“WESTMINSTER — Local author Tim Weed’s fascinating new book, “The Afterlife Project” is a work of speculative fiction that features a post-apocalyptic sea voyage on a vintage sailing yacht, lovers separated by 10,000 years of time, and pervasive dangers both physical and psychological.

The novel bounces between two time periods — one 40 years in the future, when the human species faces imminent extinction because of climate disaster and infertility, and another 10 millenniums ahead, when the Earth, having “recovered” from the destructive forces of human civilization and the total collapse of its infrastructures, is once again teeming with abundant wildlife and natural beauty.

So it was with some irony that, when I drove to within a mile of Weed’s home in the rolling hills north of Putney to interview him before his appearance this Friday at the Brattleboro Literary Festival, I was stopped dead in my tracks by power lines that had fallen across the dirt road just minutes before, apparently knocked down by a heavy gust of wind.

“Maybe nature is trying to tell you something,” Weed laughed when I later contacted him by phone. In any event, he graciously agreed to reschedule the interview for the next day, and the following is a record of our conversation.” Read the rest here.