If you are reading this, then you must have somehow managed to survive the Plague Year. You learned how to scavenge what little food could be found (and made some creative choices about what you were now willing to identify as “food”). You managed to fashion a shelter, and learned how high to climb to avoid having the machine plague slowly eat you alive. Life has been anything except easy, and now, it is about to get a whole lot more difficult. The Plague War has arrived!

I never had nightmares about ants until after I read Plague War. For days, I found myself trying to wipe off the ants I believed were crawling on my arms, only to discover that the ants did not actually exist. Only Jeff Carlson could take something as innocent as a tiny little ant, and make it into something that haunts you days after you have finished reading his book!

Plague War picks up where Plague Year ended, with the few surviving characters struggling to do what they can to put an end to the machine plague. The nanotechnology described in this book is terrifyingly real. Maybe it doesn’t exist like in Carlson’s books, but, then again, it just might! As I was reading, I kept having to remind myself that this was a Sci-Fi book, and not reality. Plague War is a mind fuck you will love every second of.

Check out this fantastic video:

Wicked good!

Jeff Carlson was kind enough to do a second interview with me for Book Sandwich.

Jen Thorpe: Hello once again, Jeff! Welcome back!

Jeff Carlson:Hi, Jen, and thank you for bringing me back for another feast at Book Sandwich!

Jen Thorpe: In our previous interview, you mentioned that you were working on the third novel in the Plague Year trilogy. I love it when I find a book that excites me, and then discover that it is part of a series! What can you tell me and my readers about the third book? When will it appear in stores?

Jeff Carlson: One of the challenges I faced with the second book, and especially now as I’m developing the third, is the incredible potential of nanotechnology. The first novel, Plague Year, is based on the idea that we’ve made some breakthroughs in the field and developed a high-level nanobot capable of operating within the human body, although it needs fine-tuning. The microscopic machine is still a prototype when it get loose and, you know, chaos ensues.

Even before the first book is done, various factions around the planet are using the machine plague itself to develop weaponized nanotech, advancing the gains of its original designers. That trend continues in the second novel, Plague War. Before that book is over, much less by the time we reach the third novel, it would have been easy to unleash the dogs of our imaginations and say, well, what if we actually had smart nanobots?

As a writer, it’s important to keep ratcheting up the stakes, not only for the world at large but for the hearts and souls of my characters. With each book — heck, with each chapter — I wanted to lay more on the line. But I didn’t want to lose sight of what’s real and important to normal people like you and me.

If we imagine nanotech in its ultimate expression, the ability to control matter precisely at the molecular level, we could use it to create invulnerable super beings who never need to eat or sleep… or to love or fear or hate. What if your skin was impervious to fire or bullets? What if you could turn invisible to the naked eye? What if you could fly?

That wasn’t a book that I wanted to write.

I like to think Plague War reads like a mainstream thriller just like says on the cover… “part Michael Crichton.” I enjoy far-out sci fi with ray guns and aliens, but I’m always more spooked by stories that seem like they could really happen, so I made a point to keep the technology moving in the small, plausible increments like you would expect in the real world, not miraculous gains that altered the very nature of the characters.

The third novel has the working title Mind Plague, or, alternately, Plague Messiah, and, well, what can I say without giving too much away? In this ruined world, there are many desperate people who have been developing their own nanotech based on the superior archetype of the machine plague… There’s a new bad guy, and some old heroes, and the fan favorites are at it again with everything that’s dear to them on the line.

Mind Plague will be out in 2009.

JT: What was it like to turn one book into a series? I imagine that would be difficult. Did you use an outline or just wing it? What inspired you to write a sequel and then make it into a series?

JC: Hee hee. I just “wing it” mostly, but there are really only so many directions for the story to go. For me, the puzzle builds itself, which is huge part of my fascination with writing.

I like to think that everyone in my stories is doing the best they can. They’re smart and genuine, no matter what side they’re on, black hat, white hat — we all think we’re the good guys from our own perspective. It’s only in the movies and poorly written books where people do stupid things just to further the plot.

