"Erebus 13"

David Wellington was born and raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He attended Syracuse University and received an MFA in creative writing from Penn State. In 2004 he began serializing his novel Monster Island online. The book rapidly gained a following, and was acquired for print publication by Thunder’s Mouth Press. Since then, Wellington has published more than 20 novels, and has been featured in The New York Times, Boing Boing and the Los Angeles Times.

Wellington applied the Page 69 Test to Erebus 13, the third title in his Red Space trilogy, and shared the following:

Page 69 of Erebus 13 is actually a great sample of what you’ll find in this book—a little character conflict, a little worldbuilding, and a moment of pure tension. Our characters are in danger, having just been shot at by an unseen sniper. Trying to get away from the shooter, they run out into a broad exposed plaza—empty of life, and offering no cover at all. Doctor Zhang just wants to run, to get away, especially when an amplified voice warns them there will be no more warning shots. But then Alexandra Petrova turns and decides she’s done running. She won’t leave, she says, until she gets some answers.

There’s very little context given here. If you haven’t followed the story so far you won’t know what’s at stake or what’s going on. Yet you can feel the danger. The heroes of the Red Space trilogy have been running for a long time, running across a hundred light years of space. Now they’re home, for a given value of home, and it’s time to stop running. It’s time to stand against the darkness that threatens to consume us all.

Writing this trilogy has been a blast. I didn’t come up with the main characters—they were mostly created by editor James Long. I just fleshed them out and gave them life. Yet as I’ve explored their story, Petrova, Zhang and the robot Rapscallion became like real people to me, flawed and desperate, scared and defiant. I’ve thrown them from one peril to the next, tossed them out of so many frying pans right into so many fires. Page 69 of this book might be the defining moment when the story turns, when my characters refuse to accept the dark fate I’ve been pushing them toward. When they start fighting back. It’s about time they got to decide things for themselves, and I can’t wait for readers to find out how they take back their power—and what it’s going to cost them.

Visit David Wellington's website.

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Q&A with David Wellington.

--Marshal Zeringue