Bella – Fortitude, Born Out of Adversity

About the Book

This is the first book of five, charting the breakdown of civilization after a CME plunges the world into darkness and anarchy. And a 13-year-old girl, transformed by events, determined to survive. She is remoulded into a reluctant saviour, bringing together the remains of her family, and an unlikely group of strangers into an outpost sanctuary on the Yorkshire moors.

The earth has been hit by CME’s for millennia. A big one hits around every hundred and fifty years. But until the mid-eighteen hundreds, this was just a very large Arora light show that could be seen worldwide. There have been accounts across history, where these events have turned night into day, they were that bright. Until the invention of telegraph, it was thought they were harmless. Then came the Carrington event. Telegraph wires were glowing, Telegraph operators were electrocuted. It started fires in a few telegraph offices and damaged their equipment and batteries.
In today’s modern world, a large CME would destroy the electrical grids, computer chips, satellites, and communications. It is estimated even with our current manufacturing capabilities, with no disruption to the power, it would take fifteen years to get enough transformers manufactured to get the grid back up and running alone. The financial system can not run with out power, even if the data had not been wiped. An international think tank estimated that anarchy would ensue, starting within hours of the realisation the power was not coming back on. We are overdue for one of these events.

About the Author

I have been a storyteller all my life, but never put pen to paper until I was forced to retire due to ill health. Married with four grown-up children, I became a father again at fifty. My wife was surprised to say the least and insisted the test results must have been mixed up. Yet low and behold we had a girl, with the other of our children being boys, this did make her smile. I digress. Due to my career and long hours, she was the only one I told a story to every night. She would give me a character, a period in time and I would create a story around it. This used had been my party trick at the pub when I was a lot younger, and rarely did it for twenty years. My daughter, at twelve years old, when I was telling her a story around the Coronavirus, a subject that she had suggested, and of cause it had to be an apocalyptic story. She suggested writing it down as she enjoyed it so much, even though we were in lockdown at the time, and it was all over the news. But she convinced me in the end, and it turned out to be my first book. So, when she suggested a story about CME’s, something they had been doing at school before the pandemic, based around the Carrington event, something I knew little about at the time, I seriously looked into it. The more I found the more I wanted to know. With what I found out, and her encouragement, this series of books was born, as she wanted it based on a character of her age. Started as a standalone book, then one book will now turn into five, though it can still be read as a one book novel, it works both ways. After feedback from her friends, it was published. I hope you enjoy reading it, as much as I did writing it.

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