EVENT HORIZON unleashed!

For public consumption.

1051 Steve Konkoly ebook EVENT HORIZON_3_LEVENT HORIZON: Book Two in The Perseid Collapse Series in now available as a Kindle book on Amazon. The hard copy version follows on March 23 (will ship on the 23rd if you preordered a hard copy). An audiobook version is in the works, expected to be ready by the 1st or 2nd week of April. I’ll keep you posted on that. Here are the links for each version:

EVENT HORIZON Kindle book 

EVENT HORIZON Hard copy

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Thank you again for your continued support and readership! This has been an exciting year, and I couldn’t have done it without you!

Exclusive sneak peek at EVENT HORIZON: Book Two in The Perseid Collapse Series…

Available for members of my Thriller Fiction Mailing List. 

Since I’ve passed the halfway point, I want to celebrate by releasing the Prologue for EVENT HORIZON: Book Two in The Perseid Collapse Series.

4,700 words (16-20 pages) chronicling Ryan Fletcher’s experience at Zero Hour on the morning of the EVENT. In this extended chapter, you’ll experience the terror from a different perspective, at a location much closer to the point of impact. What Ryan Fletcher experiences is by far the most apocalyptic scene in the series.

Below is a teaser. To receive the full passage on January 19th, sign up for my MAILING LIST. In addition to exclusive content, you’ll receive news of future discounts/promotions, along with new release updates. SIGN UP NOW!

If you’re already signed up, check your email for the full chapter! Thank you for reading.

 

EVENT HORIZON Teaser:

Prologue

EVENT 00:00 Hours

Boston University

Boston, Massachusetts

Ryan Fletcher squinted at his alien surroundings, agonizingly aware that he had been robbed of sleep. Unnaturally brilliant light penetrated the flimsy, translucent curtains, exposing the beige cinderblock walls and sparse furniture to his blurry vision. The glaring view of his dorm room faded quickly, replaced by a soft flickering light. He raised his head a few inches off the pillow to view the digital alarm clock resting on his desk. A dark object stared back. Wonderful. Heavy hands came together on his chest to manipulate the tiny buttons on his digital watch. A blue-green light bathed his face. 4:59. Brutal.

He closed his eyes and let his head sink into the familiar, worn-out pillow brought from home, and started to drift off—when the steel bedframe under his thin mattress started to rattle against the wooden dresser behind his head. Angry thoughts of the “T” waking him every morning of his freshmen year yanked him out of the murky depths of sleep. This is bullshit! He sat up, fully awake and pissed off at his room assignment. Nobody had mentioned the fact that the train would make a stop inside his room. The vibration intensified, accompanied by a deafening roar.

“No way I’m dealing with this for an entire year,” he mumbled.

The bed heaved upward, tossing him face down onto the carpeted floor. He lay prone for a few seconds, stunned by the sudden mayhem unleashed on his room. Another massive jolt rocked the building. He needed to get out of here.

Ryan grabbed the bedframe and tried to stand, but the room pitched violently, dropping him to his hands and knees. This is good enough. He crawled in the darkness toward the door, tumbling sideways into the wooden dresser beyond his bed as the building swayed. Ryan scurried into the small vestibule next to the door, moments before both of the room’s heavy, wooden dressers crashed to the floor. He leaned his back into the vestibule’s cold cinderblock walls and pressed his bare feet against the other.

Adding and releasing pressure on his legs to stay in place, Ryan moved with the building, hoping the walls didn’t collapse. Not that it would matter at that point. The building was nearly fifty years old, and if the interior walls started to fail, rescue teams would be lucky to find any of them alive. He dug his feet into the wall in front of him and closed his eyes. He was on autopilot, too disoriented and terrified to put any effort into anything beyond his immediate survival. He knew that he should be sitting under the doorframe, but he couldn’t convince his body to give up the stable position he had established between the two walls.

