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Beware the Beaten Path:
Interview with Caelen Walker
By Carin Chea
Legendary novelist Cormac McCarthy once wrote: “Long before morning I knew that what I was seeking to discover was a thing I'd always known. That all courage was a form of constancy.”
Such sentiments perhaps describe the writings of retired US Army professional turned author, Caelen Walker, who has created a haunting post-apocalyptic universe in his Crown Acres book series.
Frost Rising and Frost Settles (the first two books in the series) centers around Clint Frost, an unlikely lead in a dystopian world.
Perhaps most intriguing is the choice the author has made to make his hero an anti-hero, a regular, everyday working man with no military or combat background, who hasn’t even entertained the idea of owning a firearm.
It is this unexpected protagonist that has made Walker’s book a hit, garnering praise for both novels, with one reader excitedly comparing his work to that of Tom Clancy.
While Walker has crafted a universe that has been popular in the media for the past decade, he has cleverly chosen a central character that everyone can relate to.
Walker reminds us that courage is not simply realized in the battlefield, but resides deeply within the well of the human soul.
I’ve met Jaydens and Traydens before, but never a Caelen. How did your parents decide on that name and what does it mean?
They didn’t. Caelen is my pen name. I chose it because I also work professionally in the tech industry and I didn’t want to hold back in my book. It was a conscious move on my part.
Caelen is an old Celtic name and it means warrior. Walker, the last name, is multifaceted. I was in the military for 9 years and the call name I went by was Nomad.
Speaking of names, how did you come up with the fictitious community of Crown Acres? Is it fictitious?
Not far from where I live, there’s an area where all the roads are named after horse racing, like Stable Street. When I decided to write the book, I wanted to go one step further.
The community is this kidney-shaped area that has Derby Circle on the outside, with each street on the inside named after Triple Crown racers. It gave me something I could put in there that didn't sound apocalyptic or dystopian. They’re realistic street names you’d see in real life.
I know you sprinkle aspects of yourself across various characters in your books. Other than the protagonist, which character do you identify with the most?
There’s probably about 15-20% of me in Clint, the protagonist, but I also see myself in Les, who is his best friend, as well as Mac, who is a voice of paranoia and security.
Tell us about your Crown Acres book series. At the core of it, what do you think your books are about?
It is survivalism in a dystopian alter-reality. I love authors out there who write in this genre. But, there are tropes I get bored with. It’s always: “Can a former Navy SEAL keep his family safe?” I would hope so!
Then, there’s always the prepper that has all the knowledge and equipment. I didn’t want my main character to be either of those. He’s not a gun guy, a veteran, or a prepper. He’s a project coordinator at a large tech firm. He has nothing to do with the “after the end of the world mentality” because I wanted it to be relatable to the average person who picks up the book.
When we have shutdowns in this world, we usually have some form of communication. Like when Facebook and Instagram shut down, there were alternate ways of communication that happened.
A huge part of what Clint [the protagonist] and the reader have to deal with is that they don’t know why everything went down, why the internet and power are down. They don’t know because people like you and I aren’t special.
If a massive attack hits, we won’t know about it for months, at best, if we ever find out. In dystopian books, we always find out why the system has gone down, but in real life, we wouldn’t.
How do you know so much about this stuff?
My father was into y2k bug. I grew up with canned goods stacked in the corner of the laundry room. My dad would walk into a room, and throw a field dressing at me, and I was expected to know how to put it on in a decent amount of time.
I grew up believing y2k was going to end the world as we knew it. We learned survival skills, camping skills, and how to purify water. That was during my 14 to 18-year-old life. When it didn’t hit, those skills were still valuable.
In upstate New York, you get blizzards that will shut everything down for a week. And that’s just bad weather, not the end of the world. Is there any harm in having 2-3 weeks’ worth of rice and jarred pasta sauce, and a camping stove?
What do you want readers to take away from your books?
I don’t think you have to be wearing a foil tin hat preparing for aliens to attack. I wanted to use this book and this series as a way of introducing people to the idea of “what would you do if all of this happened?” Would you be starving and desperate? Or, would you be able to figure it out and make long-term plans?
The backs of my book are called The Knowledge Center, which is a condensed survival guide. With other survival guides, you may not know when to use those techniques and knowledge. But, my books provide those exact scenarios that may happen that require those survival techniques mentioned in The Knowledge Center.
I also have recipes in the second and third books for survivability, like how to make an incredibly shelf-stable bread. There are things like that that the reader can use as a point of reference.
There are no zombies in my books. There is a section in my first book where zombies are discussed. The theme is that the real monsters aren’t zombies; they’re other humans. You’re living next to them. When they get hungry and desperate, they’re who you’re contending with.
The likelihood of you encountering a hungry neighbor is higher than encountering a zombie. So, I want people to think: “Who can I trust? Who do I trust enough to take food out of my child’s mouth to feed?”
The monsters you’ll be fighting in this world are other people. You have no idea what people are capable of when they’re desperate. In my nine years in the army, I’ve seen a lot of desperate people do crazy things.
That sounds intense.
A big part of that is why I wrote these books. I used to write short stories. It allowed me to process things that happened, change the outcomes, and change the stories for the better.
How long did it take you to write these books?
Frost Rising took me about eight months. The second book took me 90 days. The story was there. It’s cliché. I know.
I don’t do outlines or in-depth details about the plot. I sit down and the characters tell me what’s happening. The light outlines that I might have? I look at them after I finish, and I have veered way off that path. I just let the story flow.
How do you want your readers to feel after putting down your book?
It depends on when they put them down. I love nothing more than when someone emails me and says, “I’m on chapter ___ of the second book and if you kill Les, I will come over and beat you.”
I want readers to be heartbroken when certain characters die or something bad happens to them.
Who would play your leading characters should Frost Rising and Frost Settles be made into movies?
Clint would be played by Michael Fassbender and Les (his best friend) would be Kevin McKidd.
Do you have any upcoming projects you’d like us to know about?
The third book is a side quest book called Rebel’s Redemption. It happens in the same universe but doesn’t involve the characters in the first two.
This one occurs at the same time as the start of Frost Settles but takes place in the city of Big Springs, which is four and a half hours away from San Antonio.
I want these world-building stories to tell what’s going on elsewhere in the country as this is happening because it won’t be the same experience. Survival techniques and threats will be different than in a huge city like San Antonio.
It’ll also allow me to share survival techniques that will be relevant to areas outside of San Antonio.
For example, when someone writes out of Florida, they talk about eating out of palmettos because there are palm trees everywhere. None of that exists in San Antonio.
I’m going to build up an entire world. If I get to a point where I write a book and not one single copy sells, I would still write. I’m enjoying the process.
I’ve got eight or nine books laid out in the main continuity [of Crown Acres]. I have another seven books planned for side quests to build out that world and tell stories from different sides and angles.
For more information, please visit www.CaelenWalkerBooks.com
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