Burning Earth: Climate Wars Available for Pre-Order

Last night I got the email from Amazon that my first novel was up on the store, and ready for pre-orders! It was incredibly exciting, after all these years thinking about writing a novel, to actually see that first work up there on the Amazon site.

Unfortunately, I also have a terrible cold, so I had to celebrate with Neo Citran! If you’re interested in taking a look, you can see the novel on the site by going to Amazon.com, or .ca, or .wherever you are, and searching the title.

I’m not expecting to see massive sales of a first novel by an unknown author, but for someone like me it’s simply exciting to have this first work completed and published. It was also a huge learning experience, going through the editing process, cover design, jumping all the hoops for publication on the Amazon system, and so on. But, now that it’s done, I would greatly recommend self-publishing for anyone out there who feels they have a book inside them waiting to get out.

Hopefully some of you will check it out and I hope you have as much fun reading it as I did writing it!

Happy reading, Gary Symons

New Title, Cover, for First Burning Earth Novel

A big update on the release of my upcoming novel, Burning Earth: Climate Wars.

We’re now running through the final edits for my first novel, and also the first in the Burning Earth series, with a planned five novel story arc.

And along the way, we’ve made some big changes, including to the title of the book and the cover design.

The original working title was ‘The All-Inclusive Resort at the End of the World’, a whimsical reference to one of the main locations in the book; a resort where a last-ditch peace summit is being hosted to ward off the possibility of a global nuclear conflict.

But as the book evolved it was felt that title didn’t properly reflect the plot … and it’s really long! The title Climate Wars was much more on point, as the novel really explores the geopolitical conflicts that erupt due to conditions brought on by climate change, including desertification, droughts, famine, and inundation of cities and regions by rising sea levels.

The original cover art concept was also changed from early designs, and designer Stephanie settled on the design you see in the photo, which clearly shows the ‘Burning Earth’ image, combined with main characters Simone Gray and Jamie Grant faced with an oncoming military force. Given the story has more explosions than a Michael Bay movie, I think the cover really reflects the intense in the novel.

We’re still on track for a March 15 release on Amazon, and will be opening up for pre-orders around the beginning of the month.

  • Gary Symons, Author.

The Future We Choose Shows How to Combat Climate Change

I just read an article in the Guardian about the new book by Christiana Figueres and Tom Rivett-Carnac called ‘The Future We Choose’, and while all I’ve been able to read so far is a short excerpt, I’m already hooked. In fact, I’ve ordered the advance copy from Amazon to get it on the first day of publication on Feb. 22.

So, why so excited?

I’m writing my own novel based on the impact of climate change on humanity, but the frustration I’ve had in researching the topic is the lack of really insightful books on the topic that are designed for the layman. The best I’ve read to date is The Uninhabitable Earth, which is excellent, but most of the other books I’ve read are strong on data, and short on readability, not to mention being thrifty with real solutions.

But the excerpt I read in the Guardian was probably the best summary of the potential future we face if humanity fails to act with haste. That exerpt paints an incredibly grim ‘worst-case scenario’ in 2050 – just 30 years from now – of a world where the air is toxic, where vast swaths of the equatorial belt are almost uninhabitable, where starvation, plague and warfare are rampant across the globe, and where millions are dying and billions more have become refugees.

In short, they paint the very picture that forms the backdrop of my novel, The All-Inclusive Resort at the End of the World, but they do so with a depth of knowledge I can only wish for.

The authors led the negotiations for the UN for the United Nations during the historic Paris Agreement of 2015, and now, having seen little action, they have written a cautionary tale about the fate of humanity in a world wracked by runaway global warming.

The previews of the book, however, make it sound as if the overall tone is optimistic. They outline two possible scenarios. One of them is what Earth will be like if governments and people unite and take aggressive action on greenhouse gas emissions. The second scenario lays out what it will be like if governments continue to huddle in nationalistic, isolated silos, and the public continues to act as if the crisis will go away on its own.

In that second scenario the authors paint a grim picture of a world where temperatures increase by 3 degrees Celsius over the base used by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). It’s a world where cities and even large regions are decimated by the rise of oceans, where millions die of hunger and plague, where the cooler, wealthier nations in the northern and southern extremes of the planet shut down their borders to the billions of climate refugees, and where war becomes a constant as nations fight over increasingly scarce resources.

As it turns out, that is exactly the basis of my novel, although the events in my first book of the Burning Earth series happen in the year 2101.

The reason I think this book has so much potential, however, is that unlike a novel like mine, the authors lay out the realistic tasks we must perform as a global society if humanity is to survive and even prosper. In other words, the war against climate change is one that must be fought, but it is a war we can win.

You can see the Guardian article and book excerpt at THIS LINK.

First Draft of Novel is Complete!

2020-03-15T17:00:00

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Novel Launch Date

As a first time novelist, I’m pretty thrilled to announce that the first draft of The All-Inclusive Resort at the End of the World is now complete, and we can confirm the novel will be released in just 30 days, on March 15th.

So, what’s it all about?

The Resort at the End of the World revolves around the geopolitical events that occur due to runaway global warming, in the year 2101. In addition to the damage wreaked upon the planet and human society by the natural impacts of global warming, the world has been shaken by decades of geopolitical instability, brought on by mass starvation, the movement of more than a billion climate refugees, and constant warfare fought over increasingly scarce resources.

The story picks up as a world war is brewing between powerful countries in the ‘hot zones’ – like the US, China, and Brazil – as they fight for resources held by cooler countries that now control most of the world’s water and agricultural production. As the world’s superpowers gear up for a global conflict, a group of diplomats, reporters and politicians race desperately to find a road to peace, and to forestall the grim possibility of a nuclear conflict.

Much of the story happens in the Falkland Islands, home to one of the world’s most exclusive resorts and a major ecological protection area, where the Paloma Beach Resort is playing host to a secret peace summit between the warring nations.

The book isn’t just about climate change, but more about the very real danger that climate change and the resulting scarcity of resources could lead to an extinction level nuclear exchange. While I’m certainly writing this book to entertain, I also hope it will help focus people’s attention on both the need to combat climate change, but also on the geopolitical conflicts we are already facing due to the impacts of global warming.

While The All-Inclusive Resort at the End of the World is a work of fiction, I feel the types of events outlined in the book are all too possible, unless we as a species unite to both combat climate change, and support those nations and people who are most affected.

I hope you enjoy the novel,

Sincerely, Gary Symons