Hello, once again!

Just checking in this week with the next outline segment, and some new rewards from Unbound. As part of the birthday celebrations for this site, they're offering 15% all fiction until the end of May (checkout code: MayDay) and specific offers for those who pledge for any current projects; the details are included in the conversation tab at the bottom right of the webpage. I hope you'll consider pledging for Discarded among your choices; if you already have, please share this offer with friends and fellow book-lovers!

Below is the latest (and last) section of the outline for Discarded; hopefully you've enjoyed following this as I did piecing it together. World-building is perhaps the hardest and most necessary part of any draft, no matter what the genre, and I expect there to be plenty of changes to this before Discarded goes up on digital and physical shelves. I'll be moving into the more nuts-and-bolts elements of the story (technology, weapons, characters, places) beginning next week, and perhaps expanding the direct message campaign over other sites; almost a hundred have gone out by now, with more to come. For now, enjoy, comment, share and pledge!

2035-2047 (“The Turmoil”): Over the course of this 12-year period, minor brushfire wars, economic crashes, industrial accidents, and internal violence/uprisings become the order of the day for much of the world. In the US, this unrest manifests itself through multiple public shootings and bombings (though none of the nuclear nature, at least at first), localized militia rebellions in rural and urban areas after 2042, and mass protests crushed by police empowered by martial law. D.C. is kept secure only through de facto occupation by the army; New York, Chicago, Atlanta, southern Florida, Dallas-Fort Worth, El Paso, Brownsville and much of southern California are hit most severely, and all but written off by the Feds, save when military ops are necessary; anarchy will simmer below the surface even after peace comes. Stretched to the breaking point, D.C. deploys Golems across the country to eliminate these threats, and presses Dr. Garrett harder by the day to increase production of more graduates.

At last, a large nuclear bomb is detonated in Seattle on July 29th, 2046 (presumably killing Dr. Garrett and permanently halting Project Golem). Shortly after this, a massive cyberattack of unknown origin (known only as the "Pulse") crashes nearly all Internet and other worldwide communications. Within hours, the chaos this engenders results in the Vanguard government—headed by hardline Vice-President Benjamin Stephens from Camp David since 2040, after Snyder’s “resignation” at the hands of that faction of his party—being finally overthrown, and a government of reconstruction and reconciliation is installed that November. When the “The Turmoil” finally begins to abate around the globe two years later, replaced by a cautious, rebuilding peace, the new administration is reelected by a substantial margin—and quietly begins closing down the “special operations” programs, and sealing away their surviving records.

Most in D.C. are largely unaware of the true status of many of the Project’s “offspring,” preferring to leave the operation buried. But these “offspring” are not so easily written off. Scattered around the globe, they are slowly beginning to find each other, and seek out the true reason for their existence. And there are others who will go to any lengths to ensure they never re-emerge…