Silent Clamor Press · June 30, 2026

Simple Songs for the
End of the World

The world is ending. Gus is dying. So he does what he’s always done: he writes songs.

A story about mortality, community, and the stubborn joy of making art when everything is falling apart.

LAST BROADCAST

SATELLITE COLLISION REPORTED IN LOW EARTH ORBIT — GLOBAL COMMUNICATIONS DISRUPTED — AUTHORITIES URGE CALM — REPEAT: SATELLITE COLLISION REPORTED — STAY TUNED FOR FURTHER UPDATES — ARTIST GUS KELLNER CONTINUES RECORDING — THE MUSIC PLAYS ON

Publication · June 30, 2026

Simple Songs for the End of the World

M.C. Schmidt

A Novella · Silent Clamor Press

When a satellite collision destroys global communications, Gus—a thirty-six-year-old singer-songwriter running a scrappy indie label in Yellow Springs, Ohio—is sitting in a doctor’s office, awaiting a diagnosis that will change his life.

Simple Songs for the End of the World is a story about mortality, community, and the stubborn joy of making art when everything is falling apart. Tender, funny, and defiantly hopeful, this is a story for every musician who kept playing when no one was listening.

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Available June 30, 2026

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A Novel with Sheet Music

The Songs Live Here

♩

Includes original sheet music — play the songs Gus writes as the world falls apart.

Listen Now

Scan to hear M.C. Schmidt’s
original music from the book

What This Story Explores

The Territory of This Novel

Mortality & Physical Vulnerability

The intersection of personal bodily decline and societal collapse—what it means when your own failing body mirrors the world falling apart around you.

Art as Defiance

The stubborn act of creation when everything—including the creator—is crumbling. What does it mean to keep making songs when no one might be left to hear them?

III

Community & Caregiving

Who shows up when the world ends? The foul-mouthed mother who refuses to leave, the loyal bandmates, the ex who still remembers every word.

Joy Amid Ruin

Finding light, humor, and human connection in catastrophic circumstances. The defiant hope that emerges not despite the darkness, but within it.

Advance Praise

What Readers Are Saying

Simple Songs for the End of the World is a remarkable odyssey navigating the turbulent waters of dread and despair and regret while discovering that dignity and hope are resilient and the best medicine of them all.

Michael Loyd Gray — author of The Space Between Now and Then

Are you a reviewer, bookseller, librarian, or reader interested in an advance copy? Please reach out to Silent Clamor Press to request a review copy.

This is a story for every musician who kept playing when no one was listening. For anyone who ever leaned on their people to get through the unthinkable. And for anyone who’s ever believed that the right song at the right moment can save your life.

— Simple Songs for the End of the World · M.C. Schmidt

About the Author

M.C. Schmidt

M.C. Schmidt is the author of the novels The Decadents and Mad as Birds, and the short story collections How to Steal a Train and Manna America. His short fiction has appeared in many journals and anthologies. His work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net.

Find him at mcschmidtwrites.com.