Why Toxic City?

I've written under several genres.

The Pantinium Blade is epic adventure fantasy
The Resident is a thriller/horror
DCI Forrest is crime
The Oddly Lit collection is children's horror fiction
And Nowear Left is a gothic fantasy.

But for as long as I've been writing, there's one genre that has always floated my boat and that was post apocalyptic

I crave it!

My first experience was a book called Z for Zachariah. 

I read it in my early teens and it was a diary of a girl in an American town after a nuclear war. She was all that was left. It was lonely, quiet, and uncertainty was everywhere.  She tried to live as normal, waiting for her family to come home and one day someone came to visit. She wanted to trust this man but there was an instinctual fear that kept her at arms length and it played out as true. As desperation overtook his humanity, she had to fight to keep safe. It ended with her taking his hazmat suit and walking off to find civilisation.

I always remember that this book left me feeling cold. I was at the beginning of the Harry Potter series and I'd not long left behind Steven King's famous works such as Hearts In Atlantis, Needful Things, and his Nightmares and Dreamscapes. Hell, I was still reading the goosebumps series!!

All of those gave me the chills. But nothing fed me the gritty reality of true abandonment than that diary had.

From where did it stem? 

I love magic. I was a practising witch for a decade (don't laugh!). I loved faith based things like Buddhism and Shamanism, I yearned to tap into something really special and uplifting. But it was all fantasy and I knew it, and whilst I still benefited because it helped fuel my fantasy novels, it also left me wanting.

That space was filled with radiation.

I love magic for its mysterious affect on the natural world. What I didn't realise was that the magic existed in science, and radiation was the mysticism I was craving!!!

This led me to other books, cartoons, and comics relating to post nuclear wars, fallout, and the apocalypse.

As of books, I've read many. None met the same realism that I'd craved since my first experience. I was an adult by this point and I wanted it to feel true.

Comics were mainly Judge Dread, Stephen King's The Dark Tower series, and a few shows that escape me now.

But I would say my first true rush came when I played S.T.A.L.K.E.R shadow of Chernobyl.

GSC Game World PC

At first it was just a game. I never expected it to be life changing. I soon grew engrossed with the scifi nature, of anomalies, deadly storms, blood suckers and these freaky pig things on skinny legs. The whole Russian theme was alluring; the language, the themes, the way the people of that world had settled into it with the typical Russian resolve that we attribute to them even today.

I played for hours and hour and hours. But as much as I thought the game was amazeballs, it was what came after that blew my mind.

The team behind S.T.A.L.K.E.R weren't just some office-bound games developers. They were danger-dancing adventurers who really pulled out all the stops when it came to making this game a true Post Apocalyptic nightmare!

The team went to Chernobyl, to Pripyat, and mapped what they saw. The streets you walked in the game? They were the same streets of the Dead Zone around the deadly factory. The chambers and reservoirs where I'd ran from bloodsuckers and braved anomalies to capture relics were the exact same landscapes as in the real town!

I was overcome. I played the following games with vigour.

I'd found it. After years of never thinking I would, I'd found the gritty realism I'd yearned for. 

What this led to

Mainly just musing. For a long time I'd had an idea for a story. I didn't have a main character or a cause, but I had a world. I knew how they world had ended, I knew why, and I knew the dangers my characters would face, such as disfiguring effects of radiation, struggles of power between factions, and difficulty in remaining a 'good' person when survival involved doing bad things.

I knew I wanted anomalies, but I wanted everything to be as real as possible, and the storms that inhibit human survival (though very similar to the storms of the S.T.A.L.K.E.R world are actually the result of something else, but that's another story).

I needed more inspiration.


Bring on the next video game!!

Look at all that grit. look at it!! nnnng 

I can forgive PC players for not playing STALKER, but for any kind of RPG enthusiast to never have played even one of the Fallout games is reprehensible!

I loved the camp, jovial nature in which this game delivers its characters and plots, and also the magnificence of Bethesda writers to bring you crashing down to earth in such engrossing adventures that you'll remember them forever. 

By the third Fallout, I already had Toxic City penned, at least the first draft, and I had experimented with several characters before settling with Val.

I made dis :3 

I had a general idea of how it was going to start and how it was going to end, and I used Fallout as a vehicle for adventure, to see just where I might take my character. Did I want her to be sneaky and intrusive, or impulsive and closed off? Did I want her to yearn to fight, or to slink off and let others deal with it? 

RPG games allowed me to see how different attribute classes would allow me to deal with the same situation. I'd often replay scenes as different characters in the game to get a full effect, and I did this with Toxic City, constantly starting over from scratch to play out various scenarios. 

