The day after the earthquake — I mean the literal next morning, the one where you wake up and the air still smells like dust and concrete — survival is mostly an administrative activity. You are making lists. Of people. Of things. Of which version of yourself you can locate.

I’m working on a series of short pieces about that day, and the days that followed, in 2007 in Pisco. Not the heroic-survivor narrative. The boring one. The one where your phone doesn’t work, and your hands won’t stop shaking when you pour water, and you find yourself counting the cans in someone else’s pantry as if that will help.

This is also where my fiction came from — the trilogy that begins with Tremor in the Hills. There’s a version of survival the news doesn’t cover, because it doesn’t photograph well. It’s quieter, and far weirder, and it lasts much longer than anyone tells you.

More to come, in this space, soon.