January 20, 2021
Shattered World Post Three
Week 3, Day 3 – Shattered World
Genre: Post-Apocalyptic Science Fiction
Release Date: October 1, 2014
Cover Design: Jimmy Gibbs
Formats: ebook, audiobook, and paperback
Amazon US
Amazon UK
Universal
Audible
Goodreads
Stranded in the middle of the Mojave Desert, surrounded by zombies, Vivian and Axl’s group are sure they’re facing the end. The dead are closing in and the shelter they were promised is sealed tight, only they refuse to go down without a fight. Just when they think they’ve run out of time, the doors to the shelter are thrown open and they’re given refuge. Five years in underground condos with all the provisions there for the taking. It’s almost too good to be true. With the promise of security, Vivian hopes she’ll finally able to take a deep breath and deal with everything that’s happened.
What can you tell us about the setting in Shattered World?
I already talked about the inspiration for the underground luxury shelter in my earlier post, but in this book we learn things aren’t as rosy as the survivors had expected. I started writing Broken World in 2012, and if you remember, was the year the Mayan calendar ended, which a lot of people took to mean the world might end as well. It seemed logical that the company I made up would have used 2012 as a selling point, so setting the book a couple years after that made sense, especially because I knew it would take that long before it was released. I also needed a reason for the survivors to leave the shelter, and financial problems resulting in the selling off of all the supplies that were supposed to be there made perfect sense to me. I’d chosen the Mojave Desert as the location of the shelter for two reasons. One: I wanted my characters to have to go to Vegas. Two: there were actually Atlas Missile Silos in the Mojave Desert.
After learning that the supplies are no more, the survivors decide to send a small group out to gather the things they need, and since Sam’s Club has pretty much everything, I sent them there. I know a lot of people who have Costco memberships, but we didn’t have one close to us when I was growing up, so I’ve always had a Sam’s Club membership, which made adding it natural for me. (I double checked there was one in the Vegas area before adding it.)
When Vivian and Axl get stranded in Vegas, the casino closest to them is Paris. In 2003 when my husband and I were first married, we went to Vegas on vacation and stayed at the Paris casino and even swam in the rooftop pool. It had been a few years since since I was there, so I had to pull up pictures online just to remember what it all looked like, but it seemed like the ideal place for Vivian and Axl to hang out while they waited for Angus to rescue them, and the perfect place for a little romance. I returned to Vegas in 2016 to attend the RT Convention, which was my first big book convention, and went back to the Paris casino with fellow author and friend, Diana Gardin, just to take pictures in the lobby. It was an awesome trip!
