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AFTER THE END OF THE WORLD is a women’s literary fiction novel that is complete at 104,000 words. It has similarities to the coming of age amid family abandonment theme of Maame by Jessica George and the dystopian cult living of The Water Cure by Sophie Mackintosh.
Luna and her brother Apollo are the only children being raised at The Dwellings, a doomsday cult. 8-year-old Luna and the cult leader Messiah become locked in a battle of wills. Luna uses her creativity to avoid his sexually invasive purification ceremonies and other cult rites. Because her parents offer no protection, Luna goes into survival mode making the barnyard animals her trusted community and sneaking off the property with Apollo in search tasty treats. After seven years of extreme isolation with only her brother to confide in and find comfort her, Apollo escapes. Luna longs for the promised end of days to stop her pain and loneliness. When the existence she knew on The Dwellings finally ends, 20-year-old Luna steps into a foreign modern world full of confounding social rules and her own burgeoning hormones. She tries to find Apollo and build a life she never imagined living but the looming mystery of Messiah’s role in her family’s past threatens to destroy her future and end her life.
Sydnye White is Executive Producer on a reality series in development titled America's Next Great Author. She is a 2020 Marth’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing Author Fellow and recipient of the Washington Writers Conference inaugural BIPOC scholarship award in 2023. Her non-fiction writing has been published in such outlets as The Washington Post, Cinema Journal and World Neighbors magazine. An Emmy-nominated television producer/writer who works have appeared on major cable networks, she is currently traveling the world as the Vice President of Content and Storytelling at Special Olympics’ global headquarters where she oversees web, video and photographic content creation.