to judge us, or what that would mean for
Extinction
or
Resurrection
.
 

But now we know, and can’t wait to share that story with you.
 

Because, dear reader,
YOU
are the reason we write. Thank you for being part of this journey and encouraging us to tell our stories in our unique way. We can’t wait to blow your mind with these final two books in the
Invasion
series.
 

As always, thanks for reading.
 

Sean (and Johnny)

P.S. Inquisitive fiction can go
anywhere
. If you have a question you’d like to see us explore through our stories, shoot us an email at
[email protected]
and let us know your thoughts!
 

P.P.S. If you’re enjoying the
Invasion
series,
please leave us a review.
This makes a HUGE difference to us as indie authors and will enable us to write more of the books you love.
Thanks for your support!
 

 
WE NEED YOU …

Without reviews, indie books like this one are almost impossible to market.
 

Leaving a review will only take a minute — it doesn’t have to be long or involved, just a sentence or two that tells people what you liked about the book, to help other readers know why they might like it, too, and to help us write more of what you love.
 

The truth is, VERY few readers leave reviews. Please help us by being the exception.
 

Thank you in advance!
 

Johnny and Sean
 

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That was how it was supposed to be, anyway.

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THANK YOU FOR READING!

Sean Platt & Johnny B. Truant

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Johnny B. Truant
is an author, blogger, and podcaster who, like the Ramones, was long denied induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame despite having a large cult following. He makes his online home at
SterlingAndStone.Net
and is the author of the
Fat Vampire
series, the
Unicorn Western
series, the political sci-fi thriller
The Beam
, and many more.

You can connect with Johnny on Twitter at
@JohnnyBTruant
, and you should totally send him an email at
[email protected]
if the mood strikes you.
 

Sean Platt
is speaker, author, and co-founder of Realm & Sands. He is also co-founder of Collective Inkwell, home to the breakout indie hits
Yesterday’s Gone
and
WhiteSpace,
co-authored with David W. Wright. Sean also publishes smart stories for children under the pen name Guy Incognito, and writes laugh out loud comedies with Johnny under the pen name Max Power. You can see Sterling & Stone’s complete catalogue at
SterlingAndStone.Net/Books
. Sean lives in Austin, Texas, with his wife, daughter, and son.
 

You can find Sean at
SterlingAndStone.Net
, follow him on Twitter at
@SeanPlatt
, or send him an email at
[email protected]
.
 

For any questions about Sterling & Stone books or products, or help with anything at all, please send an email to
[email protected]
, or contact us at
sterlingandstone.net/contact
. Thank you for reading.