Welcome, friend! Today I bring you a collaborative post with Ethan Warrener and we are chatting about his latest SciFi Dystopian novel, For Home and Hearth. This one is on my TBR and I am looking forward to bringing you the review sometime.

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Get to know the author: Ethan Warrener

Welcome Ethan! Tell me and my readers a bit about yourself!

I teach 4th and 5th grade English language learners in a small town in the Missouri Ozarks. I grew up on a nearby farm, and I still have one toe stuck in that world. Someday I might find myself sucked into the convergence of crunchy nature-loving and practical profit-maximizing that is regenerative agriculture. The only problem with that plan is I’m lazy as heck. I spend most of my leisure time cooking, cavorting with my two young children, playing computer games, or watching shows with my wife. I love listening to music, a wide variety of metal in particular (Be’lakor and Demon Hunter on lighter days, Meshuggah and Becoming the Archetype on heavier days), and I can name any number of different songs and albums that have influenced my writing as much as the stories I’ve consumed. 

What inspired you to write this book?

At the time I first started writing, I had seen several post-apocalyptic stories that, while often fun, didn’t make much sense to me. I grew frustrated with various tropes of the genre and asked myself some questions. What happens to humans when scavenging no longer becomes sustainable? What will happen to a culture in the wake of a cataclysm? How will survivors rebuild a society in which they can reasonably guarantee the survival of the next generation? My answers inevitably involved some sort of small, tight-knit community nurturing the embers of civilization–trade, labor specialization, literacy, etc—the way one of Jack London’s doomed protagonists might stoke a flame in the arctic wasteland. Such a community would be, out of necessity, bound to each other out of loyalty and fiercely tied to customs and traditions. I can see how a quiet, small-town drama might not be as exciting as Mad Max, but I still felt like there was a story buried there.

How long did it take you to write this book, from the first idea to the last edit?

I started writing this back in 2010. Since then, what was originally supposed to be a single, stand-alone novel has expanded to a duology, and I hope to publish the sequel within the next year.

What makes your story unique?

It’s a post-apocalyptic small town story, often with a feel that makes it seem more like historical frontier fiction than sci-fi. More on that below.

Who would enjoy reading your book? 

I like to say it’s for people who wished The Walking Dead had a little more down-home wholesome goodness, or for folks who would have liked to see The Andy Griffith Show explore man’s brutal inhumanity. How large a readership that constitutes is debatable. 

What’s something you hope readers would take away from it?

I would like readers to get something from the main character in the story, whether it be inspiration or a swift kick in the pants. When people ask me who I look up to, the back of my mind nudges me to suggest Ella Holland (I know, it’s weird). I wish I could say I made her, but in some ways, she’s making me. She has no business existing in a harsh post-apocalyptic world, and I’m not sure she’d fit into this one, either. She’s got a mythic quality to her, not because of her feats or abilities, but because of her relentless kindness and mercy. Unlike Beowulf or Hercules or Superman, there’s no good reason for me not to follow her example, which is why she makes me so uncomfortable when she stares back from the page. I’m not like her, but I ought to be. 

Do you have a favourite quote or scene in the book that you find yourself going back to?

I enjoy writing action scenes, perhaps to a fault. One of my favorites comes early on, with the point of view character stuffed in a pantry while she listens to a potentially dangerous stranger fighting mutant monsters right outside. A good scene in general accomplishes multiple things at the same time, and if I can have one with explosions on top of it all, so much the better. 

What is something you have learned on your author journey so far?

I’ve learned to write what I want without worrying if I’m writing “proper” literature. There’s a difference between doing my best with a story and writing to appease the elitist snob who lives in a dingy part of my brain where I store phrases like “Post-Structural Neocapitalist Hegemony.” 

What’s the best piece of advice you have received related to writing?

The Chekhov’s Gun principle has given way more mileage than I could have imagined. Its simplest formulation says to remove irrelevant details, but I’ve found it more effective to find irrelevant details in my story, and rather than remove them, find a way to make them relevant. It makes my writing more efficient without making it overly predictable. 

If you could give a shout out to someone(s) who has helped in your writer journey, please feel free to mention them below!

In college, I was even more insecure about my writing than I am now. Michael Czyzniejewski, my creative writing teacher and a pretty wry fellow in general, made an off-hand comment to me after discussing one of my stories in class one day: “You know, you can do this.” Coming from him, it felt like getting the Pulitzer Prize. I’ve never forgotten it. 

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Book Excerpt from
For Home and Heath

Omar and Amos walked along the palisade on the western edge of town, their breath clouding the moonlit air. In the tree line not far away, they could hear the not-quite-animal grunts and hoots of the pigmen.

“We can turn back at the corner past the gate, I guess,” Amos said.

“The carpenter’s watchin’ the gate. We can turn back here just as well.”

Amos shrugged and pivoted alongside Omar without comment.

A distant gout of flame sparked in the darkness like a guttering candle, soon followed by the pop of a rifle report. A single shot wasn’t cause for alarm, but the two young men moseyed down the wall anyway to make sure. A couple of the Finches stood at the wall, one looking out through the arrow slits, the other up on a section of the catwalk, pushing a musketball down the barrel of his rifle with his ramrod, whistling a tune to himself.

The elder of the two answered Amos’ question before he’d had a chance to ask it. “Cephas missed with the bow, so we had to burn some powder to show we meant business. Best get a move on; nothing more to see here,” he said with a sidelong glance at Omar.

Farther down the wall, Amos cast a glance back. “Those Finches can sure be a cutthroat bunch in a pinch. Anything bad happens on our shift, you run and find them.”

“They always work the night shifts?”

