November 1, 2017

Introducing My 2017 NaNoWriMo Novel

It’s November 1st, which means that NaNoWriMo has officially begun! To celebrate, I wanted to share the novel I’m working on this year.

The Other Humans

A sci-fi dystopian novel by Beth Martin


In the future, there are only two things worth owning: land and robots. Leona's family has both—Rommel’s has neither.

The disparity between the rich and poor is essentially the difference between life and death, so the have-nots go to extreme measures to demand the attention of the wealthy landowners. When her robots fall victim to debilitating computer viruses and her family's fields are torched by rebels, Leona finds herself in the same predicament as Rommel. There's no work for them, no opportunities, no communities, no charity, and no compassion. No longer a member of the select few who own all the wealth, Leona must learn to live like Rommel—as what she used to call the 'other humans.'


Rommel was sick of his nomadic lifestyle. He was ready to settle down and stay in a single town for the rest of his life. But up until this point, nowhere had been kind to him. Instead, he had been evicted from area to another, always on the hunt for somewhere he could call home for longer than a couple of weeks.

“Rommel, look out!” The edge of panic in Jovelyn’s voice could only mean one thing. Robots. They were initially designed to be useful, taking over all of the boring and mundane tasks people didn’t want to do. But at some point, they had become hostile. Rommel would never trust a robot.

He ducked down, narrowly missing the bolt of pulsar energy that sailed over his head. “This way!” Rommel yelled, leading Jovelyn toward the high brush. From the single shot aimed at him, he could infer where the machines were coming from and which direction would be safe. If he had learned anything in his twenty-two years, it was how to avoid security androids.

I’d been itching to do this story for a while. It’s been ages since I’ve worked on something really dystopian, and I’m excited to create this future world and society built on robots. In a future where technology is so advanced that robots can do everything, I imagine that the middle class has been completely replaced by cyborgs. There are a lot of ideas bouncing around my head that I want to tackle in this novel, which is great. All I need to do is write them all down!

If you’re participating in NaNoWriMo this year, make sure to add me as a buddy! I’ll be sharing my entire NaNo journey on all my social media, so if you don’t already, follow me on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.

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