Moments later, the shaking abated, and the thunderous rumble yielded to distant car alarms and screaming. Ryan stood on wobbly legs and braced himself against the walls with both hands, taking deep breaths to fight the nausea. A strong campfire smell drew his attention to the flimsy curtains flapping gently through the jagged remains of the window. A wave of dizziness struck, buckling his knees. The window could wait.

Bright yellow and orange light danced against the room’s dark interior, pushing his curiosity. He had to see what happened outside of the building. Testing his legs, he edged out of the vestibule and stopped in front of the fallen dressers. Glancing up at broken windows, a flash-flood of rational, analytical thoughts overloaded him. First things first.

He tilted the top dresser upward, letting all of the empty drawers fall to the floor as he heaved it against the opposite wall. His dresser was next, but he took care to keep the drawers pushed firmly shut. Ryan dug through the dresser and quickly replaced his athletic shorts with jeans. Thick wool socks covered his feet, followed by a pair of well-travelled, dark brown hiking boots. He saw no sense in cutting his feet on broken glass before he left his room. He stepped over to the window and brushed aside the flimsy curtains. Flames engulfed western Boston, extending as far as he could see from his sixth story window.

That was 700 words…get the rest on January 19th by signing up HERE

The complete Perseid Collapse interview…

by Randy Powers of Practical Tactical.

This isn’t the first time Randy has challenged me to dissect one of my novels. Our early 2013 discussion of The Jakarta Pandemic is one of the most thorough, well-constructed interviews I’ve had the pleasure of giving. Mr. Powers puts time and thought into meaningful questions, which deeply explore the themes buried in my work. Even if I didn’t have themes, I’d have to make them up to satisfy Randy’s incredibly rich line of questioning 🙂

THE INTERVIEW:

The Fletchers are back in The Perseid Collapse and, I’ve got to say, we’ve missed them. Six years after the the Jakarta pandemic ravaged the life they had known Alex and Kate are pushing ahead into the new reality and are even sending their son Ryan off to college. How about you take it from there and tell us a little bit about the Fletchers and sort of set the stage for what’s going on in The Perseid Collapse?

The Fletchers are trying as much as they can to maintain a normal life. They live in the same home as they did in the first book. I struggled with whether they should stay in that house, whether there was too much bad juju in that neighborhood, a lot went down. They learned that bugging in like they did in The Jakarta Pandemic, although Maine is not as populated as some areas, in a relatively crowded neighborhood in a suburb was not a good idea then and it won’t be a good idea next time because the next time it’s going to be worse. Even if it’s the same or a lesser disaster, it’s going to end up being worse because the memories are fresh. The Fletchers made some money, or retained more money than everyone else, when everything was more or less wiped out after the Jakarta pandemic. So that’s kind of where the novel starts. Their son is on to college, they’re out on their sailboat, which is part of that normal life. They’re not afraid to go out, but they’re cautious. They have preparations. They have BOLT kits. They don’t live like most Americans, but they maintain the appearance that they do.

The Perseid Collapse opens up in China (something I certainly was not expecting) and once again it seems the Red Dragon is impacting the Fletchers world. Can you offer us a little insight into your motivation here?

I think it reflects more of my techno-thriller background that I’ve developed over the last four books in the Black Flagged series. I wanted to give readers a little more. Often times reading other books where you see an America that has been impacted by an EMP (Electro-Magnetic Pulse), there was never an explanation for what happened or even a hint of it….For me, I like to know a little more. So, I set up this international conspiracy based on the Chinese to get them back on the international scene and level things.

One of the things I noticed very early in the book is even though they’re the same people, no one that survived the Jakarta Pandemic escaped without being changed in some way. I noticed it in Kate first, but as the story moved along I saw the same thing in each of core characters and especially in Alex. Everyone seems to have a bit more edge to them and felt a bit grittier. Not in a bad way, but in a real way, and it seems like our group of survivors are more comfortable with themselves and with each other in their reality following the pandemic. Was this intentional and do you want to walk us through your thought process on how each member of the Durham Road group has come through their last six years?

