Set in the immediate future, Crystal Rain is an imagined story of smart people who are seeking to do good. It is also a story of corporate leadership blinded by greed, of corruptible politicians, and of organised crime – each collective determined to profit from the destruction to be wrought by a looming, cataclysmic, natural disaster.

Since 1633, major earthquakes have been recorded striking – in the area under what is now greater Tokyo – on average every seventy-five years. The last major event was in 1923 – the Great Kanto earthquake. That earthquake, and the devastating fires and tsunami that followed, killed some 143,000 people, and rendered almost two million homeless. In 1923, Tokyo was a much smaller and far less populated city.

Overdue, it is only a question of when the next major earthquake will strike Tokyo. Crystal Rain is a page-turning sage set against that impending disaster. It chronicles the actions of its characters as they battle each other – using cutting-edge technology, and old-fashioned thuggery – to seize glittering prizes for those with knowledge, and the skills to survive …

Crystal Rain will be the first work of fiction to be published under the Make Books Australia imprint.