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.

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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

How did you come up with the title for your book?

I wish I could take credit for that. The original title was For the Love of U, a play on the chemical symbol for uranium. I had that in mind long before I wrote the book, or even before I knew what the plot would be. To be quite honest, I’m still partial to it. But my savvy editors pointed out that many readers wouldn’t know what the “U” meant, and if the pun was lost, it just looked like a typo. Among the alternative titles we considered, All That Glows stood out. It let me keep just a touch of punniness while eliminating any chance of confusion.

A side note: When I wrote research papers in college, I always tried to slip in a pun. My professors caught it every time and left a note in the margin, usually to the effect of “a pun has no place in academia.” Debbie downers. Usually by the final draft, I convinced them that it did—or hid it well enough that they let it slide with only a marginal “not sure this strengthens your argument.”

What’s your favorite writing snack, drink, and/or music?

Snacks—my favorite topic! They’re vital to my writing process because a) I write at a standing desk, which ought to count as some kind of exercise, and b) I’m a long-distance runner, so the refrigerator hates to see me coming back from a workout. I cobble my favorite snacks together into something like a charcuterie board: cheese, pistachios, salted avocado, orange slices, chips, and most importantly chocolate. Add to that an iced latte (whole milk, no flavor, decaf espresso) and I’m set for several hours of productive writing.

Video game soundtracks are great background music because they’re designed to promote focus and productivity. I especially like the music from Metro Exodus (a game that inspired some of the scenery in All That Glows), Halo, and Assassin’s Creed. I also listen to a lot of lo-fi radio, especially if I’m writing on some kind of timer (Pomodoro, usually, in increments of 40 on/10 off).

What is the most valuable piece of advice you’ve been given about writing?

The worst mistake I made as a new writer was using ridiculously long, archaic words. I poked fun at this tendency of mine in a college essay, which I wrote on my pet word, laconic. CTRL+F revealed I used it 20-odd times in the draft of my first book. Fortunately, good editors brought this to my attention and told me to write like I was talking to a friend. Would you really describe someone as “laconic” when you could say “they didn’t talk much?” Probably not in today’s English.

Since that first book, I’ve heard this advice repeated a thousand times in a thousand different ways. But it all comes down to the same idea: If you want your reader to know something, write it down exactly like you mean it, and then stop writing. The city is quiet. No need to add that nobody’s talking, the streets are silent, the silence hung over the city like a purple velvet blanket of many threads fit for the king’s palace, etc.

Of course, it’s possible to be too brusque. Occasionally readers say they find my style a bit tight. But I think color and vividness comes down to word choice, not elaborate, verbose descriptions. It’s a personal opinion, but it has often helped me get my thoughts down on the page without worrying about whether they sound polished. That’s a problem to be solved in editing.

Do you participate in writing challenges on social media? Why or why not?

I don’t, but I wish I did. Writing energy is hard to come by because I write for my day job, too. So any words left over at 5:00 p.m. are immediately dedicated to my book. That said, I love social media writing challenges (and occasionally post them myself) because they’re a short, low-pressure way to wake up the wordy side of your brain and spend a few minutes solving a verbal puzzle. Some of the writing prompts I’ve come across are incredibly clever, too. I’m particularly a fan of prompts that ask the writer to continue a line of dialogue or respond to it.

Is your writing space pristine or organized chaos?

I’m a collector of small things—beaded bracelets, movie tickets, old photos, trail maps, Polaroids, and other little memorabilia. Much of this ends up on a pinboard behind my computer. When I get distracted from my writing and look up, that board is the first thing I see. It’s organized—all the items pinned up at right angles to each other, artistically overlapping, somewhat color-coordinated—but it’s still chaos. I like that. It soothes my brain because everywhere I look, there’s something to focus on with a good memory attached.

On the flip side, I’m pretty neat (with a few exceptions—don’t ask my family about those). So the rest of my writing room is colorful, bright, and flowery, but highly organized. If there’s anything out of place, I have to put it back before I can start working.