In the first book of the Perseid, everyone has changed. They’ve retained a lot of their characteristics and their core values, but I think realism has really settled in. I thought it was most obvious in Alex, but I agree with you…and a number of other readers have said that they really liked seeing Kate and learning more about her and her mindset. Like you said, early on she establishes herself…not necessarily forcefully…but you know she’s a force to be reckoned with. She was always like that in the beginning. She was always the one that recommended doing the early shooting. She was kind of the more hard core proponent of violence in the first book. Now that’s kind of transferred over to Alex, but you can definitely see that shift.

This story gets downhill in a hurry and just picks up speed from there. A pandemic virus shook things up for the Fletchers last time around, so what is the disaster catalyst that kicks things off in The Perseid Collapse?

READ THE REST OF THE INTERVIEW HERE! Sorry to do that to you, but head on over to Randy’s site. He doesn’t bite and you won’t find yourself on a government watch list…like you will reading my stuff!

READ The Jakarta Pandemic Interview.

Two amazing reviews for The Perseid Collapse

I rarely post reviews of my own work here, but two writers have gone above and beyond the call of duty to bring The Perseid Collapse to life for potential readers. Joseph Souza (an award-winning writer and friend) and Devon Kodger (reviewer, blogger and writer) at triplemreviews  have written, what I call “dream reviews.” The kind of review every author prays will materialize.

Don’t let these two scare you. Any review is a dream come true—good or bad, because it means that someone has read your work and cared enough to express an opinion. It’s all good in my book.

Joseph Souza’s review

Devon Kodger’s review

My writing has made me a little paranoid…

which isn’t a bad thing. I think.

Here’s the situation. My son needed a ride to a friend’s house on a weekend morning, and like every weekend morning, I like to lounge around (after writing…I’m up early on weekends too out of sheer habit). 9:30 rolled by, and my son appeared out of nowhere to inform me, “It’s time to go.” I was dressed in a pair of shorts, a sweatshirt and Birkenstocks (no socks). Without donning a jacket, I dutifully jumped in the car and drove him. I didn’t plan to get out of the car, so why would I need a jacket or shoes? On the drive home, my brain started to come up with SCENARIOS, and NONE of them ended well for a man dressed in shorts, a flimsy sweatshirt and sandals, on a 25 degree morning.  

I spend six months at a time (longer for my first book, The Jakarta Pandemic), researching, creating and “playing out” one worst case SCENARIO after another. Not surprisingly, it has left an indelible mark on my thought processes and awareness. 

We had our first “sticking” snow this morning, and after a brief, “I love winter” sentiment, my mind went somewhere else. “Do we have enough food to last the winter, if the power failed right now and didn’t return?” That’s a product of The Jakarta Pandemic. The protagonist had to endure a Maine winter without power or the prospect of replenishing their food stockpile, while everyone was trying to take what they had. Which reminds me, “better check the ammo supply to0…what time does Cabelas open?” Eventually, I settle back into “these SCENARIOS are one in a million,” no need to run out today and fill up the grocery cart with canned goods, dried foods, medicine…”where’s my list again?” See what happens?

Right now, I’m living in Alex Fletcher’s new world, imagining what it would be like to navigate the unfamiliar jigsaw puzzle streets of Boston, in a city on the verge of violent, ugly collapse. He’ll get back to Maine, eventually, but the state will never be the same—for either of us. When I look around, I catch glimpses of the post-apocalyptic Maine brought to life in The Perseid Collapse. I can live with that…at least I’m not writing about zombies. I can’t imagine running around with that in my head.

Is this a writer’s curse? An occupational hazard for sure, but I think it better describes a writer’s GENESIS. The SCENARIOS didn’t start when I decided to write a novel. The novels came when I finally decided to write about the SCENARIOS. At some point, everyone asks at what point I decided to write a novel? It’s hard to answer, since I’ve been creating them for years.

