Featured Author: Emma Forrester

On Cosy Apocalypse Fiction, Community, and Staying Human When the World Shifts

Some dystopian stories arrive with explosions and spectacle. Emma Forrester’s arrive quietly — through kitchens, conversations, shared meals, and the fragile rituals that hold people together when certainty begins to slip.

Based in Somerset, Emma Forrester writes character-driven dystopian and speculative fiction rooted in emotional honesty and domestic detail. Her work focuses on ordinary people facing extraordinary circumstances, where survival is shaped less by heroics and more by care, humour, and connection. She describes her work as cosy apocalypse fiction: intimate, quiet stories where found family and community matter as much as food, shelter, and safety.

Writing from Community, Not Catastrophe

Emma’s debut novel, Queen’s Road, grew out of years of small, half-serious conversations, the kind many families have had around kitchen tables and during late evenings.

What would we do if things changed?

Who would cook?

Who would keep the children calm?

Who would hold everything together when fear crept in?

These questions weren’t really about apocalypse at all. They were about responsibility, care, and how people adapt under pressure. Rather than focusing on cinematic collapse, Emma became interested in the emotional reality of change — the quiet tensions, the humour that surfaces in dark moments, and the small choices that suddenly carry enormous weight.

“I’ve always been drawn to characters rather than spectacle,” she says. “I’m interested in how people behave when routines break, when certainty disappears, and when small decisions matter more than ever.”

Speculative and dystopian fiction offered her the space to explore those ideas while staying close to the human scale — kitchens instead of command centres, shared meals instead of survival bunkers.

Queen’s Road: Survival as Care

Set on a small Somerset street, Queen’s Road follows neighbours who choose connection over chaos as the world around them begins to change. At its heart is Emma and her family, navigating uncertainty together while trying to protect a sense of normality, especially for their children.

The novel is warm, intimate, and quietly tense. Fear exists, but it doesn’t dominate. Instead, resilience is built through humour, shared responsibility, and the belief that staying human matters as much as staying alive.

This is dystopian fiction that understands survival as emotional labour — the work of holding each other steady when the ground shifts.

Excerpt from Queen’s Road (Chapter One)

The grill hissed and spat like it had a grudge. Smoke curled into a sky streaked with late summer pink, the heat clinging heavily even in the evening. A  warm spell had settled over Somerset all week, sticky enough to glue a T-shirt to your back.

Jay stood at the grill, bald head shining, his bodybuilder frame filling the patio like a wall of muscle. With tongs in one hand and a beer in the other, he turned sausages with the precision of a man defusing bombs. Fourteen years as a Fusilier, now an IT manager. My geek soldier. Just as happy fixing networks as grilling meat with military discipline.

Justice sprawled in a camping chair, six-foot-four of muscle and trouble, his grin wide as he raised his beer. “See this, Mum? Tactical sausage-turning. If Jay put that much focus into anything else, he’d have conquered Somerset by now.”

Gemma flicked his ear. “At least we’ll eat without salmonella.”

From the grass, Sophia snorted. She sat cross-legged with Bonfires, her battered purple teddy with the single button eye, tucked under her chin. “They would eat you first,” she said. “Like a bag of crisps. No nutrition, but easy to grab.”

Jay laughed, low and dry, never taking his eyes off the grill. I liked watching him like this, softened by the people he loved. Even now, though, I could see the soldier threaded through him. The way his stance shifted when someone passed the gate. The way his gaze flicked to the hedges. Jay never stopped scanning, and I never stopped noticing when he did.

The table sagged under jerk chicken, pepper shrimp, fried plantain, and burgers Jay insisted on. This was it. Family. Laughter. A pocket of everything good.

Queen’s Road breathed as one. You learned its moods in small ways. Tonight there was a thread of quiet running under the laughter, subtle but present, tugging at me all the same.

Justice leaned in. “First rule is location. Where are we heading when it kicks off?”

They were joking, but the words nudged something in me. I glanced at Sophia, her eyes drifting briefly to the gate before she laughed again. Kids should have been thinking about school and TikTok, not escape routes.

Later, with plates stacked and laughter fading into yawns, Jay settled onto the sofa and pulled me in beside him. The news murmured in the background. Sirens. Crowds. Borders. None of it felt far away anymore.

The Wi-Fi flickered and died.
Broadband outage in your area.

Then the lights outside hiccupped and went dark.

The house held its breath.

A scream rose from the street, sharp and human, and ended too quickly.

Jay was already on his feet.

“Lock the doors.”

And in that moment, the house that had been a home changed in the space of a breath.

Writing with Intention and for the Reader

Emma writes with care and deliberation, always thinking about the reader on the other side of the page. Her goal isn’t simply to unsettle, but to offer recognition.

“I hope my stories offer comfort as well as tension,” she says. “That people recognise themselves in the characters — their fears, their humour, the small ways they keep going.”

If a reader finishes one of her books feeling a little less alone, she considers that success.

Featured Book: Queen’s Road

Genre: Character-driven dystopian fiction | Speculative | Post-apocalyptic | Found-family survival

When the world begins to change, a small Somerset street chooses to hold itself together.

Warm, intimate, and deeply human, Queen’s Road is a story about community, resilience, and the quiet courage it takes to remain kind when fear moves in.

👉 Buy the book: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Queens-Road-Emma-Forrester-ebook/dp/B0GD2HP5QQ

🔗 Website: www.emmaforresterbooks.com