Debut Novel
COMING SOON
BLACK SKY EVENT
A catastrophic loss of the electric grid across an entire society lasting weeks, months, or longer.
BLACK
START
A Near-Future
Techno-thriller
It starts as a series of whispers in the silicon…
Dr. Alana Voss built the models. She warned the U.S. power grid was a house of cards. Nobody listened.
When a coordinated attack triggers the coast-to-coast blackout she feared, Voss is forced into a cross-country gauntlet to reunite with her dying mother in New York City. Along with an unlikely travel companion, a street-smart girl named Leo, Voss battles the worst—and experiences the best—of human nature, while modern society fractures around them. As their unexpected bond deepens, Voss comes to see what really broke was not the grid, but society’s certainty electric power would always be available.
Meanwhile, in a federal command center deep under the Four Seasons Hotel in New York City, an ad hoc team of engineers and specialists fights physics, scale, and international diplomacy to restart the grid from a cold, black nothing. Where every effort takes time, every tool requires electricity, and every day more people die.
When Voss’ personal journey converges with the restoration team, she must dig deep to find her leadership voice and join the desperate battle to revive the very machine she’s spent years trying to get torn down.
BOOK ONE OF A PLANNED VOSS TRILOGY
“I have to say…
DAMN BLACK START is good.”
— Tom Witcomb Developmental Editor
About ME
Robert Logan
I know how to take the U.S. power grid down. The whole thing. Coast to coast.
And I know what happens when it doesn’t come back.
I have more than forty years’ experience as a global power executive developing, building, and operating generation and distribution companies in more than twenty-five countries on six continents.
The vulnerabilities described in this story are real and documented—and largely ignored by the people with the power to fix them.
When I’m not writing fiction, I construct crossword puzzles in my free time. My puzzles have appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Apple News+, among other outlets.
I reside in Belize.