What I came away with 

There's a lot I can say I took away from S.T.A.L.K.E.R, such as the crippling effects of radiation, the anomalies, and the very idea of Walkers (though that development has a story to itself), but what did I take away from Fallout? 

Pipboys!

Check this 3D printed baby at http://ytec3d.com/pip-boy/ 

S.T.A.L.K.E.R already introduced me to PDA's and I've loved this idea for ever, but Pipboys brought out a real sense of character. Val owns a much more refined, but no less kickass RDAC (Radiation Detector and Anomaly Counter) which takes pictures, shines light, has communication lines and, of course, a built in radio. Which brings me to the next inspiration

RADIOS!

I've been in love with the radios on every single Fallout game for as long as I've played the game. Even to this day I sing bongo bongo bongo I don't wanna leave the jungle oh no no no nooooo and it makes me smile. Even though I never got a real sense of loneliness in Fallout, I can imagine it must be a hard environment to live in, especially when 90% of people want you dead, and then you slap on the radio and have that playing in your ear. I loved it!

After Fallout? 

Well, we have Metro 2033

This game came very late on in my writing of Toxic City and it mainly compounded what I'd already achieved with S.T.A.L.K.E.R. It was also very restrictive. Less a sandbox game and more linear, which is fine, but it didn't allow me to grow as a character like RPG games often do. Still a good game, just wrong time. 

But an unlikely influence? 

It was 2015 and I had finished the final draft of the Toxic City plot. I'd ended up cutting out whole chunks of the story by the end of 2016, but that was fine, it was all for progress. But I was starting to crave survival sci-fi stories again! 

So what did I pick off the shelf? 

I'd always been recommended it but I'd never given it a chance. Not to mention I didn't view it as a Post Apocalyptic story. But that's exactly what it was. It has full-on world annihilation, with barely a handful of humans surviving, and having to make it in an environment completely new and positively deadly! But it was a little out of the usual spectrum.

Still, it was gold! 

It used comedy to ease the edges of what should've been rather dire. I tried re-reading the book without the quips and thought it honestly depressing. Not because it was badly written (because it was not) but because it made it a bit too realistic. 

I'd like to say I took from this book the comedy element. I'm really not that talented. I can't really say what came of it other than aching sides and a new outlook. But I make references to it and will do my best to get as many of my readers to grab a copy.

Conclusion

I never once stopped to think 'well that's a lot like S.T.A.L.K.E.R or Fallout' when writing this book because, frankly, that is exactly what I wanted to happen. These games, as well as the books and comics, moved me in ways I haven't experienced with other genres. Sure, Hearts in Atlantis is still one of the greatest books I've ever read, and Douglas Adams had me crying with laughter, but none of them filled a hole that, frankly, I didn't know needed filling. 

And most of all, I followed the one sound bit of advice that I will plug as my motto for eternity

If you can't find the book you want to read, then write it. 

I failed to find the true, nitty gritty, down to the bone, utterly heart breaking and realistic post-apocalyptic story that I craved, and so I've endeavoured for the past eight years to write it. And if it gets anyone to read HHGtotheG, to play S.T.A.L.K.E.R, or to find Z for Zachariah, and to be even remotely as amazed as I was, then I'd feel like I at least achieved something. 

Hopefully through the amazing guidance of Britains Next Best Seller, I'll have Toxic City Volume 1 and 2 available for purchase by the middle of 2017. 

Think you have a story the world wants to see? check them out here for your chance to get published!!!

 Clickity clack ---> Bnbsbooks

Also you can find me at twitter! @DangelAngello  

Thanks for reading!!! 

Toxic City, first chapters

Toxic City

Walkers in the Mist

Volume 1

PART ONE

1

For over a month Val had been bedbound. Each time she woke up, her first objective was to move. It was the best cure for the stiffening of her young yet haggard muscles. It negated the effects of blanket radiation which, after months to years, would sink through clothes, skin, fatty tissue, and rest on the outer lining of muscles. If this was allowed to continue then her body would slowly calcify, locking her inside. But moving hurt. Turning her head caused lightning sensations down her back, and the creaking of her bones was scarily audible. Any medical examiner worth their salt would presume she owned the organs of a middle-aged woman. In fact, she was barely six months from fifteen.

After minutes that felt like hours, she rolled from the mattress to the floor – as it had no bedframe – and forced every sinew to stand. She stumbled across clothes, empty bottles, and spent ration packets, using furniture for support until reaching the small closet that housed the toilet. She collapsed on the narrow pot and hissed against the burning sensation as she pee’d. Not much came out; a bad sign since she’d spent most of her waking moments downing litres of warm, sterilised water. Her kidneys were obviously in a terrible state and this was no surprise since she’d consumed months’ worth of radiation medication in as little as a few weeks.

