About the Book

Book: All That Glows

Author: Lauren Smyth

Genre: YA Dystopian Science Fiction

Release Date: May 12, 2026

The apocalypse didn’t take everyone. It just took us.

Ever since the rain turned green, Kyrie’s world has been bathed in glowing dust. She packs it into old mascara tubes and sells it as makeup alongside dried cacti, threadbare blankets, and long-expired canned food. There’s not much else to do when everyone outside Kyrie’s small town in the Mojave Desert died from the plague-bearing rain ten years ago.

Everyone—except the man in the rubber mask.

He’s on the dangerous side of the fence, huffing infected air like it’s nothing, babbling to Kyrie about college and umbrellas and yogurt and everything else that disappeared the day it rained. He doesn’t seem to know that the world ended, and he has no explanation for how he survived the apocalypse. But Kyrie doesn’t believe in ghosts.

She can’t trust him, but he’s right about one thing: Towns without secrets aren’t surrounded by chain-link fences. And chain-link fences won’t keep out the plague forever.

 

Click here to get your copy!

 

About the Author

Lauren Smyth is an economics journalist at World News Group. Since signing her first publishing contract at age thirteen, she has written five young adult novels, coded two narrative video games, and started a blog enjoyed by readers and writers around the world. When she’s not in the broadcast studio, you’ll find her crafting episodes of her Grammar Minute writing podcast or training for her next trail run.

 

 

 

 

More from Lauren

You’d think the apocalypse already happened in Mojave, CA.

Toxic dust could invade your lungs and kill you. Owls burrowed in the ground for lack of trees. Bobcats mated and had their kittens on neighborhood roofs, and every so often, a jet screamed overhead with a thunderclap in its wake.

I arrived in the middle of the night, and when I woke up, I was in a world different from any I had ever known. As a military kid, I had eaten fresh Belgian waffles, stood drenched in Ohio rain, and fallen asleep to Las Vegas lights. But I had never seen a place so unearthly, or so tantalizingly mysterious, as Edwards Air Force Base. I stood at the window and goggled at the scenery for a while. And then I began to make it my own.

One of the first things Edwards AFB taught me was how to write. That was a byproduct of my decision, at a mature eight years old, to become a detective.

My friends and I climbed into a ditch and found a broken arrow, half the feathers ripped away, the point still intact. An assassination attempt, of course. Old golf balls buried in the dirt—secret messages to a dangerous enemy. The allure of jets overhead, of opaque military acronyms, of drab camouflage and deadly temperatures and rumors of drug lords and cowboys and sand sharks wandering the desert, gave wings to our imaginations.

The first story I wrote was a collection of “clues” we’d gathered, an attempt to frame them all into a narrative that explained how the base was going to be attacked and how we—well-prepared with our military IDs and iPods—would save everyone. I started writing in a notebook with a hot pink cover, and a hundred more notebooks kept up the thread. The story wasn’t yet a book. But it was my first attempt at weaving a story greater than anything I had experienced.

Fourteen years have passed. All That Glows is my fifth book. It’s based on everything that came before it—most importantly, on Mojave and Edwards AFB and all the time I spent trying to tease out the desert’s mystery. It captures what I felt when I was there: small, under the broad desert sky and the huge airplanes; large, compared to the tarantulas that scuttled past my boots in the dust; melancholy, when I thought of how far away the rest of the world was; determined and thrilled, as I dove into the adventure I was living and the ones I hadn’t lived yet.

In All That Glows, you’ll poke your finger on cacti needles and get your shoes tangled in grabby creosote. You’ll experience the blazing daytime heat, the tumbleweeds, the bland architecture, and the rest of Edwards AFB’s unusual scenery, all set in fictional towns. You’ll count the desert stars and shiver in the cold twilight wind. You’ll have a mystery of your own to solve, and if you can stick it out to the end, you’ll have befriended a dry-humored, scrappy cast of characters.

Here’s the first line from one of those old notebooks: “When can we go outside, Mom?”

And here’s the first paragraph of All That Glows: “On the night the world ended, raindrops stained our roof tiles green. I was the first to notice when I went outside to dump the dishwater.”

A lot has changed, but the sense of adventure Mojave taught me hasn’t. If anything, since then, the mystery from back then has only heightened. Maybe the golf balls weren’t a secret message, but maybe a new kind of missile was tested while I was there. Maybe the broken arrow was just a kid playing in his backyard, but maybe one of those jets flew faster than sound seven times over.

I won’t ever know. I only have my memories. But I can imagine the battles and the sacrifice and the bravery. And so, if you’ll join me for this expedition, I’ll show you what my mind’s eye saw when I looked out across the desert.

Interview with the Author

• What’s your favorite under-appreciated novel?

