Swarm 700
A techno-thriller, and a change of pace from my patient guides. Here is who I wrote it for.
Swarm 700 is fiction. Most of what I publish under the name J. Wayne Saul MD is meant to help someone understand a diagnosis, but this one is meant to keep you turning pages. It is a techno-thriller, and I wrote it for readers who enjoy that genre for the same reasons I do.
Who this book is for
If you like stories where technology moves faster than the people responsible for it, where the stakes climb and the clock is always running, Swarm 700 was written with you in mind. It is for readers who pick up a thriller on a Friday and want to be a little tired on Monday because they stayed up too late with it.
You do not need a technical background to read it. Part of the craft of a good techno-thriller is making the machinery understandable without stopping the story to lecture. Medicine asks the same thing of me from the other direction, explaining complicated ideas in plain words, and I tried to bring the same discipline to fiction.
Why a physician writes thrillers
People sometimes ask why a doctor would write fiction at all. My honest answer is that medicine and storytelling share more than you might think. Both are about people under pressure. Both reward close attention to small details. And both ask you to hold uncertainty for a while before you know how things will turn out.
I also build games through Mirrorshard Studios, and that work pulls on the same instincts: building a world, setting up a problem, and letting characters or players find their way through it. Swarm 700 is the novel-length version of that impulse.
What to expect
I would rather not spoil anything here, so I will keep the description at the level of genre and tone. Expect a thriller built around technology, tension, and choices that matter. If you want a sense of how the book came together and what I was thinking about while writing it, I put some of that in a behind-the-scenes post on Swarm 700. It talks about process rather than plot, so it is safe to read first.
How it fits with the rest of the site
Swarm 700 lives a little apart from the health guides, and that is fine. If you came here for the medical material, the books page lists the Your New Diagnosis series and Heart Strong. If you came here for stories, the fiction section is where I write about craft, worldbuilding, and the creative work that happens alongside medicine.
Swarm 700 is available on Kindle through Amazon. If you read it, I hope it gives you a few good evenings.
More books
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Your New Diagnosis: CholesterolA short, plain-language guide for people who just got lipid results that worried their doctor.Health / patient guide
Your New Diagnosis: HypertensionA plain-language starting point for people who were just told their blood pressure is high.Health / patient guide
Your New Diagnosis: DiabetesA short, plain-language guide for the first weeks after a diabetes diagnosis, when everything feels new at once.Health / patient guide
Your New Diagnosis: Coronary Artery DiseaseA plain-language guide for people who just learned that the arteries feeding their heart are narrowed or diseased.Health / heart health
Heart StrongA book about taking care of your heart over the long run, written for people who want to understand their risk and do something practical about it.