Home

Welcome! Thanks for your interest.

The SvenssonWorld Chronicles is a series that untangles the mystery underlying a global genetic-engineering catastrophe, chronicles its social and political consequences, and confronts the moral dilemma presented by the search for a cure.

It consists of three novels: Blank, Off the Green, and Generation Blank, each of which is available as an e-book or paperback through Amazon.

The SvenssonWorld Chronicles journey began in April 2017 with this sobering but provocative what if question: “If you were going to design a plague to kill off most of the population of the Earth, what would it be?” Three years, three books, and almost 300,000 words later we offer our answer to that question and its progeny for your consideration.

ABOUT THE BOOKS

BLANK

Blank is back!
The plague that killed 70% of the world’s adult population in less than 72 hours, then suddenly stopped, has returned after a three-year respite. Once again, people are dying suddenly, with a peaceful “blank” expression on their face and all color drained from their eyes.
Taniqua Winkle, the adopted daughter of America’s most prominent televangelist, is now running both his Ministry and a social services empire catering to the orphans of Blank. After the Blank-related death of a close friend, Taniqua and her assistant, Bryon Samuels, a failed missionary but a man of other invaluable talents, join forces with Colonel Mark Armstrong, head of the Logistics Command and the man most responsible for picking up the pieces of a Blank-devastated nation, to renew the search for a cause and a cure.
The pressure is mounting. People are dying. Those responsible for the medical and scientific research conducted three years earlier have dispersed. The search is on for a select few: Krishna Patel, the pathologist and former science child-prodigy who kept his small flame of medical research into Blank alive long after others had extinguished theirs; Henrik Svensson, the enigmatic former billionaire, inventor, and philanthropist who lost his family to Blank—and his fortune and most of his memory in its aftermath; Philippe Dubois, the former Director of the Svensson Institute who headed up the original investigation into Blank; and Matilda Newell, Dubois’ protégé and a distinguished genomics researcher.
The investigation is helped and hindered to varying degrees by Romeo White, Taniqua’s twin brother who followed a darker path after they were separated as children; Willa Ramirez, Romeo’s chief lieutenant; Nurse Katie Armstrong, Armstrong’s wife; Captain Suzanne Connolly, Armstrong’s chief aide and mistress; and a cadre of Washington military and political insiders with their own agendas that threaten Armstrong’s standing and the success of the investigation.
The inquiry discovers unsettling truths about the human origins of Blank, its apparent irreversibility, and a putative “cure” driven more by greed than hope that threatens to be worse than the disease. The mystery is solved — but at a price, while atonement is made, retribution is exacted, and the secret to beating Blank is revealed.

OFF THE GREEN

It’s almost eight years since Blank devastated the world, killing 70% of the adult population, and over three years since Mark Armstrong led the team that prevented the propagation of a deadly false “cure” in response to the second Blank outbreak. Although Blank remains incurable, Taniqua Winkle and Bryon Samuels spearhead the Winkle Ministries’ efforts to promote increased mental engagement across the population in an effort to forestall Blank’s deadly effects.
Official reports claim all but a very small percentage of the surviving population of the U.S. was consolidated into 35 “Green Zones” in the aftermath of Blank. But a shocked nation learns differently when Bill Hogan, a past rival of now-President Armstrong, appears as the champion of millions of “forgotten Americans” living outside the Green Zones whom Armstrong allegedly abandoned.
Armstrong dispatches his daughter Kelsey with Bryon and others on a fact-finding mission “Off the Green.” They join the Radio Caravan, a colorful group with a mysterious power supply that travels an annual circuit through less populated areas of the country under the sponsorship of an old-fashioned radio network cobbled together by the populist (and popular) Henry Beckett. At the same time the Caravan fends off harassment from agents of the black-market profiteer known only as “Mrs. B,” it must mind its uneasy alliance with the “Affiliated Territories of the United States,” a loosely connected confederation of “second tier” cities abandoned by Armstrong over which Hogan, a former special forces colonel, has emerged as de facto military dictator. All while the Caravan remains blissfully unaware that it harbors within its midst an intrepid undercover reporter, Diana Livingstone, the daughter of another prominent politician, on her own quest for the truth.
As a picture of life “Off the Green” emerges—one comporting with neither the “official” version nor the most unflattering portrayals—Armstrong is called to account and struggles for political survival against both Hogan and Elizabeth Jordan, the popular senator from Green Zone 2 and outspoken critic of “Dictator Armstrong.” Armstrong must also confront a secret from his past involving Hogan’s wife Savannah, her son Lucas, and the destructive personal consequences of a quest for vengeance masquerading as a call for “justice.”
The presidential race of 2052 has a surprising conclusion. But, in the end, “justice” is surely served.

GENERATION BLANK

More than twenty-five years after the Blank outbreak that killed 70% of the world’s adult population, a “real” cure appears tantalizing close. The puzzle will remain unsolved, however, if independent research teams headed by Mattie Patel and Amandine Dubois (the granddaughter of Philippe Dubois, whose false “cure” came dangerously close to killing the rest of the civilized world) cannot find a way to overcome long-standing prejudices and hidden personal agendas to remove the last roadblocks to success.
But will such a cure be welcome?
Not by all. And not entirely by the generation conceived after Blank—a population that has only known the post-Blank world and for whom the genetic mutation caused by Blank, if properly managed, actually enhances mental abilities.
Taniqua Winkle, now part of a U.N. high commission with the power to decide Blank policy on a global basis, finds herself in the middle of the debate and squarely in the cross-hairs of her old political and personal rival, Elizabeth Jordan, now the U.S. President. Jordan calls on another of her old rivals, Mark Armstrong, in a desperate attempt to “manage” Taniqua, while Taniqua is faced with and forced to make choices that seem destined to estrange her from old friends Armstrong, Bryon Samuels, Kris and Mattie Patel—and a source of intellect long presumed extinguished who shockingly re-emerges on the world stage determined to see a cure implemented at any cost.
Half a world away, Dr. Sharon Ming, still idolizing the long-dead Philippe DuBois, sits atop the Blank-related research program of the People’s Pan-Asian Federation. Coerced into perverting her research to further the PPF’s attempts to weaponize the “Generation Blankers” whom Ming was trying to help, Ming faces her own hard choices after fate twice places her at crucial tipping points upon which the success of the potential cure is precariously balanced.
Deception follows deception after the Commission’s deliberations take a surprising turn, leaving the principals to face the ultimate question on their own: Cure? Or no cure?