As a lifelong writer, I am also a lifelong reader.

I began listening to audiobooks while working as a data entry operator. Though I doubted I could concentrate on listening and typing at the same time, I soon realized that the mindless drudgery of typing repetitively didn’t require that much effort from my brain. My fingers did all the work.

It was while listening to William Forschten’s One Second After the inspiration came to me. It was about an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack and how the people of Black Mountain, North Carolina dealt with it.

At first, I thought an EMP was only a thing of science fiction. It was featured in the movie The Matrix and I thought it was something of someone else’s imagination.

I made the mistake of Googling it. To my horror, it is a very real thing and a distinct possibility.