New Post-Apocalyptic Novelette: The Hybrids

As I’ve hinted at before, I have a story to announce. It’s another foray into science fiction, the genre that still owns my heart. However, instead of the next Shattered Empire story (coming later in 2013), this novelette tackles a different subgenre, namely post-apocalyptic SF.

Though this is the first time that it’s been released, The Hybrids is actually one of my oldest surviving stories, scribbled by hand twenty years ago during a particularly boring lecture. However, the current edition of The Hybrids is an almost complete rewrite. Only the plot and a couple of dialogue lines remain of the original.

Looking back, I wonder why I never did anything with the original version of The Hybrids beyond typing it up. I had already gotten my first rejection letter by the time I wrote The Hybrids and it’s certainly one of the better stories I wrote during that time (and some of the other, better stories of that period eventually did sell after a couple of rewrites), yet I never submitted it anywhere. Instead, it just lingered on my harddrive until I went through all of my old work to see if any of it was salvagable.

So what happened? Shortly after finishing The Hybrids, I read somewhere post-apocalyptic Adam and Eve stories were so cliched that they shouldn’t be written at all. Now The Hybrids is is clearly post-apocalyptic. And while it never was an Adam and Eve story, not even in its original form, it was still close enough that I felt very embarrassed about conforming a cliché I didn’t even know existed and promptly trunked the story without ever doing anything with it.

So here it is, finally in (electronic) print after twenty years: The Hybrids

The HybridsGordon Havers thought that he was the last man on Earth – after a virus killed off everybody else. So he lived on much as he had before the pandemic that wiped out humanity, eeking out a living as a trapper in the Canadian Rockies.
But one day, there is a knock on the door of Gordon’s log cabin. And when he opens the door, he finds an attractive young woman on his doorstep to his infinite surprise. So perhaps Gordon isn’t the last living human being after all? And maybe there is still a future for the human race.
There’s only one problem. Joanna Creed isn’t human…

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For more information visit the dedicated The Hybrids page.

Buy it for the low price of 2.99 USD, EUR or GBP at Amazon US, Amazon UK, Amazon Germany, Amazon France, Amazon Spain, Amazon Italy, Amazon Canada, Amazon Brazil, Amazon Japan, Amazon India, Amazon Mexico, Kobo, Barnes & Noble, Apple iTunes, Casa del Libro, W.H. Smith, Nook UK, DriveThruFiction, OmniLit/AllRomance e-books and XinXii.

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