The Truth about the Shiners—a novel

Have you ever wondered what would become of humanity if one of Hollywood’s apocalyptic end-of-the-world stories came true? I believe we are too intelligent, too innovative, and too stubborn to let ourselves be destroyed by something as trivial as the end of the world.

Different people respond to problems in different ways, and diametrically-opposed responses often lead to equally-successful outcomes. That is why there are two separate societies in the Truth about the Shiners. The villagers call the city-folk shiners; The city-folk call the villagers hominids. The ancestors of the shiners survived because they had prepared for the worst. The ancestors of the hominids survived because they were too damn stubborn to give up.

Shiners believe hominids can’t possibly be human, otherwise they wouldn’t be able to survive outside the env-domes. Hominids think shiners are monsters, because they can only see the environmental suit, and they don’t realise there’s an ordinary woman inside that suit.

At the beginning of the novel, the environment has become relatively benign and the hominids are thriving. The shiners have no idea that it is safe outside the domes, because they pulled the funding for environmental monitoring centuries ago. The idea that “it's dangerous out there” has become so deeply embedded in their collective psyche that they would sooner jump into a swimming pool full of sharks than go outside an env-dome without an environmental suit.

Letitia Wilson and Alexander Romanov are an experiment. Bred from hominid DNA, they are living proof that hominids and shiners share common ancestry. That’s the trouble. City-folk don’t want to hear that the wild, uncivilised hominids are human, even though, as Letitia’s mother once said: “before we had synthetic semen, we must have had natural semen—and men, like the hominids.”

Perhaps Letitia and Alexander wouldn’t have been exiled if Stella hadn’t added those last five words. Still, what is said cannot be unsaid, and the authorities did banish Letitia and Alexander...

What happens next?—you really should read the book, but while I’m busy attracting a publisher, you can get a taste of it by listening to Chapter 3.

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This book is going to be hot, really hot, so if you're a publisher or literary agent, I suggest you contact me

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