Books
Science Fiction
RoH Alien Legacy
After decades of ridiculed stories, and evidence only the American government had, aliens landed on Earth. In a spectacular show on New Year’s Eve, they rescued the thousand first settlers on Mars as a massive comet slammed into the planet.
The aliens only wanted two things, to gain empathy from humans and to have humans find the cooperation necessary to save life on Earth.
RoH, the half alien human, whose star name translated as ‘New dust that spreads new life’, had come to Earth as a key part of the effort, but her discovery of a rogue alien hybrid led her into a chase against time. The dangerous mutant threatened both aliens and humans. RoH must either tame him or kill him.
The aliens considered RoH as the first of a new entity that would take the next step for sentient life in the galaxy. She mesmerized aliens and humans as she brought humour and power to all problems.
RoH and her mother Ellie are surprised when she is called to fulfil her role in the galaxy. A star-travelling species emerged from its self-imposed dormancy in the Sagittarian arm of the galaxy when they discovered that RoH existed. This species named the miigis, summon RoH. She leaves Earth amidst hope and heartache to fulfill an unknown destiny.
ISBN: 978-1-7752459-8-8 (Softcover)
Return
Return is a sequel and homage to Steven Spielberg’s mini-series Taken. It does not pretend to achieve the level of a Spielberg approved script, but it attempts to embrace his portrayal of aliens as a non-aggressive and perhaps a bit of a bumbling entity. It would be helpful for the reader to have watched the ten-part mini-series, first aired in 2002. It would be good to get familiar with E.T. and Close Encounters of the Third Kind to get a feel for Spielberg’s portrayal of star visitors.
You will not find invading space monsters here.
Some of the character names from Taken and general references to events from the series appear here to give continuity.
Charlie Keys, father of Ellie Keys, fled into obscure exile to the small Canadian town of Goderich, Ontario. He wanted to escape the notoriety surrounding the aliens taking his daughter, Ellie, up in a star-ship. Twenty years later, Ellie returns with a daughter, RoH, as part of an alien project to absorb the positive human traits of empathy and conviviality.
Ellie, mostly human and RoH half-human, hope to save life on Earth from a certain ecocide by humans. Circumstance thwarts their plan for a gradual introduction of their existence. Canadian journalists expose the alien presence and the American government’s attempt to exploit them. A rogue visitor to the inner solar system threatens the Mars settlement and forces an earlier and more spectacular alien appearance. It also requires them to interfere more deeply in human affairs than they wanted to.
The undeniable existence of aliens forces humans to re-think our place in the cosmos against a backdrop of political and economic chaos and religious hate.
ISBN 978-1-7752459-7-1 (Soft cover)
Global collapse thread
Collapse
When a global economic collapse hits a small town in Dufferin County, Ontario, Canada, many residents flee in search of relief while others choose more horrible solutions.
The catastrophe overwhelms elected governments as the long-distance supply of food collapses and desperate populations fight for meagre rations. Some local residents band together to survive, but an elite that sees collapse as a chance to take control threatens their efforts. Bloody fighting among ethnic groups and criminal gangs spills out of the cities, engulfing much of the countryside.
Threatened by repression and murder, the local progressive leadership seeks allies in order to survive. They join the small, free enclave of Huron Territory, and its struggle against internal shortages, starvation and preparations to fight the brutal dictatorship that soon dominates most of Ontario.
ISBN 9781775245926
Under Shadows
In this second book of the After the Last Day sage, five families have fled north into a seemingly safer territory focused on Owen Sound and most of the former Grey and Bruce counties north of the Saugeen River. These refugees settle on a complex of three farms in the lower Beaver River valley and labour under the shadows of their lost past. The threat from the racist dictatorship colours their lives and for the next several years, they struggle to survive and hold the fascists at bay.
The fight for freedom climaxes in a desperate battle beneath unfriendly November skies. Those skies turn into an ally, giving hope that a free future might be possible.
ISBN 9781775245940
The End Of Shadows
In this third book of the After the Last Day saga, the fascists, weakened by the military and natural consequences from their attempt to destroy Huron Territory, are finally subdued.
Nature’s fortune benefits the people of Huron, and in The End of Shadows, they enter the future taking advantage of an uneasy peace to overcome the lingering but fading emotional and physical shadows of the lives they had been living before the last day of industrial society.
Nature again reminds them to be humble, but adversity strengthens them to face bravely the uncertain future. This is somewhat the personal journey of the travelling scribe, Brandi Shadly where a world striving for political, economic and emotional security forms a backdrop to constant struggle.
ISBN 9781775245957
The Seventh Path
A follow-along story from the After the Last Day trilogy.
A century and a half after the collapse of the global economy, the residents of the Great Lakes basin struggled with the aftermath of the industrial ‘Before Time’. Climatic extremes are a persistent reminder of the dangers of straying from the loop of life. There is a risk of losing useful knowledge from the brief intellectual, industrial era of humanity’s existence on Earth and sinking into a world of total mysticism and ignorance. A young girl is given the responsibility, the quest, to find the true light of wisdom that balances the spiritual with the scientific. She grows into a mother and grandmother walking paths that lead her astray from the quest. In her concern for the trend to mysticism, she is awakened to the larger threat from attempts to restart technological domination of the natural and human world. Her seventh path leads her back to this appreciation of her true quest.
