The year is 2019. The Watchers maintain a state of constant surveillance: guns are outlawed, media is censored, and unmanned drones patrol the skies.

Derrion Parsing is a high school senior and the son of an ex-Army Ranger. Unlike his classmates, he has access to information from the time before the Invisible War, when the government shut down the Internet, reformatting into a propaganda tool. When Derrion attempts to use this information as part of a school project, he awakens to his worst nightmare.

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Guest Post :

We All Deserve a Second Chance

by K. M. Douglas

In the Place Where There is No Darkness was originally supposed to have been the novel that I have been working towards for almost 20 years. When the first chapter was complete, I was thrilled to see it come to life. As I began the second chapter, I knew that this was not the book that I set out to create when I first began writing it.

The story begins in the final minutes of Arthur Parsing’s life. The second chapter was supposed to go back in time and tell the story of how Art had come to the point where he was deciding whether or not to take his own life. Instead, the second chapter that I wrote took place nine years in the future and began with Arthur’s son, 17-year old Derrion, leaving home and walking to school. I kept writing from there, progressing the story, though I knew that I was not going to publish it. But still, I thought it would be good practice.

I had written almost the entire book when I finally set it aside. I decided that I wanted my first novel to be something special. I let that manuscript sit in a drawer for two years before I finally did the one thing with it that I had yet to do: I read it. I know it sounds silly, but while I was writing it, I would only read sections at a time, editing and adding to it, but I never sat down and read it from start to almost finished.

When I did read it two years later, I saw that there was something there, and though it was not the story I had originally set out to tell, it was without a doubt a compelling and important story that I believed needed to be told.

This is the book I needed to write. This is the book that symbolizes for me both an ending and a beginning. The culmination of a lifetime of writing as well as the birth of a new novelist.

Now, after having received more and more feedback from readers, I am glad that I took this book out of that desk drawer and gave it a second chance. In the first few reviews of In the Place Where There is No Darkness, the feedback I’ve received includes: “one of the best I’ve ever read”, “superbly written with a very vivid and imaginative writing style,” and “Douglas has a visceral writing ability that paints a picture, stimulates the senses and pierces the heart.”

This is a book about second chances, and now I realize how appropriate that is. Looking back, I also realize that the only thing this book was missing was my confidence in it. I said I wanted my first novel to be something special. For me, and for a number of readers already, it is.

A portion of the proceeds from the sales of In the Place Where There is No Darkness will be donated to the Fisher House Foundation, a non-profit organization that donates homes to enable military family members to be close to a loved one at the most stressful time – during hospitalization for a combat injury, illness or disease.

For more information, visit kmdouglas.org

K. M. Douglas grew up in Northeast Ohio and studied creative writing at The Ohio State University. He lives in Rainier, Washington with his wife, cat and two dogs.
In the Place Where There is No Darkness is his first novel.