I just finally decided to put one of them on paper. Now I can’t stop.

Maybe my paranoia made the writing!

The Perseid Collapse goes live

Not that this comes as a big surprise. Still, it’s a little surreal to know that another book is out there, for anyone to read.

It’s a little scary too, since this is what I do for a living now. Write books. I no longer have a convenient paycheck rolling into my bank account, on top of what Amazon pays me. It’s actually a lot more exciting than scary, and it couldn’t feel better.

With that said, The Perseid Collapse is now available on Amazon. You can download the ebook or pre-order a hardcopy(will be shipped Dec 6th), or wait for the audiobook in January—can you really wait?

Apparently, someone has already read and reviewed The Perseid Collapse. It’s an incredible review, capturing the essence of the story.

Check it out: First Amazon Review for The Perseid Collapse.

Another review just hit Amazon from award winning writer and apocalyptic author, Joseph Souza: Souza’s Review

Welcome to  The Perseid Collapse world! 

Resurfacing one of my favorite interviews

With The Perseid Collapse launch rapidly approaching it’s magic date—December 1st, I wanted to bring back some memories of it’s predecessor, The Jakarta Pandemic. TJP was my first novel, kicking my writing career into full gear. A ton has been said about TJP, covering every aspect of the story. I’ve been interviewed several times, and hundreds of independent reviews (individual blogs and websites) have been posted.

Randy Powers of Practical Tactical interviewed me during the late spring of 2013, and his questions blew me away. It was evident from the very start, that he had put an incredible amount of time and thought into my novel. This is by far one of my favorite interviews. He asks some hard questions about the more “controversial” material, giving me an opportunity to explain how I merge fiction with research.

THE INTERVIEW:

Welcome, Steve.  First and foremost, thank you for your service.

Thank you, Randy. I really appreciate the opportunity to dig below the surface of my writing and expose some of the core ideas and concepts that help shape the stories. Regardless of what other authors may claim, writing is a personal endeavor, no matter how far fetched the plot or action may seem to the reader. There is always something deeply personal embedded in the writing, and the threads that wrap around these aspects often define the story’s core essence.

In your writings, there is no such thing as black and white.  You deal in personal confliction and there are no easy answers.  You have also said that your military experience figures heavily into your writings.  With all that said, TJP brings all that together in a complex character and gives us Alex Fletcher.

Ten years out of the Marines, Alex has fully transitioned back into the private sector and seems to be doing quite well.  Putting aside what I assume would be Alex’s tendency to be prepared due to his military experience, I would like to talk a little about what motivated Alex to focus on the threat of a pandemic and make preparations for his family.  At the end of Chapter 5, we learn about a presentation that Alex did for his company Biosphere and the research that went into it.  We learned that process “changed his life” in apparently more ways than just professionally.  Can you talk about how this process impacted Alex and his decisions when it comes to his family’s preparedness?

When I started to conceptualize The Jakarta Pandemic, I wanted to highlight the difficulties of surviving a catastrophic level event in a suburban setting. The leading difficulty in my opinion would be dealing with everyone else’s varying degree of unpreparedness in the face of a complete lack of essential services. With that in mind, I wanted to start Alex in a position of self-sufficiency, and I chose this “presentation” as his catalyst to start preparing for a worst-case scenario. The conclusion Alex draws from his research reflects the culmination of my own examination of the scenario. In a nutshell, it’s not a matter of IF something like this will happen, it’s a matter of WHEN, and WHEN it happens, survival will depend on your basic level of preparedness and planning.