ISBN: 978-1-7752459-9-5
Journey's End
Sequel to The Seventh Path
Desperate to fulfill her quest, neutralize the murderous Erie Nation, and keep it from devouring the peaceful residents of the Great Lakes basin, Annie must battle her heart and her head.
Having found her way from the seventh wrong path, she is sure of her duty but goes into captivity with no firm idea of how to defeat a nation that is a gang of killers. The task seems impossible for a middle-aged grandmother. Annie relies on the one certainty that she would not have arrived at this place if she could not gain success.
In the end, she discovers that she is only the catalyst, and a most surprising friend and his Cuban lover become the key to victory.
ISBN: 978-1-7752459-3-3
Mike Donovan Mystery
Murder On the Goderich Local
Steam dominated the railways of the world for a hundred years, but the powerful marriage of internal combustion and electricity gradually pushed steam aside. By the end of the 1950s, steam was fading fast and diesel locomotives were dominating. The old romance of living steel and tough men would not go quietly.
On a small backwater sub branch of the Canadian Southern Railway, the men of the old and the new collided. Love, hate, ambition and intrigue came together to end in tragedy.
Ex-Mountie Mike Donovan, hoping for quiet semi-retirement as a railway cop soon discovered that sleepy backwater Ontario provided more excitement and mystery than he thought possible. As Donovan digs deeper, he finds killers are not always evil and victims not always deserving as the old motives of lust, jealousy, love and fear play out their deadly dance. In the end he finds, in despite of all, love wins.
Eco-resistance
Sherwood Green
“We will destroy Toronto. We will destroy industrialism.”
In a world where industrialism devastated the planetary ecosystem at a fast pace, the environmental movement split into two factions. The established environmentalists evolved into business operations where paid jobs, fundraising, government and corporate grants became the main focus. This faction believed that green corporations and growth could save the planet and allow the destructive ballooning of human numbers to continue. They thought that electing members to industrialist controlled parliaments would make a difference. The second faction understood that only total destruction of industrialism would be effective, allowing the remaining species to survive and perhaps some humans. At the extreme of this group sat the deep resistors, organised in cells so black that the security forces were not aware of them until they first attacked.
Sherwood Green, in a spectacular series of fires and explosions, launched a surprise attack on Toronto, the strategic financial centre of Canada. The frantic, response of police focused on the above ground supporters of Sherwood Green.
Jos Amiel, a young reporter for the local, superficial TorontoNewsNow television network hoped covering Sherwood Green would build his career. Events drew him in deeper as the stress of the attacks exposed the seamy underside of the fragile city culture. Jos began to understand, if Sherwood Green succeeded, they would destroy Toronto along with his career.
ISBN 9781775245902
High Falls Spanish River - Eskimanetigon
High Falls
The sub-hamlet of High Falls on the Spanish River in Ontario’s mid-north is now just a memory. Perhaps it is best this way. The place that many of us grew up in is now frozen in our memories, never to be altered by new realities, new residents and new events.
Here is a pictorial summary of the life of the town, from 1904 to 1986.
It is still an operating hydro-electric generating site.
ISBN 9781775245964
Echo of the Whip-poor-will
This is a personal vignette of some of my life in High Falls up to about Grade 10. At that age, High Falls changed from being my world to become my sometime refuge as more of my life was focused on the outside, high school and university. In later life, it has become my refuge of memory, my spiritual place that anchors while waiting to be called into the safe harbour. This is a letter to my family that perhaps others associated with High Falls might appreciate. I have added a fictionalised drama to the work to keep it from becoming a mere laundry-list of some of my memories. High Falls had disappeared as a town by 1986.
ISBN 9781775245919
Peasant Poetry
I do not intend the verses to aspire to, or imitate great or even good poetry. If the reader approaches verse from a literary perspective, I suggest they not bother proceeding further. As the sub-title says, these are the margin notes to my life. I have recorded my thoughts and feelings at various times and from an early age have expressed them in crude verse and rhyme. The quality will be uneven. I have included things here that evoke something in me. Re-reading these makes me re-examine my thoughts, feelings and attitudes and give me a sense of change, if not progress. There is no definite chronology here. The verses are not in rigid order from youth to now.
I write no deeper poem
But thought and rhyme
My life’s trail to mark
With blazing on the bark
That I might then divine
My shadowed way to home
ISBN: 978-1-7380641-0-6
Coming Soon
Order
Order Paperbacks directly from Don
E-mail to order: haywardon@gmail.com
The price for all books other than High Falls is $15.00 for pickup in Goderich.
Shipping outside of Canada, please ask for a quote.
All prices are in Canadian dollars.
E-books are available from most vendors such as Barns and Noble.
