I’ve written before about how mood affects reading, and how immersion influences writing. But what else shapes our stories? Emotions, the time of year, the room we write in. My unfinished novella was drafted in the early days of the Covid lockdown, and it carries all the tension and fear that hung in the air. How does my daily world find its way into my work?

I don’t write in a quiet New England hut or on a secluded island retreat. My days feature commutes, New York City, and suburban strip malls. Moments of grandeur tinged with decay. This isn’t neutral background noise, it conditions how I imagine fictional worlds. It shapes imagery, restlessness of characters, claustrophobia, the urge to escape, and a feeling that something is off beneath clean surfaces. No wonder I gravitate toward post-apocalyptic stories and settings.

The New Jersey suburbs carries a sense of the uncanny, an uneasiness buried beneath rows of similar houses and weedy lawns fed by gallons of clean water. The dreamlike monotony of sameness sits next to an awareness that all of it might be built on something rotten. Aging pipes, crumbling roads, dated schools, overstretched pensions, the illusion of safety and order. Is a post-apocalyptic world looming in the future, or is it already here, hidden beneath Dunkin’ Donuts plastic?

Commutes create liminal spaces. Ferries are a perfect example, suspended between home and the city, crossing water, physically and mentally in between. The subway is the opposite: nose to armpit with strangers, hot, held up by delays, engulfed by the steady decline of the system itself. Riders shutting down, wishing they were anywhere else in the world. These in-between spaces seep into my writing and create that drifting, epic quality. Characters become people who exist between worlds but never fully belong to any of them.

And then there is the streets of Manhattan. Everything all at once. Crowded streets, endless sirens, horns, the shouts of mentally ill. Sensory overload, followed by an instinct to retreat inward, to write inward, and search for quieter thoughts and clearer prose as a way to push back against the noise. I came up with the idea for my first story, The Inspector’s Legacy, while sitting on a bus outside the Port Authority in New York City, picturing the streets covered in ten feet of sea water.

So it’s no surprise I keep writing characters who bounce between solitude and entanglement. Characters who wrestle with the tension between isolation and connection, and never resolve it cleanly. Modern infrastructure becomes mythology. Ferries, highways, bridges, and subways turn into ancient runes. The built world becomes a relic. And in that relic I keep finding new stories.

Lately, I’ve noticed a troubling trend: I’m abandoning more books than I finish. The problem isn’t with the books themselves, but rather with the reader. When stressed, bringing an open mind to reading becomes difficult.

Letting go of a book is never easy—especially after hunting down recommendations, tracking it to a shop or online store, and powering through those first chapters to “get into” a story. So what makes me decide to abandon one? Is it a flaw in the book—or in me as the reader?

Sometimes it’s a mismatch. I can usually spot a story that won’t suit my taste, but a few slip through. Often, it’s because the plot feels stagnant or the characters never come alive. This happened recently with the latest Neal Stephenson novel—by one of my favorite authors, no less. After 150 pages, I still didn’t care about the protagonist. For a while I wondered if she wasn’t meant to be the central focus and the “real” story would soon emerge. It didn’t. Perhaps on a calmer day, I would have settled into its pacing.

Other times, the style itself doesn’t click. I tried Susanna Clarke’s Piranesi after endless praise online, but couldn’t get past ten pages. Middlemarch lasted a little longer, but I’ve never enjoyed aristocrats in drawing rooms gossiping. No matter how finely written, those settings can’t hold my interest.

Sometimes, though, the issue is squarely with me. Am I approaching the book in the right frame of mind—calm, open to new ideas, and willing to follow its pace? Or am I stressed, impatient, and quick to judge?

It’s a bit like wine. The same bottle can taste entirely different depending on what you’ve eaten, whether you’ve just brushed your teeth, or if you drink it over a fun dinner with friends. The wine hasn’t changed—only your perception has. Reading is the same. A book’s impact depends not only on its inherent quality, but also on the mental climate of the reader.

Many of the books I’ve abandoned recently are, by most measures, excellent—celebrated, award-winning, even canonical. Their failure to hold my attention may have little to do with merit and everything to do with timing. Perhaps the kindest thing I can do is let them rest on the shelf until my mind is ready to meet them halfway.

Part 2 – Application

pt 1 here

Genre storytelling carries a built-in contract: readers arrive with expectations. One of the key “rules” is to understand these expectations, to work with them, twist them, or break them with purpose. Neil Gaiman, in his Masterclass, highlights this dynamic. Genre is not a set of restrictions, but a shared language between writer and reader.

On a crowd-editing platform, I once described one of my stories containing a mysterious house. There were no ghosts, no shadows moving at the edge of vision, no whispers in the dark. A reader ranted at me, claiming I didn’t fulfill their expectations. To them, “haunted” implied a set of recognizable tropes, and the story had didn’t deliver. The critique wasn’t about content, but a broken promise.

Post-apocalyptic fiction holds on similar promises. Crumbling cities, fractured societies, roaming survivors, the lure of a cure, the desperate journey — these elements create the thematic and structural scaffolding of the genre. They ask enduring questions.

What happens when the systems that shape daily life disappear? When the conveniences, institutions, and routines that give structure are gone, what remains? In that silence, stripped of distractions, do people become more compassionate or more cruel? Do they band together for protection, or turn on one another for survival?

