SHIT FROM BRAINS

This was a strange but very satisfying book to write. It took one story and made it into a different one. 

Because, get this:

We knew from the start that while The Tomorrow Gene would have an insular feel, The Eden Experiment would necessarily come out into the wider world. In this second book, Ephraim would no longer be trapped on Eden, going nuts and wondering why; instead, he’d be back home in New York, beginning to learn about his own future and Eden’s larger plan.

And that changed the whole feel of the story. Once Ephraim hit NYC, the external forces after him (Eden, Fiona, GEM) would give this second installment a fundamentally different feel. It’s similar, really, to the Alien movie franchise. The first movie is horror: one very scary alien against a handful of people trapped on a ship. The second movie is action-adventure: space marines versus a huge nest of aliens able to spread out across an entire planet.

The Tomorrow Gene is mostly a psychological thriller: one man doing battle, in part, with his own mind and reality. Not to spoil anything, but the third and final book in the series is almost entirely a traditional-style thriller: one team versus another in the wider world. That put the book you just read squarely in the middle, halfway between the two types of books. The Eden Experiment is half psychological, half external. It’s what happens when an unreliable narrator is released into a world that, it turns out, is against him just as much as his paranoia claims. 

We wanted to continue the lost feeling Ephraim had throughout The Tomorrow Gene as we told the story in this second book. Neven really screwed Ephraim up in the first book’s final pages: Ephraim doesn’t yet know what he truly is, but you as the reader do. You know all sorts of other things Ephraim doesn’t know, as well: Neven and Jonathan are controlling him and always have been; he’s “different” somehow and while his breaking mind is necessary, it’s also a dangerous line to walk. And of course you know that Neven’s plans differ from what he tells Jonathan they are, and perhaps vice-versa. The ground is supposed to feel uncertain here. That’s what makes it such a head-trip. 

But at the same time, we wanted to give you some real-world grounding — stuff that’s actually going wrong for Ephraim in addition to what he’s simply afraid of. We wanted to introduce you to some very important players whose purpose and meaning will become more apparent in the final book in the series: Hershel Wood, Mercer Fox, Clone Sophie, others. So there was a line to walk. And that was fun, as writers. 

By now, if we’ve done our job, you’re simultaneously 1) thrilled by the heart-pounding conclusion to this book, 2) really damn curious what will happen next and why we see the trio in the final scene that we do, and 3) still a little unsettled. Enjoy the uncertainty; Ephraim’s paranoia will die in the final book as this story finds its true grounding in reality. Soon you’ll no longer wonder what’s actually going on, as Ephraim wonders. Soon, after you finish the next and final book in the series, you’ll flat-out know. You’ll have all the answers. 

And man, those answers are doozies. 

I’ll talk about some of those doozies in the author’s note for the final book, and there’s always plenty more behind-the-scenes for any one book in the “Backstory” recording that goes with it. (You listen to those, right? You should, if you read author’s notes!  We’ll have a Backstory episode for the entire Tomorrow Gene series at the end of book three).  But for now, let’s just say that this trilogy surprised us just as much as it’s likely to surprise you. Let’s just say that what Neven and Wood and Jonathan and Fiona and Ephraim and everyone else are up to is a lot bigger than even we — as the authors — originally thought. 

Which I guess is my way of saying that this book wasn’t just a mindfuck to read. It was a mindfuck to write, too. 

Make sure you’re on our mailing list so we can tell you about the third book. Because what happens there is going to kick your teeth right in. 

Johnny B. Truant

May 25, 2017

Austin, Texas