Julian Fernandes and his wife, Remy, are the architects behind Endless Ink Publishing House, one of Colorado’s top indie publishers. He is also the founding force behind The Earth’s Final Chapter series, a series of collective novellas and short stories by over seventy of the brightest creatives around. What We Reading sat down with Julian to talk about everything from his roots as an imaginative creative, the conception of Earth’s Final Chapter and his plans for the future!
Thanks for speaking with us, Julian! First off, tell us a bit about yourself and what led you to the creative world.
I’m a born-and-raised Coloradan, but my mother is a Portuguese national, so I still have deep roots across the pond. As an only child raised by a single mother, I relied on my imagination a lot to entertain myself. That is the foundation of my creativity I’m sure, but I’ve always been into storytelling in one form or another.
In my teenage and young adult years, I was an actor in film and stage productions as well as a director and attempted filmmaker. Storytelling and creating stories are a part of my being. I love making something out of nothing as well as collaborating with other creatives.
Talk to us about The Earth’s Final Chapter. What is it about, how did it come about, and how has it grown as a collaborative project?
The Earth’s Final Chapter series, or EFC, is a series of lightly-illustrated novellas, shorts, and flash fictions. These stories take place in a post-post-apocalyptic/ cataclysmic future Earth. Although ninety percent of these stories are stand-alone, if you read the series as a whole you will see varying degrees of connection and even overlapping stories told from a different perspective. The series is written and illustrated by over 70 creatives and counting!
My wife Remy and I started working on opening Endless Ink Publishing House in 2016 with the idea that the Earth’s Final Chapter series would be our main focus. After I wrote the first two books, I realized it would be too much to write alone. We hired GD Penman, Nathan Banks, and CM Alongi to pen some novellas, and EFC was off to the races. Over the years we have had the privilege of working with an amazing array of creative people, and it has been a very fulfilling project. I am looking forward to what we have in store next!
What is the number one goal you want your work to have with readers?
The goal of my writing and storytelling is to provide a rich experience for the reader, something that lets them go on an imaginative journey, escapism in a nutshell. For the EFC series in particular I wanted to build something that was light reading, quick, and entertaining for the modern adult reader.
What do you think makes you stand out as a creative?
My imagination is my most potent creative talent, particularly my world-building. But I like to believe I can spin a good yarn too.
What would you say has been your biggest success so far?
My biggest success so far is probably Book 13 in the Earth’s Final Chapter series, Elutheramania: Freedom City, because it has a lot of connections and fan service, but still stands alone as just a good story. I think someone could start the series there and really enjoy the read. It is important for a series’ success to have stories that will pull a new reader in, no matter where they start.
What’s one tip you would give your younger self if you had the opportunity?
Start writing! It’s great to have ideas, but if you don’t start writing and have a completed story down, it never actualizes into more than the idea.
And finally, what do you hope the future holds for you and your work?
I hope more people discover the Earth’s Final Chapter series and all that it has to offer. The amount of talented people we have putting their work into this series gives me confidence that EFC has something for all fiction fans to love and enjoy!
Check out all of Julian’s work by following him on his website or on Twitter/X
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Part-time reader, part-time rambler, and full-time Horror enthusiast, James has been writing for What We Reading since 2022. His earliest reading memories involved Historical Fiction, Fantasy and Horror tales, which he has continued to take with him to this day. James’ favourite books include The Last (Hanna Jameson), The Troop (Nick Cutter) and Chasing The Boogeyman (Richard Chizmar).
