‘til the End of the World is my new young adult supernatural series – an episodic collection of short stories set in Lancashire in 2005. If you love British YA fantasy, Buffy-style monster-of-the-week adventures, or nostalgic coming-of-age stories with a dark twist, this is the ensemble series for you.
You can skip the pre-amble if you want to avoid mild spoilers (or just want to cut to the chase) and pick up the first story on our dedicated ‘til the End of the World page. It will be available initially in PDF format, though I’m currently working on ePub versions for e-readers to follow. Below is the quick highlights, but if you fancy a bit of mildly-spoiler-ish pre-amble and backstory, read on beyond.
Quick Highlights
- An ‘episodic’ series of short stories, one published per month
- A ‘young adult’ supernatural series set in Lancashire circa 2005
- Year One comprising of twenty-two short stories subtitled ‘Blood Ties’ begins today
- Story one available in PDF today (ePub to follow)
- Story two (second half of the ‘pilot’) available next Friday (30th January)
The Mildly Spoiler-ish Pre-Amble and Backstory
‘Til the End of the World, what by todays standards would be deemed a Young Adult Supernatural series, truly is the beginning of writing for me. Picture this, a somewhat awkward pre-teen, nose deep in a book on the primary school playground, or in the back of a car on the way to the latest family Scottish getaway. Or in a million other places. Those stories? Perhaps the mildly bonkers Animorphs (KA Applegate) or the incredibly underrated Spooksville (Christopher Pike). In these shorter, easily digestible tales, kids like me faced down vampyrs, demons and the forces of darkness (or alien slugs, but bear with).
Then puberty hits with all it’s hormonal, incredibly foul-mouthed, confusing chaos. So comes along your Buffy, your Smallville, your Vampire Diaries. Suddenly, as you’re dealing with the routine apocalypses (or is it apocalypi?) of your day-to-day teen drama, you see stories of people dealing with all that normal stuff – with like, vampyrs and stuff. Again, week by week, shorter snappy tales take us to prom with hellhounds, to football practice with pyrokinetics, to the end of innocence while being pursued by not one, but two, ‘handsome’ young vampyrs (or like incredibly old vampyrs, to be fair).
That’s the era in which ‘til the End of the World was initially conceived. A world of Linkin Park and Avril Lavigne. A world where moving from childhood to adulthood was drenched in the romantic, dark, twisted, horror filled world of teen angst. And demons. Where if the apocalypse came, one could just be beeped.
It was my way of getting into writing, taking the concepts I was seeing around and applying them more closely to my life. To my circumstances. To my challenges. And while there’s a deep, deep love of the DNA of shows like Buffy within ‘til the End of the World (the title itself comes from a Spike quote*), hopefully you’ll be able to feel unique flavour and Britishness of the era that flows through the series.
I use to write episode after episode of the series, plotting out entire seasons and mini-arcs and following the characters through their adolescence into adulthood. I explored monsters and themes and stories that interested me as a teen. Some friends read it, some didn’t, but mostly it was me in my room creating a world that was adjacent to, but in some ways far more safe and fantastical than, my own. Then I forgot about it, time moved on. It was shelved amongst my folders of old notes and files and never returned to. It was around then I tried to ‘grow up’ with what eventually became Heroes & Demons.
It was during the writing of the second book of that series and my fifth overall, Hope & Fury, that I actually found a place to include Miss Drake (and by extension a minor reference to the major ‘til the End of the World character Amy). It was a little easter egg or cameo, really only for my own benefit. But then, as I was conceiving the sequel to Avalon, I saw the perfect opportunity to bring in the world of Magickal, and it’s thirty-something director, the jaffa-cake obsessed Amy Donaldson.
That began the spark, the nugget of an idea. Perhaps, just maybe, there was a different way to regress and tell her back story. A way for her to reflect, me to try a different genre, and the dust-gathered tales of Amy and her childhood friends to finally get their time in the sunlight…
* Season 5 Episode 22 “The Gift” – 100th episode, one of the finest episodes of television ever made…in my humble opinion…
So What’s it Actually About?
Last chance to turn back before minor spoilers – or you can skip down to the next heading for the practicals!
‘til the End of the World is set in the small Lancashire town of Calendar, nestled amongst the valleys and hills of this part of the world. A world in which the surrounding nature – farmer’s fields, deep forests, rolling slopes and valleys – meets the human world.