Tropes offer the framework for exploring these questions. The “safe house” offers a moment of vulnerability. The “traveling band” becomes a lens through which trust, loyalty, and human dynamics are tested. Even the possibility of a “cure” forces ethical dilemmas and exposes the depth of human hope or desperation.

In post-apocalyptic storytelling, the ruins are not the point. The people walking through them are. And within those ruins that the most revealing, unsettling, and meaningful human stories can be told.

I usually begin my book reviews by sharing how I discovered the novel. I believed The Ancients by John Larison appeared on a list of top post-apocalyptic novels; however, I couldn’t find it on any such lists. Regardless, The Ancients stands out as one of the finest post-apocalyptic reads I’ve read.​

The story introduces a solitary family living in the remnants of a tribal fishing village in a future world. While the exact setting isn’t specified, it may be the U.S. West Coast, set hundreds of years in the future. The narrative follows three siblings—Leerit, Maren, and Kushim—who are left alone after their parents disappear. Their journey across a treacherous wilderness in search of their community forms the emotional core of the novel. ​

The world itself emerges as a central character. Devastated by climate change, expanding deserts encroach upon the few habitable areas, and the oceans are depleted of fish, at least in the regions depicted. Subtle references to ancient, enigmatic structures suggest this dystopian landscape overlays our own collapsed society. I really liked the mentions of plastic harvesting and the elite’s reverence for plastic artifacts within the city.​

A theme is the significance of storytelling and myth. In the absence of readily available paper, books, or digital media, knowledge is transmitted orally across generations—not merely for history or entertainment, but as essential survival guides, teaching skills like knot-tying or fishing protocols vital for enduring in this desolate world.​

These elements collectively craft a realm steeped in myth and legend, complete with emperors, creation myths, and feudal systems. This mirrors common motifs in post-apocalyptic narratives, a topic I intend to explore in a future post.​

Larison’s writing is exceptional, offering just the right amount of vivid description, authentic dialogue, and characters who evoke genuine empathy. Notably, he balances immersive world-building with enough exposition to keep readers grounded—a skill I deeply admire, especially as someone who grapples with this balance in my own short stories. This equilibrium between showing and telling is a hallmark of quality storytelling.​

I highly recommend The Ancients. My only frustration was occasionally struggling to identify certain relics; for instance, large structures are described without clear identification, though the proximity of mountains to the coast led me to speculate about California. Perhaps a second reading would unveil these nuances more clearly. If so, challenge accepted.​

I’m thrilled to announce that my short story, The Librarian of Truth, is featured in the latest issue of New Maps. This marks my second publication in New Maps, a quarterly journal showcasing short stories set in an age of limits.

I’m a longtime subscriber and fan of New Maps and appreciate the thoughtful, immersive fiction Nathanael curates. It’s an honor to have my work included.

The Librarian of Truth will also be part of my upcoming short story collection. It follows a librarian searching for answers at a Pennsylvania rest stop in the wake of the second wave. I hope you enjoy her journey!

I’ve previously written about my old-school, paper and bound books. When I first owned an iPad in the early 2010s, I read a lot of Kindle books. But patterns emerged; I retained little and wasn’t sure where I was in the book or chapter. Twenty pages or two hundred to the end? I almost never buy Kindle books anymore, opting for the tactile experience of proper books.

Actual books are fun to mark up with marginalia to note techniques I admire. I did this in my most recent version of The Stinging Fly, (“The Wrong Thing” by Keith Ridgway). I liked how Ridgway started the story and used it as a guide for my WIP. There are ways to do this with Kindle but it doesn’t resonate like words excitedly scribbled in the margins.

But not all physical books are good. I’ve been fooled multiple times now into ordering very low quality publications. The most recent one is this version of White Nights by Dostoevsky. I knew it was an issue the second I opened the Amazon package. It has this cheap cover and is oddly sized. Feels more like a pamphlet than an actual book.

Worse are the pages themselves. Oddly long with massive margins (1/3 of the page). Tiny print. I know little about the art and science of laying out print on the page, so I can’t fully express why this is done poorly… but neither can the people who cobbled this edition together.

And, similar to my experience reading on Kindle, the poor presentation carries over to the reading experience. I couldn’t get past 5 pages. Unfortunately, this isn’t the first time this cheap knockoff printing has fooled me. I’ve ordered (online, of course) at least 4 other books like this. Most of them have quickly ended up in the donation pile.

Part of my disappointment is the actual story, though. I was looking for another Russian classic, but didn’t want to invest months into a 1000 pager. White Nights and its svelte 51 pages. I thought I had read Dostoevsky before, but I don’t think I have. His writing, or this translation, didn’t land with me. So! Many! Exclamations! And the plot of a lovestruck fool doesn’t resonate with me like it does with others.

It’s amazing how the physical presentation of the story matters. My enjoyment of both Shopkeeping and The Creative Act were enhanced because of the care and quality of the physical book. Both have material covers, artfully arranged text, and thick pages, giving the words more weight. You can literally feel the care and craftsmanship put into each page.

I don’t know if White Nights would land with me if read in a different format. But the cheap packaging and terrible typography guaranteed I would not finish the novel. I wish I didn’t need multiple lessons on this topic, but perhaps this is what I need to make it stick. And internalize, as I get closer to putting out a book myself, how important the physical and typographic decisions matter.