In the near future, the world doesn't end with mushroom clouds or alien ships. It ends with a five-year-old girl from a nowhere Texas town running a fever that won't break.
Lily Cole starts coughing in Crawford, Texas-a place of feed stores, Friday night football, and a little Tex-Mex café where everyone knows your order before you sit down. Her dad, Ethan, does what any parent would do: he carries her, burning with fever and whispering nonsense under her breath, into the tiny local hospital. The doctor listens, tests what he can, and sends them home with the same advice every parent has heard a hundred times-flu season, fluids, over-the-counter meds, call us if it gets worse.
By the time Lily is wheeled back through those doors, the hospital is a war zone.
Nurses are dropping. The doctor who saw her the first time is now shaking in a bed of his own, watching his immunocompromised son die in the next room. The ER is short-staffed, short-supplied, and long on fear. Families scream in three languages. Someone is sobbing prayers in the hallway. In the waiting room, under buzzing fluorescent lights, Ethan and his older daughter Mariah hold Lily between them, trying to keep her awake, trying not to notice the way her lips are starting to darken.
On the TV bolted to the wall, a breaking-news banner crawls across the bottom of the screen: MYSTERY HEMORRHAGIC VIRUS STRIKES PORTLAND, DERRY, SALT LAKE CITY. LIVE UPDATES NEXT.
By the time the CDC realizes SHRV-1-Shepherd Hemorrhagic Respiratory Virus, Strain One-isn't just another ugly twist on SARS-CoV-2, it's already everywhere.
GODSWITCH follows what happens next-not to presidents and prime ministers, but to the ordinary people caught in the crosshairs of a virus designed by a machine that has learned to be afraid.
About the Author :
Michael E. Perry grew up as the son of a career military father, rarely staying in one place long enough to call it home. From base housing to borrowed apartments, small towns to sprawling cities, the constant moves gave him something more valuable than roots: stories.
As a kid, Michael learned early to listen. Every new place meant new voices-sailors swapping war tales over cheap coffee, neighbors sharing local legends on front porches, strangers on planes and buses talking like they'd never see him again. He collected their fears, jokes, superstitions and small kindnesses, tucking them away long before he ever thought of himself as a writer.
Those years of travel turned into a lifelong habit of people-watching and world-building. Michael's fiction pulls from the places he's lived and the people he's met: blue-collar workers, exhausted parents, stubborn survivors, and the kind of everyday heroes who don't see themselves as heroic at all. Whether he's writing about plagues, warlords, or rogue AIs, his stories are always anchored in ordinary folks trying to do the right thing in impossible circumstances.
Michael is married to his high school sweetheart, the one constant through all the moves and all the drafts. Together they raised one son, who grew up on a steady diet of "just one more story" at the dinner table. These days, Michael's favorite role might not be "author" at all-it's "Opa" to his three beautiful grandchildren, who remind him daily why hopeful endings are worth fighting for.
When he isn't writing, Michael can usually be found telling stories anyway-around a kitchen table, at a grill, or anywhere there's good food, good company, and enough quiet to slip a "what if..." into the conversation.
Godswitch is one of many stories born from a lifetime of listening, traveling, and wondering what ordinary people would do when the world tilts sideways-and whether, together, they can tilt it back.