“Jim?” she called, her voice hoarse. She repeated her shout to no avail.

She’d not looked for him during her struggle to the loo, but it was obvious he wasn’t there.

She hauled herself to a stand, but bumped her head on a plastic sheet covering a hole in the ceiling. Pulling it away showered plaster dust, but the space up through the loft bathed her in light. Not pure sunlight as the clouds hadn’t broken in her lifetime, but light all the same. That meant one thing.

She had made it to day thirty-six.

2

Val stumbled from the table where she’d been tuning the radio and collapsed on the mattress. She refused to lie down as she’d likely sleep, so she distracted herself by looking about the apartment. It consisted of one large room with smaller quarters serving as the toilet and her greenhouse at the end. The old Beckton Globe Library in East London had been her home for almost three years and whilst it wasn’t a fortress, it was enough out of the way of the main road to remain safe.

The windows were covered in lead and lined with blast-proof cladding; protection from the Mists – powerful storms that dragged radiation across the Earth. With the help of Jim, who was the closest thing she had to family, she had erected a partition to the back of the room that also acted as a desk supporting a water purification unit – or WPU. On the back wall was a hatch she’d constructed from a pressure door sourced from an old war ship that Jim still lived in. Also with his help, she’d hauled it home and installed it within a month or so. Now it acted as the perfect barrier between her less-than-sterile apartment and the greenhouse growing veg and brewing beer. As Jim had said at the time, it wasn’t bad going for a twelve-year-old.

It was nearly seven, but whether that meant morning or evening, it didn’t matter. ERD would always come upon this hour. For this, she listened ever closer to the static, waiting.

Not long now, she told herself. Stay awake for a few minutes more.

She looked to her dresser filled with empty medication packets. There was also a broken mirror that she now used to check the colour of her tongue and eyes. She’d been called a lot of things in her time, but pale wasn’t one. Muddy. Dusky. Black, even. But she was light brown in her opinion. Or she should’ve been. Her last mission into the Wastes far south of London had brought about such high levels of exposure that it had actually drained her of some pigment. Now she looked relatively grey with yellowing eyes.

Her hair fared no better. When she was young and living in the Sacred Hearts Orphanage, all the Sisters would run their fingers through it and say it was her most precious feature. Now it was limp about her face and several clumps came free when she pulled at knots. It wouldn’t be long before the spots of alopecia combined, making her look ten years older. She used a small, standard-carry penknife to slice her hair to a few inches in length. It looked no better, but at least it could be pushed beneath her beanie hat.

She rushed with cold and held herself. It was a side effect of the meds. She’d begin seizing soon if she didn’t remain calm. She needed a distraction and eyed the radio as if willing the voice to come.

ERD, they called him. His name meant, ‘Energy-Rich Drink’ if the jingle at the start of his broadcast was anything to go by. He, like many others who’d hi-jacked radio channels from the Peace Enforcement Agency, reused jingles that had played before the End. This one stuck and most had come to know him by it. The funniest jingle was for ladies’ sanitary towels that sang before Hound Hoolia’s broadcast. She doubted he knew what the woman was singing about, but it would break the monotony of the static all the same.

As if her ears had popped, the static died and a jingle broke through.

“It’s what you do,

Not what you think,

So break from the chains

With an Energy-rich Drink!”

The women seemed so euphoric! As if all life’s problems could be solved with a simple soda.

Val leaned back with a relieved smile.

“Hello ERD.”

Now all she had to do was stay awake.

3

‘Good morning. And yes, it is morning,’ said the aged but well-spoken man from her slightly less static-hungry radio. ERD was a constant reassurance and, right then, her only beacon of strength. Eyes closed and head waning, she listened to his mature voice; educated in his words and gentle in his tone.

‘…and any of you up early enough would’ve seen the rains below Old South Quad. The clouds thinned to such a degree I was told the sky had been almost visible. I hope none of you saw it, actually.  Not in person at any rate. Anomalies fall with the rain and we all remember what happened to Peace Ranger Rotsland.’

She snorted a laugh – as morbid as it was – because she could still picture the outline of his body on the concrete column of the train-bridge heading to Sevenoaks, the perfect silhouette of a man squatting. The explosion had printed a permanent shadow, decimating everything save his trousers and ID cards. And a pile of shit, incidentally.

