FAQ

What would you like people to take from Cerebellix?
First and foremost, a good story. I want people to feel engaged in the characters and the story arc from the very first page until the very last. Secondly, I want people to consider the story on a deeper, more fundamental and symbolic level. While the Cerebellix is a computer chip in the story, we all have things we turn to that numb our emotional extremes. Hopefully readers might consider what those influences are and to what degree their lives are impacted by them.

How long did it take you to write Cerebellix?

I’ve had the story in my heart, as a concept, for several years. I had an experimental first chapter on a computer hard drive for about the same amount of time. But early in 2021, I decided it was time to write it. So I spent most of the month of May developing characters, scenes, and the outline. On June 1st, I began writing the story, and finished on November 7th.

Is the story of Cerebellix about a political philosophy?

Not necessarily. I want the story to have individual meaning for each reader. Certainly there are political ideologies that are designed to suppress thought, emotion, and behavior. But many other things can have the same effect: forms of religious observance, family dynamics, employment environments, friend groups. Really any environment that is designed to quell thought could be symbolized by the themes found in Cerebellix.

What inspired you to write Cerebellix?

There’s not any one thing that sparked the story. I do remember standing near the center of the Jefferson Memorial in Washington D.C. Inscribed on the wall is Jefferson’s famous quote from a letter to Benjamin Rush in which he wrote “…for I have sworn upon the altar of god eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.”

I remember learning much in an organizational communications course in college about the dynamics of groupthink.

I remember well reading Orwell’s 1984 in a high school AP English class, fascinated by how terrifyingly pliable our perceptions can be when others in power are determined to change them.

All of it together has fueled in me a deep interest in elevating the primacy of our individual agency. It was out of this interest the story emerged.

Will Cerebellix have a sequel?

Without a doubt. In fact, two are planned. The next story — title to be determined — will be a continuation of the resistance group’s efforts to overthrow Henry Irvine, and is expected to finish the story.

A third book will tell the back story of Henry Irvine and how our modern Western culture was transformed into the bleak existence that is Omnividia.