[End Times 01] • Wake

It’s 2020 and California girl Camilla Brightly is an expat working for a PR firm that specializes in raising public awareness about their clients’ products, even ones like eco-friendly bouncy castles and almost-vegan honey. Their most recent project? Everyone on staff has to get their “domestic helpmates”—anything from dishwashers to disco balls—networked via a new client’s “smart” home automation system. Camille doesn’t want Big Brother knowing that the only thing in her freezer is a vodka smoothie, but that’s not the worst of her problems.

A hacker intent on taking down one of her firm’s customers stumbles across a secret Camilla didn’t even know she was keeping, and her refrigerator turns out to be so smart it’s figured out how to stalk her. On top of that, there’s an environmental crisis brewing in the depths of a glacier halfway across the world that’s a threat to everyone on the planet. Global warming has reached a tipping point—and so has Camilla. She can’t stop the impending apocalypse but can she save herself?

With the help of an adorably nerdy co-worker and his polyamorous cousin, Camilla has to untangle herself from her less-than-harmonious home, foil a blackmailer, and face down an ecological disaster that might change life as she knows it forever. “Wake”—the prequel to “An Etiquette Guide to the End Times”—is a novel of climate change, unruly appliances, and finding a place to belong.