New high streets adorned with a Café Nero and boutique shops, sitting next to greasy takeaways and cobbled ginnels. Old cotton mills half filled with small local businesses, with the bypass bringing an industrial area of cold grey steel warehouses. Kids walking to the one local high school under green oak trees. Stone terraced back-to-backs just down the road from that new build estate. A real, breathing Lancashire town, far away from the city streets of my usual Manchester settings, but one that still holds the fate of the world in it’s hands.
Beginning in September 2005, the story follows six teenagers as they navigate their final year of high school – GCSEs, romantic entanglements, PE kits and a massively unprofessional head teacher. Ricky Kent and Mark Matthews alone know what is happening out on the dark streets of Calendar – supernatural threats that stalk the shadows. For Ricky, his prophetic dreams of fire, ash and blood, and newfound strength lead him to question his destiny, while Mark faces down the secrets of his family – and their links to a mystery known as the Covenant.
Meanwhile, their blissfully unaware friends – kind hearted every girl Sara Carpenter, sweetly geeky Amy Donaldson, unusually sensitive jock Luke Cross, and queen bee Sam Summers, begin to circle the truth of their hometown – and one by one are drawn into the ancient battle to follow.
The first story, Stand By Me – Part 1, follows a typical pilot format – introducing us to this world, this setting and these characters. Vampyrs, vicious and definitely not sexy, have begun to creep into the darkness of Calendar’s ecosystem; drawing Ricky, Mark and their friends into the beginning of a war that will ultimately decide their fates, the fates of those they love, and perhaps even the world along with it.
The Practicals! (Not a 90s Band)
‘til the End of the World Year 1: Blood Ties, starts today with the first story drop. The format will mimic the episodic storytelling of my youth, in that each year will cover roughly one academic year in the life of Ricky and his friends, over the course of twenty-two story drops. The first, Stand By Me – Part 1, is available today for free – over on the ‘til the End of the World page; while the second part of the ‘pilot’, Stand By Me – Part 2, will be released next Friday. Following this, each month a new episode will drop, again available on the same page with a little fanfare.
Each story will follow the same episodic format – an opening, followed by four ‘acts’, each of them split into smaller scenes that drive the story forward. Their length will vary – this first one is over 100 pages and is really more of a short-novella (but is doing much of the set up work), though later ones will be shorter. Some will tie to an over-arching year long plot, others will be your typical monster-of-the-week stories, which can be easily dipped into and out of.
Why follow this format? Well, I suppose this is the Tv series I’d always wished was around when I was growing up, and thanks to doing it this way there’s certainly no budget or network issues. An actor is never going to decide they need to find themselves or do movies and leave a storyline hanging.
If you’re like me, and enjoy a good actual book book though, you’ll be pleased to know I’ll be collecting stories into volumes of roughly five to six stories at a time. These will be released after their respective episodes are dropped onto the website and will be collections available in eBook and Paperback for pretty much cost price. Thrown in for some good measure with some bonus features, behind the scenes essays and other goodies to thank you, the reader.
Thank You (as Dido Says)
So that’s it, launched and away! I hope you enjoy reading about these adventures as much as I have enjoyed writing them. They helped me through my formative years, and being able to bring them back, polish them off and make them shine once more feels like a form of self-indulgent therapy. But sometimes you have to do that. Sometimes you have to take the past, dust off the old scars and recognise it for what it was. Painful, messy, funny, and deeply human. A place of darkness and hurt, whether emotional or supernatural, in the midst of which you are forged. A place in which you learn to hope and love and survive. That’s the heart of these stories, and I look forward to continuing to share them with you.
Read the first episode of ‘til the End of the World for free – available now in PDF, with ePub coming soon. If you’d like to keep up to date with all the latest goings on, please do subscribe to the site, or bookmark us. You can find me through socials on Facebook and Instagram, so please drop a like, follow or even just a lil’ howdy wave.
On a rain-soaked morning in West Yorkshire, this grown-up child wants to tell you about a rain-soaked night in Lancashire, some twenty odd years ago.
And so it begins…
Peace & Love y’all
Rick Rawes
23rd January, 2026
Leeds, West Yorkshire
Rick Rawes 
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