AUTHOR OF THE RIDGE UNIVERSE
Meet R.T. Fagan
I write realistic grid-down thrillers about ordinary people facing extraordinary pressure.
The Ridge Universe explores what happens when the systems people depend upon disappear—and survival begins to depend on judgment, adaptability, and the neighbors standing beside them.
My stories are grounded in real infrastructure, practical preparedness, the geography of Washington’s Olympic Peninsula, and the complicated ways people respond when plans collide with fear.
Experience Behind the Fiction
I grew up as an Army brat in West Germany during the Cold War. That environment made military readiness, international tension, and the importance of reliable communications part of the world I understood from an early age.
My first job after college took me back to West Germany as a civilian technical representative installing communications systems for the U.S. Air Force. I later supported Air Force and Navy systems before building a career in telecommunications.
I also attended the Nevada State Firefighting Academy and served for six years as a volunteer firefighter, receiving specialized training in vehicle extrication. That experience gave me a firsthand understanding of emergency response, teamwork, scene safety, and the need to make sound decisions when time and information are limited.
Together, those experiences taught me how much modern life depends upon systems most people rarely notice—communications, electrical power, transportation, emergency services, logistics, maintenance, and the people responsible for keeping everything working.
They also taught me that equipment is only part of preparedness. Training, procedures, leadership, redundancy, teamwork, and human judgment determine whether a system—and the people depending upon it—can continue functioning when conditions deteriorate.
Those lessons form part of the foundation of The Ridge Universe.
Why I Created The Ridge Universe
Many collapse stories begin with a highly trained hero who already knows what to do.
The Ridge Universe begins with neighbors.
Some are prepared. Some are not. Each person brings different skills, assumptions, fears, and limitations. Nobody can solve every problem alone, and even the best plan begins to change the moment other people become part of it.
That is the story I wanted to explore.
What happens when the power remains off? When stored supplies begin to run down? When reliable information disappears? When people who once exchanged little more than a wave on the road must decide whether they can trust one another with food, security, medical care, and leadership?
The Ridge Universe is about preparedness, but it is also about adaptation, responsibility, and community. Gear matters. Skills matter. But judgment—and the ability to work with other people—may matter most.
Writing from the Olympic Peninsula
The Ridge Universe is set on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula because the landscape is more than scenery. It shapes every decision the characters make.
The region combines dense forests, cold and wet winters, isolated rural roads, small communities, limited routes in and out, and communities separated by difficult terrain. A road closure, communications failure, fuel shortage, or extended loss of power can quickly turn geography into a survival problem.
I live and write in the foothills outside Port Angeles. The forests, weather, roads, elevations, and distances in the books are grounded in a place I know.
That does not mean every location is reproduced literally. The Ridge is fictional. But the environment pressing against its residents is unmistakably real.
Communications and Systems
Years working with military and commercial communications shaped the way infrastructure, redundancy, and system failure are portrayed.
Practical Preparedness
The books treat water, food, power, communications, medical care, sanitation, and security as connected household and community systems.
Place-Based Realism
Weather, terrain, distance, transportation routes, and the limitations of the Olympic Peninsula influence what the characters can realistically do.
Human Decisions
The stories focus on how ordinary people process incomplete information, respond to stress, misread danger, build trust, and adapt when plans fail.
What I Want Readers to Experience
I want readers to recognize the people in these stories.
Not because everyone has a neighbor exactly like Tom, Claire, Jonas, Melissa, or the Keller family—but because their strengths, disagreements, mistakes, and responsibilities should feel familiar.
The crisis creates the pressure. The people create the story.
If a reader finishes one of my books entertained, a little more aware of how fragile our systems can be, and thinking differently about the people around them, then the story has done what I hoped it would do.
Enter The Ridge Universe
Begin with The Ridge Plan, the first full-length novel in The Ridge Universe. Then follow the Keller family’s parallel journey in Twenty-Eight Days West.
Two stories. One unfolding crisis. Ordinary people discovering what survival requires when the systems around them disappear.
Let's Connect
Contact R.T. Fagan
Questions about the books, media inquiries, book-club requests, or something else related to The Ridge Universe?
Send me a message using the form. I read every legitimate inquiry and will respond as soon as I can.