The results are surprisingly inhuman (or disappointingly human, depending on your perspective), which is a big part of the lesson. Instead of being defined by race or ethnicity in the more classical senses though, on Extremus Terra, each person belongs to a race that pursues one ideological extreme, with no grey area on that issue. The geography is different and so is the cast, but the humans of Extremus Terra are very recognizable.

Stimpson: It doesn’t spoil anything to say that the world of Extremus Terra is a fantasy version of Earth. Me: Tell us something about the world of Extremus Terra. I’ll let it enjoy the spotlight for a while. For now, though, I’m very proud of it as is, and it’s important to me that it gets the opportunity to be “ Extremus Terra”, as opposed to immediately becoming “the first book of X trilogy”. Stimpson: I wrote Extremus Terra with the goal of making it a complete story that stood on its own, but I left the door open at the end (no spoilers, I promise) for it to continue, and I have the ideas and skeleton in place to potentially turn it into a trilogy. I actually discovered that I was a thematic writer while writing Extremus Terra all of the novel’s elements are important to me, but none more so than the commentary on extremism and intolerance. But there’s a lot of social commentary in the book, and I firmly believed that it was important to put down on paper, and that kept my momentum high. I’d never written such a comprehensive story before, and I’m not sure if I really knew I could do it. Stimpson: Extremus Terra was my first full-length novel and it was very much a passion project. Me: What made you pen down Extremus Terra?

As an adult, I’ve never really wavered in the idea that this is what I want to do. I had to work my way up to complete novels I started with short stories, and by the time I was in college, novels were something I was able to do. I took breaks periodically when I was younger, but it has always been the dream. Me: Have you always wanted to be a writer?

Extremus Terra by J.D. Stimpson