Jonathan Epps's Blog
March 21, 2025
Preview of THE NEVER NOT YES
Preview of THE NEVER NOT YES. I aim for publication later this year.
Political division. Welcome distractions. Looming civil war: American society in the near future, a one-time limitless civilization, exploited by narcissists whose selfishness results in the permanent failure of the nation’s power grids. Within which, a band of survivors give up the hate to take a stand between a gang of plantation supremacists and a board of corporate fascists, both engaged in a battle for absolute power.
Twenty-something Antonio “Ant” Hobbes, having lost his beloved grandfather, must face an unforgiving world that has fallen back into deadly racial antagonism. On his journey, he allies himself with freedom fighters whose desire to transcend the hatred binds them together in a race against ultimate destruction.
This brave group of survivors develops as a coherent whole. They have a cow and a bull, a calf. The wherewithal to make and maintain fire. A shelter to keep them warm and safe from the highway men who wait in the shadows.
But oppression lurks within and without. Bloodthirsty, the supremacist gang has tracked Ant down, dragging with them their supposed property: a young woman he’d broken their rules to romance while working on their farm. She’s stunning, biracial like Ant, and pregnant with his child.
Unable to reconcile the opposing sides, the central six break apart: some dying, some wandering into the wild. Only the strongest four, including Ant and the new love he must rescue from the punishing supremacists, manage to escape the violence and travel farther west to reconstitute their lives and rebirth the old new world.
Political division. Welcome distractions. Looming civil war: American society in the near future, a one-time limitless civilization, exploited by narcissists whose selfishness results in the permanent failure of the nation’s power grids. Within which, a band of survivors give up the hate to take a stand between a gang of plantation supremacists and a board of corporate fascists, both engaged in a battle for absolute power.
Twenty-something Antonio “Ant” Hobbes, having lost his beloved grandfather, must face an unforgiving world that has fallen back into deadly racial antagonism. On his journey, he allies himself with freedom fighters whose desire to transcend the hatred binds them together in a race against ultimate destruction.
This brave group of survivors develops as a coherent whole. They have a cow and a bull, a calf. The wherewithal to make and maintain fire. A shelter to keep them warm and safe from the highway men who wait in the shadows.
But oppression lurks within and without. Bloodthirsty, the supremacist gang has tracked Ant down, dragging with them their supposed property: a young woman he’d broken their rules to romance while working on their farm. She’s stunning, biracial like Ant, and pregnant with his child.
Unable to reconcile the opposing sides, the central six break apart: some dying, some wandering into the wild. Only the strongest four, including Ant and the new love he must rescue from the punishing supremacists, manage to escape the violence and travel farther west to reconstitute their lives and rebirth the old new world.
