The Burnt Earth Series, Book 1

Post-Apocalyptic Steampunk/Solarpunk

Melanie Karsak

Releasing October 18th, 2017

Thank you so much to Coffee Time Romance and More for allowing me to stop by today and share my new release, Scorched: The Last Nomads. While my Airship Racing Chronicles and Steampunk Fairy Tales series are both gaslamp, Regency or Victorian steampunk, I decided to go a new direction with The Burnt Earth Series. In addition to writing steampunk, I also write in the post-apocalyptic genre. I wanted to marry the two genres together. The result is The Burnt Earth Series which is a little Mad Max, a little steampunk, and will eventually end on a solar- or greenpunk theme.

Scorched: The Last Nomads begins in a post-apocalyptic future after a massive solar event destroyed the earth. Similar to an EMP, a coronal mass ejection from the sun devastated humanity, fried modern technology, and left disease in it’s wake. My heroine, Keyes, is a resident at The Park, one of the surviving communities. Keyes, while a gifted mechanic, finds herself trying to invent and build a future on the rusted remains of the past. She develops devices, such as landsailers, to help her survive the burnt earth. But Keyes is also smart enough to see that the future needs to be made from something new.

Keyes’ life changes when her sister Ash travels to the nearby community of Low Tide for an annual shipment of supplies. But Ash never returns. Keyes is told by her community elders to wait, but that solution isn’t good enough for my plucky heroine. The solution to her problem presents itself in the unexpected arrival of The Dead Troupe, part-nomads, part-warriors, at The Park. Their arrival changes Keyes life and sets off her adventure in the larger world beyond the rusting ruins of The Park.

As Keyes adventures, she will encounter a variety of communities and learn about other places that are thriving. The solarpunk themes in the series will be more evident later as a contrast to The Park. Solarpunk, like steampunk, envisions the world based on different technology. In the case of solarpunk, the vision is generally of the future. Solarpunk worlds feature Earth-friendly energy sources and environmentally sensitive philosophies. Societies are often centered around the artisan/craftsman way of life and are less patriarchal. While not dystopias, solarpunk does suggest an ideal way of interacting with the environment. Solarpunk is the child of eco-critical literature and is just beginning to emerge in genre and speculative fiction. I’m excited to add my own voice–through the eyes of Keyes–to this new literary genre.

Novel Blurb

Survive the Night. Suffer the Day.

Every day, I pray my sister survived the wasteland–and that the bond between us will be enough for me to find her.

One hundred and sixty-seven years ago, a solar coronal mass ejection devastated civilization. In the blink of an eye, modern technology died. Destroying the grid might not have brought about our end, but the solar superstorm blighted the land and made us sick. After the crisis, lawlessness ruled, and societies fell. This is the hellish world my sister Ash and I grew up in. If it’s not the landscape trying to kill you, the wailers who roam the wasteland at night will.

Now our home, The Park, teeters on the brink of extinction. When the annual shipment of supplies from Low Tide outpost failed to arrive, my sister led a small scouting party to find out what happened.

But she never came back. No one did.

I can either hope for a miracle or mourn her for dead. I can’t live with either option. The elders won’t let me leave. But nothing will keep me from Ash. The unexpected arrival of The Dead Troupe–part-nomads, part-performers–offers an unexpected opportunity to find her.

Now I just need to survive the sunburnt earth where the wailers roam and none but the Dead Troupe survive.

Join Keyes in her search for Ash in this post-apocalypse CME fiction with solarpunk and steampunk elements, Scorched: The Last Nomads, The Burnt Earth Series Book One.