I turned a year older and so did my story

Two years on the Dust Road

I am a snapshot of time. The record of an existence.—Shia Santos

Today is my birthday. Two years ago, on this same day, I published the first episode of a climate fiction series I wasn’t sure anyone would read. I was in Mexico at the time, visiting family. I remember sitting at the large dining table, rewriting that first story for what felt like the thousand time. And eating breakfast tacos.

The family was gathered around me in the sala. My husband chatted with his mother, who was scrolling on her phone. My brother in law typed a screenplay on his laptop. And the 96-year-old grandmother chased Penny, the little chihuahua, off the couch.

There are simple moment in life that etch themselves into memory. If you close your eyes, time rolls back and you’re there. And yet, not. What are memories, really? These imaginary snapshots of time and life we carry inside?

As I prepare to release the fifth and final season of There Is Hope this May, I’ve been reflecting on memory and how we preserve what matters. The series—a cli-fi mosaic novel—is built on five interconnected stories and five Letters from the Future. Within my fictional universe, these stories are archived in a futuristic Museum of Life, a place where memories are curated as public exhibitions that people can visit virtually or in person.

In this imagined future, memories become immersive, sensory experiences. You don’t read about the past, you feel it. You walk the scorching Dust Road, swim through the kelp forests of the Japanese Colonies, dance at the Rainmaking Festival of the Dust Tribes, follow The Ghost through the last forest, and uncover the secrets of the Dust Pirates. Through these stories, you experience what it meant to live in Europe in the year 2550, on the brink of ecological and civlizational collapse.

There Is Hope is not about saving the world. I don’t have a blueprint for utopia. My stories are snapshots of lives, artefacts from a future that could be, witnesses to the passage of time. There is salvation on the Dust Road, but it’s intentionally ambiguous, even fantastical. And they lived happily ever after is how fairytales end, not life.

No matter how hard we try to imagine it, the future remains uncertain. Reaching utopia is impossible—perfection is an illusion. Between our first and last breath, this moment—right here—is all we have. The wind in our hair. The sun on our skin. A birdsong in our ears. A flower’s scent in our nostrils. The beauty of this blue planet in our eyes.

The characters in my Dust Road stories are full of longing for an Earth they will never know. Will we take it away from them?

I hope you’ll walk with me a little further this May when the last season arrives as a three part mini-series and a final Letter from the Future. To mark the occasion, I’m taking all previous seasons of There Is Hope out from behind the paywall and make them free to read until the end of season 5.

If you’ve never walked the Dust Road—or wish to return—now is the perfect time. Once the last episode drops, this series will return behind a paywall as I prepare to turn it into a book.

Thank you for reading. For remembering. I write for those who never look away from suffering, who never give up, who keep tending the fire of hope.

You are the fireflies in the dark.

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Thank you for walking with me.