The Mountain and The City

A Novel by Brian Martinez

In my mind at least, in the rose-colored glow of memory, The Mountain and The City is one of my best books, and possibly the one I enjoyed writing the most. As I explain in a brief afterword near its end, TMATC didn’t begin as a novel at all, but as a short story for a website I can’t remember, and as far as I’m aware no longer exists. Even that came about from a brief Twitter interaction with the site’s owner that ended in me promising to write a story to be featured at some later date.

The feature came and went, giving me the brief excitement of seeing my name on their front page. Left with nothing else to do with the story, I published it on a whim to Kindle, free of charge, figuring it might get a few eyes on my other work. I was surprised to see it not only downloaded thousands of times, but well-reviewed to boot. Many of those reviewers asked what happened to its two main characters next, and I had to admit that, though I previously hadn’t given it any thought, I was curious to find out as well.

In that moment TMATC became a serial, six installments in all. It also became a game of intentionally painting myself into a corner at the end of each installment, just so I could figure out how to get myself out of it in the next. These became the serial’s cliffhangers, serving to not only entice people to keep reading, but to shock my writer’s brain into action. The result is a book I’m very proud of, unexpected in its turns, and satisfying the promise of its characters. I think you’ll enjoy it, too.

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The virus wiped out mankind in a matter of days. Now the survivors are being hunted by what it left behind.

Years after global extinction, a young woman with no name hides in a mountain above a dead city. She lives her life with the door and windows taped shut, because survival comes down to two, simple rules: stay quiet, and protect the air. Anything less means death, or worse: becoming one of them.

But one day a curious, little monster comes up the mountain. It's a meeting that leads to a fateful decision, and a sacrifice that will change everything.

Collected here for the first time, The Mountain and The City is a post-apocalyptic serial that has kept its faithful readers on the edge of their seats time and time again.

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