Ex Situ

The Keseburg once boasted a complement of fifty thousand. Generations of hardship, space hazards and disease have whittled it down to just under thirty thousand. That was the number when a small crew of resource miners departed on a routine asteroid run three months ago. But when they return home to the ship, all traces of their friends and family are gone.The Keseburg is silent, adrift, and running out of fuel.As they search the massive ship for survivors and answers, something else stalks them. Something that does not belong on the Keseburg. A severe addiction to Post-apocalyptic literature combined with a lifetime of a very rural existence, first in central Maine and now in northern Idaho naturally led to both of Deirdre's novels: The Jade Seed and After the Cure.Deirdre's education in anthropology and peace and conflict studies prompted the central idea for After the Cure: How do people live with each other after doing horrendous things to each other? How do societies put themselves together or continue to exist after terrible wars? What is day to day existence like when such violence exists within living memory? Though fiction can never come close to the reality of living with atrocity, it can help us ask important questions about our world and our treatment of each other.Since living in the woods makes it all too easy to imagine being one of the last people left in the world, After the Cure is only the first novel of several that will take place in a post-apocalyptic, "post-zombie" world. Sixteen hundred years ago, they fled Earth. Now their long journey may finally be at an end. None of them have ever walked on soil, felt rain, or breathed unrecycled air.Their resources nearly spent, they sent a last exploratory mission to a new planet. It's ideal... but they are not alone.In the struggle for survival, they must make a choice. Sacrifice another species or accept their own extinction. And time is running out.

Sixteen hundred years ago, they fled Earth. Now their long journey may finally be at an end. None of them have ever walked on soil, felt rain, or breathed unrecycled air.Their resources nearly spent, they sent a last exploratory mission to a new planet. It's ideal... but they are not alone.In the struggle for survival, they must make a choice. Sacrifice another species or accept their own extinction. And time is running out. A severe addiction to Post-apocalyptic literature combined with a lifetime of a very rural existence, first in central Maine and now in northern Idaho naturally led to both of Deirdre's novels: The Jade Seed and After the Cure.Deirdre's education in anthropology and peace and conflict studies prompted the central idea for After the Cure: How do people live with each other after doing horrendous things to each other? How do societies put themselves together or continue to exist after terrible wars? What is day to day existence like when such violence exists within living memory? Though fiction can never come close to the reality of living with atrocity, it can help us ask important questions about our world and our treatment of each other.Since living in the woods makes it all too easy to imagine being one of the last people left in the world, After the Cure is only the first novel of several that will take place in a post-apocalyptic, "post-zombie" world. Sixteen hundred years ago, they fled Earth. Now their long journey may finally be at an end. None of them have ever walked on soil, felt rain, or breathed unrecycled air.Their resources nearly spent, they sent a last exploratory mission to a new planet. It's ideal... but they are not alone.In the struggle for survival, they must make a choice. Sacrifice another species or accept their own extinction. And time is running out.

Out of fifty thousand, only thirty-three survived the Keseburg and the alien AI called Issk'ath. Hurtling toward an unfamiliar planet with few supplies and no preparation, they believe they are the last of humanity.But Indra, trapped inside Issk'ath's colony, knows better. What she uncovers of the Keseburg's past forces her to confront the lies that governed her entire history. Her thirst for justice leads the colony down an ever darker path that risks them all.Issk'ath must make a choice: Betray its directives to save them and face its own termination, or help Indra get the justice she is bent on and risk Earth, itself. A severe addiction to Post-apocalyptic literature combined with a lifetime of a very rural existence, first in central Maine and now in northern Idaho naturally led to both of Deirdre's novels: The Jade Seed and After the Cure.Deirdre's education in anthropology and peace and conflict studies prompted the central idea for After the Cure: How do people live with each other after doing horrendous things to each other? How do societies put themselves together or continue to exist after terrible wars? What is day to day existence like when such violence exists within living memory? Though fiction can never come close to the reality of living with atrocity, it can help us ask important questions about our world and our treatment of each other.Since living in the woods makes it all too easy to imagine being one of the last people left in the world, After the Cure is only the first novel of several that will take place in a post-apocalyptic, "post-zombie" world. Sixteen hundred years ago, they fled Earth. Now their long journey may finally be at an end. None of them have ever walked on soil, felt rain, or breathed unrecycled air.Their resources nearly spent, they sent a last exploratory mission to a new planet. It's ideal... but they are not alone.In the struggle for survival, they must make a choice. Sacrifice another species or accept their own extinction. And time is running out.