‘Today falls directly in the middle of April, a spring month, or so it had been before the End. Anyone outside of the buffered areas of Central will feel the balmy early morning reach peaks of twenty-four Celsius, though I have heard rumour that the afternoon may tip somewhat uncomfortably over thirty degrees. So keep light and make sure you have your rations.’

Val smiled. He appeared so caring. Not the type of caring where people had a job to do, like the Casuals who worked in hospitals or those peddling merchandise aimed at relieving day-to-day hardships. He seemed genuine, like he had nothing to gain and everything to give.

‘You know, I was reading a book last night. It was a sorry state of a novel with its cover missing and the pages browned, but I did read some of the inner pages however, that it was printed nearly two hundred and fifty years ago, so I can forgive as much.

‘It was a fictitious affair, deemed a comedy in its day. The title, for what was left of the interior, was The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. I’ll not eat too greatly into your morning routine, but I found myself more enchanted as I went and I wanted to share it with you.

‘The hero of the tale was a man with no true difference to you or I. Caught up in his life, dealing with his own affairs, thinking largely about sustaining an existence he was never much happy with in the first place. Yet, like most, he was content to sustain it all the same.

‘Then, incidentally, the world blew up. Completely and utterly obliterated.  Amazingly, moments before the blast that claimed the other billions of his race – as there were in the days before the End – he and an alien companion were sucked into a spaceship. Improbable, but I suppose not impossible considering the realm of things. And there began his new adventure as, well, a hitchhiker of the galaxy.’

A silence followed before he said, ‘You’re screwing up your face now, aren’t you?’

She softened her expression to mild surprise. If she’d not been responsible for the making of that radio, she would’ve sworn he could see her through it.

‘I suppose you would have to read it in order to feel how I feel. I wish I could print a copy for everyone. Books are a blessing, an escape from the norm. Not all of us can find ourselves in the midst of a novel that keeps us turning page after page. But then, we’re all living our own story, much like the hero in my book.’

His voice grew somewhat solemn.

‘A while ago our world ended. Before your time and before mine. Remnants of it persist to this day but never how it was before. Children are born, grow, and die never to know sunshine, fearing the rain and growing old before their time. Many will be fighting to preserve a life that has more ill in it than good, but persevering in order to fend off what worse may come along.

‘I suppose this has become quite a sermon. But to top off the few stringent minutes I’m given, before my air runs out, I can only insist that you grab the next ride on that ship, on that train, on that bus, and find your own adventure.

‘Life’s too short not to be explored.’

She thought she could hear him smiling. Then the jingle played, running a little longer than the intro tune, and Val allowed herself to collapse and phase out. No longer could she fight the convulsions.

4

The evening brought sweltering heat and she snapped awake when her PDA, known as an RDAC, began bleeping. It meant a Mist was coming. She was weak and delirious. But she needed to secure the windows, bolt down doors, and activate systemic-ionisation routers to deter heavy particles. But when a shaded figure lowered over her, pushing her down by the shoulders, she calmed.

Jim was home.

He watered her, wiped her brow, and slurred, “Well done on surviving day thirty-six, and with no medication to boot!”

She celebrated with a faint lifting of her eyebrows. Then she vomited the water back up, collapsed into her thin pillow, and shook until she passed out.. 

Meet Val! ( this is how she looks on a good day)
Awesome concept art done by my artist over at fiverr!

When editing

I was commented on the other day that I spend too much time on twitter when I'm editing my work.

I'm currently ironing out Toxic City Volume 2 Walkers In The Mist. It took a few days to write 90k words, with an average of 8k words written a day. This is not hard for me as I shimmied out of the habit of stopping after each chapter to spot check my work.

This is beneficial because it helps me focus on the flow of the story and not on minute details as I know any errors made can be picked up in full edits.

It does tend to mean I edit the manuscript  a good few times. For example I just finished my eighth edit of Toxic City and will embark on the ninth tomorrow.

But why do I regularly pause editing to bother with twitter?

The reason is to inhibit monotony. After ten minutes or so, I'll start to rush the edit. Even when I'm reading out loud, I find myself skipping words because I know them so well.

Taking a minute to tweet or to blog allows me to come back with fresher eyes and it also tells me if a scene is taking too long, or if it's even that interesting.

It has its ups and downs as, like I said, I know the words so well by now. It'd be nice to put the book away for a month and come back truly refreshed. I do plan on that, but only when I'm certain enough has been done to warrant that rest.

I'm a self taught writer and I take advice where I can. Let me know what you do when editing.

And keep your eyes peeled for Toxic City that'll be community funded in a few months time.

Cheers guys.