I’ve read that you raised your personal level of preparedness AFTER writing TJP.  I was a bit shocked by that fact.  One of my favorite parts of the book is when we get a first look at the Fletcher’s supplies as we join Alex for an inventory “the Frito supply” for the first time.  You describe the Fletcher’s well rounded stockpile in some detail and even lay out a good plan for rotating food stores as if you had been doing it yourself for a long time.  I particularly appreciated how you pointed out throughout the book that building a stockpile like the Fletcher’s is something that anyone can do if they make a plan and execute it in a practical way.  Was family preparedness and establishing an emergency survival kit a chicken and egg type thing for you as you wrote the book?  And, without divulging too much, how much did Alex teach you about being more prepared and what steps have you taken in your personal life to be better prepared for any future emergency?

Most people are shocked to learn that I never visited a prepper or survivalist website prior to finishing The Jakarta Pandemic. In many ways, I’m glad that I didn’t. I’m a details oriented writer, and despite the fact that the scene you described is exhaustively detailed, I would have driven myself insane trying to get the Fletcher’s “bunker” perfect. I put a considerable amount of thought into the contents of their survival stockpile, starting with the basics: Food, Water, and Medical Supplies…and expanding from there. And I certainly expanded far beyond the basics. Solar panels connected to battery storage, two oil tanks for storing fuel (this is a New England phenomena…most of you have natural gas or propane), wood burning stove (which I don’t think they ever used), generator, antibiotics (unethically obtained through Alex’s employer) and many other items that might come in handy if the shelves at your local Home Depot and grocery store emptied overnight. Imagine going cold turkey off Fritos…devastating. :0)

So to answer your question, I created this incredible stockpile or “bunker” in my novel, and didn’t have so much as three extra cans of vegetables in my own house to back up one of the main themes in my book. A few months after publishing the novel, I took Alex Fletcher’s advice and started to slowly build up a reserve of food and supplies, one shopping trip at a time. It’s truly amazing what you can amass in two years, when you take a systematic, consistent approach to stockpiling supplies. Does my basement now resemble Alex’s? Not even close, but I feel confident that my family could ride out a major disaster, without resorting to desperate measures. Of course, the same question always remains, regardless of how much you prepare…what is your neighbor doing to avoid resorting to desperate measures, and what is your plan to deal their desperation. This becomes a pinnacle issue for Alex, and his plan is woefully lacking in this author’s opinion…on purpose.

Most folks living a preparedness lifestyle understand that planning is paramount to the success of any emergency plan.  This usually means having a plan to ride out an emergency situation at home, also known as sheltering in place or bugging in, and also having a plan to evacuate if the situation dictates, commonly referred to as bugging out.  If the plan is to shelter in place, neighbors can become a real problem like we see in TJP.  We don’t want to give the story away, but what are your thoughts on working with neighbors or building a survival team, given that the necessities of dealing with a pandemic primarily call for isolation?  Makeshift alliances develop in TJP, but should Alex have developed relationships and built his team within the neighborhood well ahead of the pandemic since he viewed it as such a real threat?

This is hard to say. Unfortunately for Alex, his plan from the start was isolation, but he quickly learned that this wasn’t going to be a viable option. Without recognizing the need for a diplomacy based “crowd control” plan prior to the arrival of the pandemic virus, he really shortchanged himself and put his family in danger. With that said, none of us want to view our neighborhood as an episode of Survivor, where shifting alliances and secret plots undermine the ease of living and sense of relaxation we come to expect when we pull into the driveway. Alex had some core friends in the neighborhood, which came in handy as the conflict escalated, and he found a few surprise allies along the way. If anything, Alex could have been more open to dispelling a few stereotypes that hindered him in the beginning. I don’t write big moral lessons into my novels, but Alex’s character gave me the opportunity to point out a few negative behaviors that most of us can find in ourselves from time to time.

Read the full interview

National Geographic primer for The Perseid Collapse

American Blackout

October 27th 9PM Eastern Time, set your DVR for American Blackout

Just when I’m about to give Time Warner Cable the boot, I find something like American Blackout—and we’re stuck with 900 channels of cable again!