Print copies of most books are also available from Amazon.
About Me
Don Hayward grew up at a hydroelectric generating site on the Spanish River, surrounded by the wonder of the Canadian Shield. The experience of the north has influenced Don’s feeling for the natural world.
During 1970–71 Don backpacked in Australia. Returning to Canada to study photography, Don and his wife Diane ran a small part-time farming operation in Dufferin County as Don worked in the electrical industry.
Don and Diane now live in Goderich Ontario on the shore of Lake Huron.
Don’s fiction books on global collapse, eco-terrorism and science fiction are available worldwide through bookstores.
EBook versions are available through the same channels as well as Amazon and Smashwords.com.
Contact Don via e-mail at: haywardon@gmail.com
Contact Us
- Goderich, Canada
- haywardon@gmail.com
Reviews
Jacqueline Rivet in the Mid-North Monitor (Espanola) July 2022
If a situation can make you want to become a writer, it is listening to
author Don Hayward. On July 14, Hayward gave a talk at the Espanola
Public Library. He read excerpts from some of his books that led the
audience to imagine themselves sitting on the bank of the Spanish River
and meeting unique characters. Hayward’s evocative descriptions of
settings and people make the words come to life.
Hayward has written 12 books, and has plans for more. Storytelling appears to
live in his soul. When he speaks you see how the twists and turns of his
conversation with the audience and his fluency and humour weave a
living breathing tale. From his shoes to the top of his unruly snowy
hair, Hayward portrays a writer brimming with stories to share making
you want to sit and talk and learn from him. When he described his
writing he said, “I write episodically through a series of intertwined
stories.” As he read some of his poetry and from the chapters, you had a
sense of the connections he built within the stories.
Don grew up in High Falls on the Spanish River. The town no longer exists
as is the story of many of the small towns owned by different companies.
Some of the houses were moved to other locations of which he shared a
story or two. The locations of the Spanish River, Espanola and High
Falls are the settings for some of his books. The trilogy beginning with
the book ‘Collapse,’ followed by ‘Under Shadows’ and concluding with
‘End of Shadows’ are set in this area, as is ‘The Seventh Path.’ Hayward
doesn’t just write under one genre. Some of his pieces are science
fiction, others are mysteries and, like the trilogy, stories of a post
global economy collapse.
After he left High Falls, he eventually made his way to Dufferin County where
he operated a small farm and worked in the electrical industry. He
retired in 2008 and began to write, starting with a re-write of a
chapter he began in 2007. His first book was published in 2014. Hayward
now lives in Goderich, Ontario. Reading his stories will convey his
profound respect for the Indigenous way of life and an appreciation for
the land all around us. The books are available on Amazon and directly
from Don Hayward. The Espanola Public Library has his collection
available for borrowing.
Review of the original “big book” of After the Last Day.
The trilogy is the same but improved
By “Resonant” on Smashwords 2014
Awesome
epic book. It doesn’t just deal with a collapse, but follows society
for several generations, from the viewpoint of multiple characters.
“Words: 432,670” isn’t a typo. This is HUGE, and it’s not fluff and padding.
This is a unique story in that it includes people with disabilities,
people of various First Nations, people who are immigrants, people who
are visible minorities, and people of widely varying backgrounds, ethnic
heritages, political views, and religions beliefs, and treats them as
actual people with stories rather than background decoration. This gives
so many more opportunities to develop the story, and the author fully
takes advantage of it. After reading this, I realized how much it gets
repetitive reading books where the same generic heroic man fights to
survive, with kids and womenfolk only there to cheer him on. I think
this is the first post-apocalyptic book I’ve read where more than half
the narrative is from the viewpoint of women.
Anton Chekov wrote, “If you say in the first chapter that there is a
rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely
must go off.”. In this book, the wall would be destroyed by a train
driving through it. The author keeps things interesting by setting up
the story so you expect one thing, but then knocks the legs out from
under it. For example, a community develops its own currency to replace
the nearly-worthless dollar, using some old store coupons they found.
The characters carefully sign each one, keep track of how many are
issued, monitor the relative value of the coupons to available food
resources, and secretly mark the coupons to prevent duplication. You
expect that they will soon have problems with counterfeit coupons, or
hyperinflation. But, just like real life, events take place that
invalidate your predictions.
This is really, really, really good value for the money. A lot of good story for your dollar.
(reviewed 22 days after purchase)
Also, After the Last Day original book
gjh42 reviewed on June 15, 2015
Gripping
story, and all too plausible. There are no plot points where one says
“no, that isn’t possible”; more like “OMG, that could really happen”…
The only real quibble I have is that the dialog tends to be stiff, and
the book really needed a good proofreader, largely for continuity errors
of spelling and some typos. On the whole, highly recommended. Prepare
to have your thinking about society provoked.
(reviewed 9 days after purchase)
Collapse
reviewed on May 12, 2022
The books are interesting to read. The narrative is for ordinary people, and the plot is credible.
(reviewed 32 days after purchase)