Women's Fiction / Dystopian
Date Published: June 6, 2014
Good manners never go out of
style…do they?
There aren’t any zombies (yet), but the world is still
at the brink of destruction: It’s 2028 and global warming has led to rising oceans, crazy weather, and resource scarcity. On top of that,
someone just turned the Internet off. Seeing as how it’s humanity’s last chance to turn things around manners are, understandably, a
bit frayed.
Etiquette buff Olive O’Malley is busy microfarming
her urban property and minding her own business (and her chickens) when the government comes calling. Their goal is to push the
populace towards carbon-neutrality while keeping kvetching to a minimum, and they come with a proposal: transition Olive’s popular
etiquette column to a radio show for the masses, and they’ll help Olive find her grandfather, who’s gone missing.
Olive doesn’t trust the hipster government officials
who try to bribe her with delicious-but-probably-a-little-evil chocolate pastries, and declines their offer. (Politely, of course.) But they
won't take no for an answer, and soon Olive is knee-deep in turmoil, eco-terrorism, and missing chickens. Now she has to untangle
herself from their demands and figure out how to make sure her family (and her poultry) are safe before it’s too late.
*Note* This Novel is Written in Canadian English.
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EXCERPT
My superhero power is
definitely not sleeping. When I was looking for a house, my realtor rhapsodized about this bedroom’s perfect southern exposure,
about the tastefully herbaceous wall treatment and charming old-world feel. Right now my room could be more accurately described
as a floral-wallpapered sauna, full of an impossible heat, like three Julys stuffed into one. It isn’t helping.
I watch the overhead fan
stop again, gyrate, and then restart before I roll over, the sheets coming with me. After a minute I shift to the other side, flinging the
covers away with a sigh. The fan finally grinds to a halt, probably the victim of a wiring problem I haven’t been able to pin down,
although lately I’ve been thinking it might just hate me.
I relocate to the living room
and angle the pedestal fan my way. God, it’s hot. I close my eyes and lean back on the couch for a minute,
hoping sleep will take me. The sofa is a faux leather hand-me-down that’s supple after years of wear, smelling faintly earthy, soft
against my skin.
Eventually I switch the TV
on. Our cable hasn’t worked properly in months, service so erratic it’s like the people running the company are legless</
i>, as my grandfather Fred would say–a charming Irish way of saying spectacularly drunk, even
though my grandfather hasn’t seen Ireland since he
was a child. My eyes land on Fred’s easy chair, a pale green monstrosity he could barely squeeze through the front door when I finally
convinced him to move in with me. His pipe, his books, and his old-man slippers are still where he left them.
About the Author : Maia Sepp
After flipping through a
bunch of static, I shut the TV off and switch to the radio, which promptly announces it’s five-thirty in the morning. I ponder what
to do next, discarding juggling, mind reading, and origami, although I spend more time thinking about mind reading than I probably
should, considering I’m the only one here. Finally I pull my computer tablet onto my lap and turn it on. I write an etiquette column
for a spunky arts and culture website, and my latest instalment is due on Friday; other people’s problems are always a delightful way to
get my mind off my own. I start to page through the letters, which all start with Dear Olive. Dear Olive, I’m convinced my
neighbour is milking my goat. Dear Olive, my neighbour’s windmill is keeping me up at night. Dear Olive, my wife is hoarding solar
panels. What do I do?
Three crashing noises erupt
above my head, each more ominous than the next. I wait for it to stop, but twenty minutes later I’m clinging to the side of my house,
staring down a pair of raccoons who seem intent on defiling my solar array. For a long while it’s just the three of us, locked in visual
combat, but it’s my roof and unless they start paying rent, they’ve got to go. Eventually they get spooked by the noise of the
six a.m. domestic surveillance drone overhead, which would make this the first time I’ve ever been happy to see a drone. I watch as
it starts its first pass of the morning. They’re smaller than the military version–sleek, modern, ever-watchful. Rumour is they’re even
biodegradable, although that hasn’t exactly endeared them to the population.
After the raccoons finally
lumber off I pull myself onto the roof and take a look at the solar panel they’ve sullied, the wires connecting the array to my house
almost stripped. It’s not easy to carry out rooftop repairs quietly at six in the morning, and it definitely wouldn’t be polite to wake
anyone up, but I don’t want to be back up here tomorrow, either. If I leave the panel like this, they’ll come back and finish the job, I
know it. They’re organized.
I look up when a
newfangled Town Car, still boxy and authoritarian but now electric-powered, turns onto my street. I watch it as it goes; there are
almost no cars on the roads these days, and the sight makes a faint sense of unease pulse through me. I hope whoever’s in that car
isn’t carrying bad news for one of my neighbours.
After it eases past my
house I try to concentrate on how to get myself off this roof. I’ve brought my very last roll of duct tape with me and after a moment
of conflict, I wrestle a piece off and start to fix the panel, but my foot slips and my right hip ends up bouncing off the shingles. I
pull myself into a sitting position to gather my wits, my stomach clenched into the size of a peanut, my breath suddenly ragged and
shaky. I don’t want to go splat on the driveway beside my house. It’s a bungalow, true, and not that far to fall, but it’s still a worry.
Over my left shoulder the
sunrise glows on the horizon, beautiful in a terrifying sort of way. It’s hard not to be nervous about what the sun will do to us today;
so far the summer of 2028 has broken four temperature records, slow-cooking our city under our feet, making everything smell like
asphalt and failure.
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About the Author : Maia Sepp
Maia left the tech sector to write about sock thievery,
migraines, and...the tech sector.
The Sock Wars is her debut novel. The first chapter
of The Sock Wars was published as a short story/novel excerpt titled Irish Drinking Socks, and became a Kobo bestselling short
story. The Sock Wars has been a top-100 digital bestseller on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and the iBookstore, as well as a genre and
Writing Life bestseller on Kobo.
Maia's second novel is The Migraine Mafia, a story
about a nerdy thirtysomething's quest to come to terms with a chronic illness. It is available online everywhere.
Her latest is a humorous near-future dystopian
novella, titled, An Etiquette Guide to the End Times, available June 2014. To be notified about new releases, please add yourself to
Maia's mailing list: http://www.maiasepp.com/mailing_list.html.
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Authors Links
Website</
a> | Facebook | Twitter
| Blog | Mailing List Sign Up
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Amazon buy link: http://www.amazon.com/Etiquette-Guide-End-Times-Novella-ebook/dp/B00KPPFA6Y/
Kobo buy link: http://store.kobobooks.com/en-CA/ebook/an-etiquette-guide-to-the-end-times
Smashwords buy link: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/444085
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BUY LINKS
Amazon buy link: http://www.amazon.com/Etiquette-Guide-End-Times-Novella-ebook/dp/B00KPPFA6Y/
Kobo buy link: http://store.kobobooks.com/en-CA/ebook/an-etiquette-guide-to-the-end-times
Smashwords buy link: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/444085