Sounds drastic, but a one hour special like this can make an immeasurable impact. From what I can tell through show’s website, you don’t want to miss it. It details the possible outcome of a nationwide, 10 day blackout, and its impact on everyday Americans.

The timing of American Blackout coincides with the impending launch of my research based, disaster epic, The Perseid Collapse. You’ll find some frightening similarities between the two stories, except in my novel, nobody gets to flip the lights back on in 10 days. The “mass event” in The Perseid Collaspe is more of a permanent blackout.

Check out National Geographic’s interactive timeline at Survive the Blackout. They take you day by day through the scenario, as the situation deteriorates. I guarantee you’ll learn something that could save your life on the ten pages of this timeline. I’ve been writing research based fiction about realistic disaster scenarios for years, and I took away some simple, “no kidding,” easy to implement tips that could help in any disaster situation. It’s well worth a look.

A blackout isn’t the only disaster scenario discussed on the National Geographic website. I found the killer asteroid scenario interesting.

I wonder what would happen if both occurred simultaneously? The Perseid Collaspe.

Final Cover for The Perseid Collapse

0979 Steve Konkoly ebook THE PERSEID COLLAPSE_2_LJeroen ten Berge has turned the tables on me! He’s delivered an incredible cover design, and I haven’t finished writing the book!  As always, Jeroen scored a bullseye. His design brilliantly captures the core essence of The Perseid Collapse’s sweeping apocalyptic world.

2019. Six years after the Jakarta Pandemic, the United States stands at the brink of a fiscal and industrial resurgence. Stories of prosperity and confidence dominate the headlines, orchestrated to distract the nation from a dangerous current of hostility and fear—running strong below the surface. Nobody has forgotten the horrors of the Jakarta Pandemic. Sickness. Hunger. Desperation. Unspeakable violence.

On August 19, 2019, an unprecedented “mass event” will release a darkness across the United States. A human darkness with a vast appetite for violence and chaos. Alex Fletcher will awaken to this new world, catapulted unwillingly into an frantic odyssey, against overwhelming odds, to save his family and friends.”

Sample Chapters of The Perseid Collapse

I have decided to release “unedited” chapters of The Perseid Collapse periodically until the novel’s release in December. A fair number of you have waited VERY patiently for me to return to the apocalyptic genre, so I thought I would give you something to hold you over until the launch. I anticipate posting roughly one chapter per week through November, which should bring you about a third of the way through Alex Fletcher’s latest survival journey.

Yes, the Fletchers are back, just as the United States has effectively settled into a comfortable, but tenuous post Jakarta Pandemic routine. A new era of isolationism has emerged, with the economy stabilized and the population better prepared for disaster.  On the surface, its business as usual in the United States, but dig a little deeper and you’ll find that one thing has remained the same. Trust in the government is at an all time low. The collective memory of twenty-six million deaths (nearly one in every ten citizens) during the Jakarta Pandemic runs like a shallow current, waiting to break through the thin facade of prosperity and confidence. The Perseid Collapse takes place in 2019, six years after The Jakarta Pandemic. It starts with a “Mass Event” that instantly shatters the fragile barrier…and unleashes a torrent of fear, panic and mistrust.

Of course, the Fletchers will be caught up in the middle of it…and they’ll no longer have the option of secluding themselves in the comfort and safety of their “prepper” paradise. I’m taking all of that away from them in The Perseid Collapse…from the very start. If you enjoyed The Jakarta Pandemic, or my Black Flagged novels, I guarantee this one will grab you from the beginning. Part technothriller, all apocalyptic…The Perseid Collapse is the best of both worlds.

You can find and download the chapters from my blog, either at the top right corner of my blog or on The Perseid Collapse page accessible at the very top of my blog. The chapters are available in Word or PDF form. You can save these on your computer and upload them to your Kindle. If you don’t know how to do that, let me know…it sure beats reading on a computer screen.