I wrote a dystopian survival story without a traditional invasion

Beyond the Lost Horizon takes a different path from a typical dystopian survival story, beginning with a collapse years in the making.

In 2005, we didn’t have phones or high-speed internet (at least in my neck of the woods) to preoccupy our minds. Hell, we still had tube TVs, and they weren’t exactly in HD.

So I spent my Saturday mornings watching random movies before playing Madden NFL at some point on the Playstation 2 — back when Madden was still worth playing, with its epic franchise mode that EA Sports can’t match 20 years later.

One movie that piqued my interest was Red Dawn. I didn’t know it at the time because I suppressed my love for writing back then to “fit in” with everyone else — dumbass move on my part — but it laid the foundation for what would become Beyond the Lost when I sat down to write its opening chapter 18 years later.

But nobody from North Korea, China, Russia, Iran, or anywhere else were going to be paratrooping from the skies. Nah, I didn’t want to remanufacture the manufactured wearing a different skin.

Instead, I made it a terrorist attack at a K-pop concert. One that would send the West into a hellscape in a single night. But one where a disillusioned indie sportswriter crossed paths with a K-pop idol — something that came to me in a dream.

Kick off this epic trilogy with Beyond the Lost Horizon

A dystopian survival story with a unique concept

Bam! I had the ingredients for a very weird dystopian survival story. But there was one more problem: No help was arriving, so how do I even remotely explain it?

More than the power grid had to go out, that was for sure. Instead, I made the “enemy” here out to be terrorist cells embedded in everyday society. People who looked like your average, everyday neighbor, workout partner, co-worker, you get the gist.

And then, when the brains behind it — embedded into Western governments thanks to their crisp suits, clean smiles, and PR-friendly aesthetics — gave the signal, it was game, set, and match.

In short — no enemy nation shut down the power grid. And they definitely didn’t invade from the sky, start a war, or do anything like that. No. It was a long con in the making. One that began decades before the book’s events.

The real enemy seeks something disturbing and personal

Their endgame is so sinister that Quinn Cozens and Yui Kikuchi wish the enemy was just some mustache-twirling cartoon villain hell-bent on global domination. In some ways, that real villain is. They’re just disguised in a PR package with millions upon millions of passionate admirers. Many of those same admirers perished in the first phase of the attack.

Some of my readers already know what’s waiting for Quinn and Yui because they have access to Beyond the Lost inside the Vault VIP Club. You can get the entire trilogy today and over two-dozen other full-length books inside the Club.

Or if you’d rather fly solo, kick things off with Beyond the Lost Horizon