Yes, people make mistakes that lead them into trouble. More often they’re working at a disadvantage compared to their rivals. Whether that’s a disparity in resources, knowledge, or inner strength is all of a matter of what makes the world so interesting, from the vast scale of geopolitics to the very intimate personal history that we all carry inside us.

I like smart bad guys. I hate stupid heroes. I work very hard to make sure that everyone in my books is darn well trying their hardest, especially when it’s the end of the world, to get what they’re after. So the characters really do take over.

From there, it was easy to expand the scope of the first book into a trilogy.

JT: I’ve watched the video on Youtube for your books several times, and I still find myself shocked by the way it ends. It’s that good! There are a bunch of “book trailers” on Youtube these days, but yours is the best I’ve ever seen. It’s way better than just pointing a camera at the author as he or she sits in a chair and blathers on! What was it like to shoot the video? Where was it filmed? And… who exactly is that guy at the end?

JC: Thank you. I’m very lucky that one of my friends, Adad Warda, is a professional cinematographer and a freakin’ genius! He has his own camera, sound, and editing equipment. Would you believe that 4 Minutes Above 10,000 Feet only cost me a tank of gas, several sandwiches, a twelve-pack of Pepsi, and some licensing fees for the soundtrack? Adad and I both live in the San Francisco Bay Area. We drove into the Sierras one day, shot the whole thing from sun up to sun down, and shazam — I must have run and hiked over a mile to get those two hundred and forty seconds right, but it was totally worth it.

Acting out scenes from the books was great fun, from playing Blair Witch in the freaky opening sequence to ducking the space shuttle as it came roaring out of the sky. Ha!

Editing the footage turned out to be the bigger challenge. Much like writing, assembling the shots required a lot of patience and hard choices. I thought it was intriguing as hell, because the process was all new to me, whereas Adad simply buckled down and ground through the work with remarkable diligence. I can’t give him enough praise.

The poor bastard at the end of the film is Chuck Keen, another friend who joined us for the day. He’s in the credits as “Special thanks to Charles Keen,” and no wonder!!!!

JT: What other projects do you have going on right now that your fans would want to know about?

JC: Top secret! I’d have to sell you all on eBay to keep you quiet!

All I can say is that I’m a very busy duck. Not only am I about halfway done with Mind Plague to wrap up the nanotech trilogy, I’m also nearly finished with a collaboration with New York Times bestselling author David Brin, an adventure novel called Colony High that taps all of David’s fearsome intellect and my own taste for mayhem. We’re hoping it’ll be out in 2010.

In the meantime, I’m also shin-deep in a new stand-alone thriller whose title is Eyes Only Burn After Reading . The most I can say is that it’s another high concept novel that I think will blow the doors off of the Plague trilogy.

The only safe places on Earth are above 10,000 feet elevation?

Well, you haven’t seen anything yet!

JT: Podcasts are quickly becoming a popular way to generate interest in a book, especially for Sci Fi novels. Have you been on any podcasts lately as a guest to talk about the Plague Year series? Can fans look forward to a podcast about the books? What can you tell us about your books in audio format?

JC: I’ve had several short stories picked up lately by podcasters such as Starship Sofa, Escape Pod, Pseudopod, Horror Addicts, and The Dunesteef. I heartily recommend Starship Sofa and Pseudopod, Pseudopod in particular, and I recorded where-do-your-ideas-come-from clips for Starship Sofa and Dunesteef, in which I talk a little about my books and my brain as well as the individual story itself.

As for the novels themselves, Plague Year is now available on CD from ,Recorded Books, narrated by stage actor Richard Ferrone, who also does John Sanford’s Prey series. I’m very excited about that, and I urge anyone with a thirst for audiobooks to check it out. He’s excellent!

Readers can find more about Jeff Carlson and his books on his website, which is just packed with cool stuff to check out!

 http://www.recordedbooks.com/index.cfm?f…