Spawn of the Cataclysm
by Robert Hoppensteadt
Date of Publication: March 2nd 2020
Publisher: Solstice Publishing
Genre: Post-Apocalyptic Adventure
ISBN: 979-8620552344
ASIN: B085DN3K5V
Number of pages: Print 227; Kindle 194
Word Count: 70K
BLURB
Humans carelessly wielded their power to create new things, a power that far outpaced their understanding. It was only a matter of time until something went terribly wrong. Something did.
Technology has been erased for millenniums, monsters spawned at the end of a world infest the forests and seas, and a new civilization has slowly risen from the long darkness. In sight of the looming ruins of what was once called San Francisco there is an evil growing.
The people of New Gate are about to face their greatest challenge.
Excerpt
Chapter One
Chapter One
“We didn’t create the virus, it lived in the wild. We found it when Howler monkeys began starving to death even though they stripped every local crop in the area. The virus triggered their metabolism to speed up ... we were paid by the Defense Department to develop an offensive application, said we could keep exclusive rights to all its commercial uses if we delivered. It could have changed the way we grow food but they pushed us. It wasn’t ready to test, and when the earthquake hit… is out now. The death toll will be on their heads. And ours.”
Translated from the Cataclysm
Rik Arrowen leaned over the gunwale, his gaze following dancing green shafts of sunlight that plunged into the depths. He strained his eyes, thought he saw movement. A huge shadow drifted slowly below the light. He knew the creature they Hunted was down there, a hungry thing that lurked unseen.
“It is here,” he muttered.
A school of silver fish darted upward, their bodies flashed like a thousand mirrors. Rik’s heart jumped in the instant before a sail-sized fin, jagged and scarred, cut slowly into the green twilight before receding back into the murk. He had no time to catch his breath, or shout a warning, when the great misshapen spawn rose fast and straight into the light, its gaping jaws filled with teeth. The thing ignored the weighted haunch of bloody meat they had drawn it in with, and hit the wooden galley on the port side with enough force to knock four Hunters into the bay.
As the hull rocked, the water turned red and raw screams filled the air.
***
“What a beautiful day to be alive.”
The voice blew away Rik’s memory and brought him back to where he stood, high above the countryside on the windy battlement of Stonehaven’s north wall.
“Oh, forgive me,” the voice continued. “Did I startle you?”
Rik did not bother to turn around.
“No, Jerold,” he replied. “I was watching the bay. It’s been six days since we lost those four Hunters to the spawn. I can’t stop hearing their screams as the thing ate them. Nothing we could do. We hit it with five harpoons and it still swam away. On the way down, it swallowed the bait haunch whole, and would have pulled us under if we hadn’t cut the rope.” He paused for a moment. “I have never seen one that big. I hope it has gone back out to sea.”
“May the Mystery welcome them all,” Jerold said. “I don’t often see anyone else up here this time of day. I like the solitude, the view calms me when the Council is crawling up my back about money.”
Rik scanned the horizon. The morning mist had burned away, and the sea breeze held a hint of pine. To the west rose a low range covered with giant redwoods, some of them hundreds of feet tall. The ridge continued to wind its way from the south, ending in cliffs at the mouth of the bay. The wide channel reflected the blue of the sky, and ripples that ran counter to the waves marked strong currents that carried the tide out to sea. Across the water, the redwoods picked up again and became the great northern forest. Long ago, when the seas were lower, a famed bridge the ancients called Golden Gate stretched above the treacherous waters from shore to shore. Nothing was left of it now but a few worn mounds of concrete piles at each end.
Below the fortress, starting near the base of the hill, the city of New Gate sprouted like a garden. It spread down to the bay, a bright jumble of buildings and spires that tumbled to the busy harbor. There, sailing ships and galleys crowded together, bare masts bobbed within the walls of the breakwater. New Gate was home to almost twenty thousand souls and a passing refuge for a few thousand more at any given time. Now, it was bursting at the seams with wagons and people who could be seen crowding the streets and setting up stalls in the Market Square for the upcoming Equinal Games.
To the east and scattered around the bay were ruins. Most were settled into oddly geometric mounds and small hills covered in green, but in some places, they rose like monstrous patches of black lace from the dense hardwood forests that covered the lowlands around the bay. The largest cluster of these, called Lily’s Bones for reasons nobody could remember, contained broken and crumbling towers so immense that their ragged peaks were sometimes lost in the clouds.
Robert Hoppensteadt lied about his age and started working in Reno when he was fourteen, washing dishes on the late shift at a casino restaurant. Since then he has been a grunt in the Forest Service, a carpenter, and, after receiving a degree in Information Systems, a recruiter and senior manager. Now he writes full time. He has lived on both coasts and several places in between but currently resides in Virginia with his wife and two seriously spoiled and obnoxious cats.
The Book Junkie Reads . . . Interview with Robert Hoppensteadt . . .
How would you describe your style of writing to someone that has never read your work? I hope people find it approachable and natural. I always start a project with an idea and a goal for the story, but once I get going it is an organic process for me. I don’t do outlines so the experience of writing the book is somewhat like the experience of the reader with the exception of it being spread out over a much longer period. Also the reader is not subjected to months of editing. ☺
Do you feel that writing is an ingrained process or just something that flows naturally for you? I think there is some natural talent involved but it is also a lot of work for me. I always have trouble starting, though once I get into it time seems to disappear and hours go by before I take notice. There are a lot of technical things about writing – character development, pacing, descriptions that don’t impede the flow of a story, continuity, sentence structure, word choices etc. that for me only came with many years of practice.
What mindset or routine do you feel the need to set when preparing to write (in general whether you are working on a project or just free writing)? I need a quiet space without interruptions. I have been a computer programmer as well and the same kind of concentration applies for me. I have to be able to keep my train of logic and thoughts long enough to get them down on paper without having to shift my consciousness elsewhere. I don’t really have a set routine. I find the best time to write is late at night. I am a night owl anyway, so it is not unusual for me to start writing at 10 pm and go until 3 am, though sometimes I write in the afternoons as well. I am not a morning person.
Can you share your next creative project(s)? If yes, can you give a few details? I am writing a semi-autobiography. It will be a fiction novel but all of the incidents it contains will be authentic, just with different names and some differences in timelines. It is challenging for me because it is being written in the first person, which I don’t have extensive experience with. I had kind of a wild youth. People have often told me I should write about it so that is what I am doing. Some of it is difficult to go back and rummage around in, it brings up a lot of feelings and forgotten details emerge with the writing, but I am excited about the way it is going and I think it will be a good read.
Where would you spend one full year, if you could go ANYWhere, money is not a concern? What would you do with this time? A year is a long time. Many of the places on my bucket list are not viable for that long, but the one place I know I am in love with is Rome and the surrounding areas. I am very interested in history, the worlds and the people who existed before us and the lives they lived. There is something about walking around Rome at night. Standing on the Capitoline Hill under a full moon and looking out over the deserted Forum or sitting in the Pantheon during a thunderstorm as water comes pouring through the oculus are magical. I could easily spend a year there writing, walking, hanging out, eating and maybe spending some of the time with my wife.
Amazon - https://amzn.to/3a5w7Hv
Twitter - https://twitter.com/RHoppensteadt