I quote the ending line of Roadside Picnic, a Russian sci-fi classic, in All That Glows. (Beware: The rest of that book deals with heavy topics in less-than-clean language and is not suitable for young readers.)

The most interesting thing about this text isn’t the story itself—it’s what the Soviet censors removed. The up-to-date English translation includes a few of the nixed passages in an addendum at the end. These are an instruction manual on how to write about political themes incisively, without sparking anger or argument—but also without letting officials and systems off the hook.

Roadside Picnic is only about 200 pages long, yet it’s one of the most thoroughly believable and well-crafted worlds I’ve come across in fiction. The authors have mastered the art of showing rather than telling, and the result is light work for the reader with a tremendous payoff. That’s how I strive to write, too.

• How do you select the names of your characters?

I’m told I pick odd names for my characters. I think everyone is worried about what I’ll name my future children, so for this book, I tried to at least keep a consistent theme.

There’s a tension in the story between the harsh environment and the humans who tend this wild, thistly, thorny garden. This led me to pick strong, earthy names for the main cast. Halley is named after a distant relative of mine who, in turn, is named after Halley’s comet. Morgan and Maple sound alliterative together. Hunter is an ironic twist for a man who feels himself constantly hunted by the town’s authorities. Juliet is classic and a little prim.

Names that diverged from this theme offered a clue that the character would diverge, too, or that he approached the problem from a very different background. Hadley, for example, sounds rather suburban and has nothing obviously to do with the outdoors … but does have a connection if you know the name’s etymology.

• What was your hardest scene to write?

I didn’t know how to end this book. I never do. I don’t know how to end anything, in fact—I’m one of those people who won’t watch the last episode in a TV series because I can’t handle that it’s over.

The original ending for All That Glows was much darker than what you’ll read now. Someday, maybe I’ll release the deleted scene as an extra chapter. But my wonderful editors at Enclave encouraged me to write a happier ending, one that tied together more loose ends, let some characters go, and allowed others to have their redemption. I think it was the right call. I wrote the new ending rather quickly, and my editor said the twist wasn’t what she expected but she liked it. That was good enough for me!

• If you had to do something differently as a child or teenager to become a better writer as an adult, what would you do?

I’d let more people read my unfinished work. Like most writers, I guard my drafts like Smaug on his gold pile. Those are for my eyes only—but they shouldn’t be. The earlier in the process I can get reader feedback, the better. It saves me from major rewrites when my manuscripts finally make it to the editor.

I took a writing course in college that required students to share their work with each other, often reading it aloud in front of the group. A fun little twist: The professor especially liked essays that took some outlandish opinion and made it at least somewhat palatable. Which is how I found myself reading my own article about how video games aren’t violent enough, getting strange looks from the class—and realizing that being both wrong and vulnerable wasn’t as terrifying as I’d feared.

I got an A on that essay, and I haven’t been afraid to share my drafts since.

• What do you like to do when you are not writing?

I’m a trail runner, currently training for my first Spartan and my first ultramarathon. Since I aim to do both injury-free, preparation takes quite a bit of my free time. The rest seems to be spent eating, especially “unhealthy” things like Snickers, in a desperate attempt to fuel several hours of continuous exercise.

Which brings me to one of my favorite verses, Proverbs 28:1—“The wicked run when no one is chasing them.” Biblically, I suspect this means all marathons should have a bear at the back of the pack. I have this verse printed on a shirt I like to wear to run club. They don’t find it as funny as I do.

When I’m not running, I love other outdoor sports, especially those I can enjoy with friends. There’s no game of pickleball I won’t join (and probably lose), no playground obstacle course I won’t climb, and no hill I won’t hike. I also love to paddleboard, and I’m a certified rifle instructor.

Blog Stops

The Lofty Pages, May 26

Simple Harvest Reads, May 27 (Author Interview)

Blossoms and Blessings, May 28 (Spotlight)

Stories By Gina, May 29 (Spotlight)

Inspired by fiction, May 29

Artistic Nobody, May 30 (Author Interview)

Debbie’s Dusty Deliberations, May 31 (Spotlight)

Jodie Wolfe – Stories Where Hope and Quirky Meet, June 1 (Spotlight)

Tell Tale Book Reviews, June 1

Guild Master, June 2 (Author Interview)

Books, Books, & More Books, June 3 (Spotlight)

Texas Book-aholic, June 4

A Modern Day Fairy Tale, June 5 (Spotlight)

Books Less Travelled, June 6 (Spotlight)

Fiction Book Lover, June 7 (Author Interview)

The Bookish Ledger, June 8 (Author Interview)

Giveaway

To celebrate her tour, Lauren is giving away the grand prize of a $50 Amazon gift card and a signed copy of the book!!

Be sure to comment on the blog stops for extra entries into the giveaway! Click the link below to enter.

https://gleam.io/bueoY/all-that-glows-celebration-tour-giveaway