End of Story

Author/Guide: Louise Swanson

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2035:Too much imagination can be a dangerous thing

ISBN: B0B7RB4VS8
Genre: Dystopian, Fantasy/Sci Fi

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What you need to know before your trail

It’s the year 2035 and fiction has been banned by the government for five years. Writing novels is a crime. Reading fairytales to children is punishable by law.

Fern Dostoy is a criminal. Officially, she has retrained in a new job outside of the arts but she still scrawls in a secret notepad in an effort to capture what her life has become: her work on a banned phone line, reading bedtime stories to sleep-starved children; Hunter, the young boy who calls her and has captured her heart; and the dreaded visits from government officials.

But as Fern begins to learn more about Hunter, doubts begin to surface. What are they both hiding? And who can be trusted?

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The land where Fiction is banned

Louise Swanson says – The tricky part of my 2035 setting is that not only am I having to imagine the landscape of a future time but in the case of this book, I’m having to be purposefully vague about exactly where it’s set, due to a later reveal. So how did I bring to life a world that doesn’t exist yet and also not name the place?

First I addressed the weather. This, to me, is an important aspect of setting because it adds to the atmosphere, whether this is the extreme cold of somewhere in the Arctic or the dry heat of a desert. I wondered, what will the climate be like in another twelve years? The way we’re heading, warm, I decided. The book is set during November and December but I had melting, softening pathways, midnight sweats, Christmas lights that are out of place when it’s 29 degrees, flowers still blooming despite it being winter, and fans and fridges that break down or don’t help. The reader will imagine a crisp, burnt out scene, further added to by the burning of books in this dystopian future.