“Always. Nobody in the clan can see in the dark better than them. Whole family’s like that; it’s in their blood. You think they’d be good drifters?”

“How should I know? I don’t know the Finches. There’s more to driftin’ than being able to see at night.”

“I suppose so. You ever going to tell me about the drifting life?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“’Cause it’s none of your business, that’s why.”

“Well, fine then. Seems like an awful nice night for folks to be sticking to their own business.” Amos hitched the shoulder strap of his rifle a little higher up. They walked a few hundred feet farther down the length of the palisade before Amos spoke again. “I don’t suppose a drifter’s got much occasion to go courting.”

“Nope.”

“Ever wanted to?”

Omar surveyed the open area in front of the palisade. “When I was a kid, I guess.”

They walked on as the night wore away. Amos shivered and shrugged off the deepening cold. Stopping to check the perimeter, he peeked through the rifle holes and arrow loops of the palisade to scan the killing space in front of the woods.

“Omar,” Amos whispered.

“Hmm?”

“Pigman out on the edge of the woods. See him?”

A lone pigman rested on its haunches out in the open, watching the town with its head cocked to the side as if curious. An odd bearing, but then again, most unbred strains did not follow the warp and woof of wild-wrought beasts. It looked serene in the moonlight.

Omar looked through a firing slit as he nocked an arrow. “I see him. Eyeshine always gets ’em.”

The bow twanged and a sharp howl that sounded like a man’s cry rang in the night. The beast whimpered a little as its life passed into the snow.

“My dad always said archery was a waste of time,” Amos said. “That and swordfighting.”

“I can’t speak for matchet work, but the bow is mighty cheap for sure shots.”

“Dad said that if an enemy or an unbred gets past your rifle fire, go for the spear.”

“And only an idiot lets anything get past his spear,” Omar finished.

“Your dad told you that too, huh?”

“Yup.”

“I kinda like the sportiness of it, though, you know? Me and my friends would get some dull swords, pack straw in our coveralls, and go to town on each other.” Amos mimed a parry and riposte.

“Playin’ is one thing. Killing’s another.”

“Yeah, I haven’t got used to that, yet,” Amos admitted.

“The killin’?”

“Only unbreds, so far. But even that…” Amos shook his head, searching for the right words. “It’s not as easy as I figured when I was little.”

Omar grunted. “They can be tougher than leather sometimes.”

“That’s not what I mean. If I had a hog and a pigman trussed up and lying on the ground, and I had to kill both of them, you’d think it would be easier to kill the pigman. I mean, it’s a monster, right? But it isn’t. Easier, I mean.”

“Can’t say I have that problem much.”

“Some say that pigmen cry just like us.”

“It’s true. Don’t make them like us, though.”

“I don’t know—they come from humans.”

“They come from a lot that ain’t humans, too.”

“I know. A little bit of hog, a little bit of ant, a little bit of fish, a little mushroom, even. I heard they put some stuff in there spun out of nothing but clouds and cotton. But there’s still a lot of human parts and pieces left in them. The idea curdles my blood.”

“We don’t hunt pigmen for the sport of it. They ain’t dogs you can tame, you know.”

“I just don’t understand why the scientists ever made the unbreds in the first place.”

“I reckon they made a mistake.”

“But I don’t get what they was even trying to do that they messed up so bad they made all these creatures. None of the old folks ever talk about it, and we’ve hardly got any books about the breedcrafting in the school. But you know there had to be some reason for the unbreds.”

“They was—” Omar stopped.

“They was what?”

“I guess I don’t know,” he shrugged.

“Yeah, I reckon so,” Amos said.

They walked on for a while before Amos spoke again. “Did you ever see any ubermenschen while you were out drifting?”

“I … I don’t make it a point to go a-lookin’.”

“The nomad traders say some of them could fly and punch through walls and peek inside people’s heads.”

“That would be something to see.”

“But you haven’t ever seen it?”

“No.”

“Sam Chambers thought there couldn’t be many ubermenschen left anymore, ’cause they weren’t suited for this belt-tightening kind of life. But most of the ones still around are otherworldly cunning.”

“Not cunning enough to last, though.”

“I suppose they’re still human, like the rest of us. I’ve heard a story that in the old days, before the unbred outbreak and the plague and the war, an ubermensch and a regular person fell in love. They couldn’t be together because of the breeding laws, so they killed themselves rather than go on with their own kind. The Reverend says it’s a wicked tale, but I always thought it was really… I don’t know. Really something.”

They got on with their patrol. The moon’s placid face hung over a black forest seething with ill-will. They reached the gate, where the murky shapes of the two Finches stood just outside the ring of light cast by a lone lantern. They didn’t move as Amos and Omar drew near.

“Evening again,” Amos said.

“Shhh,” one of the Finches hissed, his gaze locked on the road beyond the wall. “Douse that glim.”

Amos and Omar stopped in their tracks. Amos reached out and shuttered the lantern hanging on a peg. A low, meditative, horn-like call glided across the forest. Two rifles bolted to their shoulders and leveled themselves at the darkness.

“That isn’t a pigman call,” Amos muttered.

The elder Finch made no move but whispered back, “Wasn’t sure what I was seein’ ’til I heard it. Can you make it out?”

The four of them peered into the moon-pale darkness of the woods and the sloping hills before they heard one last call, this time within rifle range. And they saw it briefly against the velvet night sky before it flitted away. It stood upright, and if they had not known better, they might have mistaken it for a man.

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Interested?

Find For Home and Hearth on Goodreads and Amazon.

Thank you for hanging out with us today. Connect with Ethan on his website, Goodreads, Amazon and Facebook.

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Cover image: Photo on Unsplash