People ask me two questions about The Architecture of Survival.

The first: "How do you plan a story that spans 3,200 years?"

The second, usually delivered with the specific facial expression of someone trying to be polite: "Are you insane?"

Fair question. Let me answer both.

The Seed

Every long project starts with a single question. Mine was this:

Why do civilizations keep collapsing in the same pattern?

I was reading about the Bronze Age Collapse—that catastrophic simultaneous failure of every major civilization in the Eastern Mediterranean around 1177 BCE—and I noticed something that bothered me. The pattern of collapse looked familiar. Not just because it resembled the fall of Rome (everyone notices that). But because it resembled the Black Death. And the Thirty Years' War. And the disruptions of our own era.

Same structure. Same sequence. Same vulnerability: complexity → interconnection → efficiency → shock → cascading failure → collapse.

The question that became the series: What if someone noticed this pattern 3,000 years ago? And what if they did something about it?

That's when things got complicated.

The Architecture

Twelve books. Twelve eras. One bloodline spanning 111 generations from 1177 BCE to the present day.

Here's the structural challenge: each book needs to work as a standalone novel. A reader should be able to pick up any book in the series and follow the story without having read the others. But readers who follow the complete series should see patterns building across books—echoes, parallels, the same systemic dynamics playing out in different centuries with different characters.

The series is designed like a cathedral. Each book is a pillar—self-supporting, complete. But the arches connecting them reveal the larger structure.

The organizing principle is systems thinking. Each book introduces one new concept from systems dynamics:

  • Book 3 (Bronze Age, 1177 BCE): Feedback loops and interconnection
  • Book 4 (Roman Judea, 26-70 CE): Distributed vs. centralized systems
  • Book 5 (Late Rome, 312-430 CE): Institutional co-option
  • Book 6 (Early Medieval, 476-800 CE): Network topology
  • Book 1 (Black Death, 1347 CE): The meta-pattern — seeing the system itself
  • Book 2 (Modern era, 2018 CE): Complete understanding — the 3,200-year view

A reader who follows the series from beginning to end will learn systems thinking through story—not through lectures, but through watching characters discover, apply, and teach these concepts across centuries. By the final book, the reader should be able to see the patterns in their own world.

Why Not Chronological?

The books aren't numbered in chronological order. Book 1 is set in 1347. Book 2 in 2018. Book 3 goes back to 1177 BCE. This was deliberate.

The Aethelred Cipher (Book 1) is the entry point because it's the most accessible—a medieval thriller with a clear protagonist, urgent stakes, and a mystery that unfolds through discovery. Readers enter the series through Thomas's eyes, learning about the Order and the cipher system alongside him.

The Genesis Protocol (Book 2) jumps to the modern era because it answers the question Book 1 raises: did any of it matter? Did Thomas's sacrifice—scattering knowledge across Europe during the Black Death—change anything?

Then Books 3 through 12 fill in the history. Each one answers questions raised by the books before it while asking new ones. Why was the Order created? What happened between Thomas and Sarah Chen? How did the defensive network survive the Reformation, the Enlightenment, the World Wars?

The non-chronological structure mirrors how real historical understanding works. You don't learn history in order. You learn a piece, then fill in the context, then revise your understanding, then fill in more context. The series replicates this process.

The Continuity Problem

Writing across 3,200 years means tracking continuity across a staggering range of variables.

Characters age, marry, have children, die. Their descendants inherit traits, locations, knowledge. The defensive network evolves its methods—from oral transmission in the Bronze Age to manuscript encoding in the medieval period to digital encryption in the modern era. The Order adapts in parallel.

I maintain a series bible that currently runs to tens of thousands of words. It tracks:

  • Every named character's birth year, death year, relationships, and physical description
  • The custody chain of seven bronze keys across 111 generations
  • The evolution of encoding methods by era
  • The Order's organizational structure at each point in history
  • Geographic locations of network safe houses, archives, and coordinating centers
  • Which systems thinking concepts have been introduced in which books
  • The medieval vocabulary for systems concepts (you can't have a 14th-century monk say "feedback loop"—he says "the wheel that turns itself")

The bible is essential. It's also insufficient. The real continuity challenge isn't tracking facts—it's maintaining emotional consistency. Each book's protagonist needs to feel like a product of their era while also resonating with the series's themes. A Bronze Age Egyptian priestess and a medieval German monk and a modern American analyst all need to grapple with the same fundamental questions, but in radically different cultural contexts.

The Research Problem

Each book requires deep research into a specific historical era. Not surface-level "what did they wear" research—structural research. How did power flow? What institutions controlled information? How did people think about causation, pattern, time?

For The Aethelred Cipher, I researched:

  • Medieval manuscript production (how scriptoriums worked, what inks were used, how long copying took)
  • The Black Death's actual progression across Europe (month by month, city by city)
  • 14th-century Mainz, Strasbourg, Cologne, and York (street layouts, social structures, trade patterns)
  • Medieval medical theory (humoral medicine, miasma theory, early quarantine)
  • The real history of medieval cryptography
  • Monastic daily life (the canonical hours, diet, sleeping arrangements, hierarchy)
  • Medieval travel (speeds, routes, dangers, costs)
  • Systems thinking translated into medieval conceptual language

Multiply this by twelve books across twelve eras, and you begin to understand the "are you insane?" question.

The answer, for the record, is "probably, but it's too late to stop now."

What Makes It Worth It

The ambition of the series is also its reward.

Most novels—even excellent ones—capture a single moment. A character faces a crisis, grows, resolves it. The story ends. You close the book.

The Architecture of Survival is trying to do something different. It's trying to capture a process—the 3,200-year process by which human knowledge evolves, fragments, is hidden, rediscovered, scattered, suppressed, and ultimately (if the defensive network succeeds) distributed beyond anyone's ability to control it.

This process is the real protagonist of the series. Individual characters carry it forward, but the process transcends any single life. Thomas doesn't defeat the Order in 1347. Nefertari doesn't solve the collapse pattern in 1177 BCE. No single character can. The victory—if there is one—accumulates across centuries, built by people who never meet each other, working toward a goal most of them won't live to see.

As Thomas says: "Do not expect victory in your lifetime. Expect to add your stone to the wall."

That's the series in a sentence. And it's what keeps me writing.

Where It Stands

The Aethelred Cipher (Book 1) is published and available now. It follows Thomas, Margarethe, and Maria through the Black Death as they discover the Order's breeding program and attempt to scatter its secrets across Europe.

The Genesis Protocol (Book 2) is complete and in revision. It follows Sarah Chen in the modern era as she discovers Thomas's manuscripts and connects a medieval conspiracy to a 21st-century genetics corporation.

Books 3 through 6 are in various stages of completion. The remaining books are outlined but unwritten.

The series will take years to complete. I'm at peace with that. Some stories require time. This one requires 3,200 years' worth.