For my Reddit friends: A Synopsis of The Backside of Beyond.
Send a note to stella(dot)atrium(at)gmail(dot)com for a sample chapter or the complete story in pdf form for review.
A
contemporary fantasy in the vein of American Gods by Neil Gaiman and
Umberto Eco’s Island of the Day Before, this sardonic story pokes fun at
conceits in the Left Behind series.
A
colony of long-lived aliens known as Longists is established in the Blue Ridge
Mountains in 2065, just as America appears to enter End Times events. The USA
has fragmented into eleven provinces. Economic tensions lead to the
construction of a bisecting fence on a north-to-south borderline one state west
of the Mississippi
Yolanda Santiago, a Longist who walks among us,
volunteers for a brain implant program, then goes rogue with military and
banking internet codes. She rejoins the colony and learns her sister Aurora is
troubled by a menacing spirit.
Danielo Manuel de Barbarossa, widely viewed as the
antichrist, grabs power in independent California and then in the provinces of
Mexico and the Northwest. A grassroots movement of fencewalkers led by Pastor
Acher undertakes a trek to circumnavigate the fence and call attention to the
need for dismantling and for reconciliation among the provinces. Aurora and
friends join the fencewalkers to gain guidance from Pastor Acher about the
menacing spirit.
The
story’s pivotal character Abby Davies takes a position as an intern with
Senator Bertol Martineau, who is Longist, but she quickly grows into an enabler
for disparate groups to communicate. Only when Abby Davies and Pastor Acher
join forces can healing and the defeat of princes and principalities begin.
Spirits are vanquished. Barbarossa is toppled, and the fence is dismantled by
local groups similar to the end of the Berlin Wall.
