Series Reading Order
— Series Guide — Substrate
Part of the Substrate science series for Wherever It Leads.
The Substrate Series is five novels. They tell one story. They are designed to be read in order. All five are available now.
BOOK 1: WHEREVER IT LEADS
Leo Alderman is twelve years old, the son of a pastor in a small valley town, when he finds something in the woods that shouldn't be there. The physics is real — quantum mechanics, the observer problem, the hard problem of consciousness. Decades later, a physicist named Sarah Chen follows the data to the same place.
Book 1 is the entry point. It establishes the scientific premise, the central characters, and the question the series will spend five novels pursuing. It is also the most accessible starting point for readers new to the physics — the science is introduced as the characters encounter it, without assuming prior knowledge.
Currently $0.99 on Kindle. Available in Kindle Unlimited. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DLK9Q335?utm_source=cmswinney&utm_medium=blog&utm_campaign=launch
BOOK 2: THE INSTRUMENT
Six months after the events of Book 1, the signal arrives — deep inside a particle physics laboratory two kilometres beneath a mountain. It is not radio. It is not electromagnetic. It has no source that any instrument can locate.
Book 2 widens the frame. The anomaly of Book 1 becomes something that cannot be explained as a single data artifact. Sarah has to decide what kind of scientist she is willing to be.
Available now in Kindle and paperback. Available in Kindle Unlimited. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GXCG9PN2?utm_source=cmswinney&utm_medium=blog&utm_campaign=launch
BOOK 3: CONTACT
The signal has been confirmed by seventeen independent research teams across nine countries. The substrate — the attending mind beneath the fabric of space — is real. Not a hypothesis. Not an anomaly. A confirmed fact of physics. The question is no longer whether it exists. The question is what it wants.
Book 3 is the hinge of the series — the book in which the scientific and the theological can no longer be kept in separate categories.
Available now in Kindle. Available in Kindle Unlimited. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GXKVT4S3?utm_source=cmswinney&utm_medium=blog&utm_campaign=launch
BOOK 4: GRAMMAR
The substrate speaks. The problem is that it speaks in a grammar that no human language was designed to receive. Four scientists — working across physics, linguistics, neuroscience, and mathematics — attempt to build the grammar that will allow the conversation to continue.
Available now in Kindle and paperback. Available in Kindle Unlimited. → https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0H61L2CZ7?utm_source=cmswinney&utm_medium=blog&utm_campaign=launch
BOOK 5: THE OLDEST CONVERSATION
The conversation has been going on for longer than the species having it has existed. The Oldest Conversation is the fifth and final book in the series — the book in which everything that has been building across four novels arrives at its destination. The question the series has been asking — what does the substrate mean for the dead? — receives the only answer physics and conscience together can give.
Available now in Kindle and paperback. Available in Kindle Unlimited. → https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GX2SS92F?utm_source=cmswinney&utm_medium=blog&utm_campaign=launch
WHERE TO START: Book 1. Always Book 1. Book 1 ($0.99) is the lowest price it will be. Books 2 through 5 are $4.99. All five novels are in Kindle Unlimited now.
Start with Wherever It Leads — Book 1, $0.99: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DLK9Q335?utm_source=cmswinney&utm_medium=blog&utm_campaign=launch