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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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

Intelligently and expertly crafted, Simple Songs for the End of the World pulls off the extraordinary feat of delicately balancing humor and pathos beneath the backdrop of harrowing uncertainty. This slim and powerful book showcases the talent of a writer who has the ability to render the everyday in extraordinary ways. You will laugh. You will cry. And you very well may never look at the sky the same way. M.C. Schmidt is a writer at the top of his game.

Nicholas Claro — author of This Is Where You Are and Sedgwick County

Satellites have collided, space is cluttered with killer debris, and a planetary communications blackout has hit, but those may be the least of his worries as musician Gus suddenly faces a grim cancer diagnosis while still feeling the aftereffects of his breakup with Brooke. As parallel global and personal disasters spin beyond his control, Gus draws closer to his community through music jams, laughter, and the constancy of his cursing, home-cooking mother. Simple Songs for the End of the World is a beautifully imagined book about finding grace in accepting the imperfections in ourselves and others, the connections built when we make art, and the ways humans are able to locate chinks of light in the darkest times. M.C. Schmidt has written an inspiring novella that serenades the reader with its song of hope and courage.

Lynn Mundell — editor of Centaur, author of Let Our Bodies Be Returned to Us (University of South Carolina), and co-editor of Nothing Short Of: Selected Tales from 100 Word Story (Outpost19)

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.

Simple Songs for theEnd of the World