Audiobook HIghlight with ‘Writing the Dystopian edge’ by T.M. Smith and his Opposites audiobook release! (guest post and giveaway)

Writing the Dystopian edge by T.M. Smith

Hello everyone, and thanks for stopping by Scattered Thoughts and Rogue Words for their stop on the Opposites Audiobook tour. I thought I’d talk about the Dystopian edge to the world that I created for Opposites. I’m a huge fan of books like Dune, The Lord of the Rings and the Matched series by Allie Condie. I pulled elements from these three series when I started writing Opposites.

In Dune, people don’t have last names, they have Houses. Since Opposites took on this elemental saga with a huge cast of characters, I decided not to give the characters last names, but to give them Houses that they’d be tied to. So you have Aiyan of House Gaeland, Kaden of House Devi and so on. There’s also the intricate storyline in Dune with the worms and the drought, there are similar elements in Opposites with ‘Global Warming Ignition’ or GWI as I refer to it within the story. Opposites is set some 200 plus years in the future after Global Warming basically ignited and annihilated our planet. Society was reborn from the ashes and the Houses were created and the smartest people still alive are put in charge of these Houses.

Tolkien’s epic saga is one of my favorite books, series and movies. While this is an older series, it’s still wildly popular and, dare I say, almost a cult classic in its own right. I love the costumes, the era, the weapons and sword play. I included this ancient but recent style of clothing and weapons in the Opposites series. I also tried to keep the clothing and weapons somewhat liken to the area or region that the specific characters were from. I think I had the most fun with House Devi when describing culture and clothing, especially the Mehndi.

The Matched trilogy is exactly what the title says. It’s a future society where everyone is matched, sometimes without having even met each other. It’s what can happen when you’re incompatible that really plays into the story. Taking it one step further, what if in this society I have created where as being Gay/Lesbian is the norm, one of the royal houses children is very much straight? She’s matched to a young woman that she very much admires and loves, though not the way it was intended. How will the relationship shape these two women?

I promote the Opposites series as Dystopian SciFi because there are elements of both in the world I’ve created. If you’re a fan of either sub-genre, I’m confident you’ll enjoy this series. But at its heart, Opposites is about romance, passion, figuring out who you are and deciding that the person you want to be is up to you… not some preconceived notion of what a relationship should be. I hope you’ll grab a copy, Greg Boudreaux really outdid himself with all the various accents and characters. Each dialect is accurately portrayed and brought to life with rich accents and nuances.