It’s 12:32 a.m. here on the East Coast of America… the night sky is packed with thick, dark clouds, and rain pounds the roof of my modest home in Belleair.

I love the rain, it washes away the sins of mankind and brings renewal, offering new beginnings when the streets are washed clean and the soul senses reinvigorating hope.

Life… no matter what it throws at the human spirit, we bounce back and fight for another dream, reaching into that vast universe of courage to continue the good fight.

I often quote the following :

“That which does not kill us makes us stronger.”

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844-1900)

I’m a huge believer in redemption… and I support the old adage that it doesn’t matter how many times a person is knocked down, but how many times they pick themselves up to fight another day.

No matter what one faces in life, we have to keep on chasing that elusive dream, you’ve got to have that fire deep inside your soul.

A friend recently noted that I’m listed on Wikipedia as a “famous resident” of Belleair, Florida.

I’m flattered and grateful for the recognition.

But I have to laugh.. FAME?

Really?

As I tap this on my trusted custom built laptop, my pledge to the fans who buy my books is to encourage the hope of the future.

I’ll try my best to recover from the injuries I sustained in 2013 and do my best to get back to writing great books. It’s difficult, the pain is atrocious, but I’m trying to recover.

I continue to be humbled by everyone who reads my work, and I thank those who’ve sent get well notes, or took the time to post reviews of my novels.

It means the world to me, and this is me saying thanks.

The only thing that matters in life are the friendships we form and being kind to one another. If someone has shown you kindness, pass it on, make someone else smile. Sometimes, we get so caught up in the small things, we forget our lives are nothing more than a particle on a strong gust of wind. We’re only on this little blue planet for a brief moment, and in the end, what’s important is whether or not we made the best of our lives.

I love you all for your well wishes.

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WHEN I was a young boy, I’d stretch my young bones out on the roof of mother’s house staring at the vastness of space. My eyes would squint at the stars  peppering the galaxy.

SPACE intrigued me, and I wondered, could the movie E.T. perhaps hold a sliver of truth? Might there really be life on other planets? 

MIGHT the whispers really be true? Were flying saucers real, and more importantly, was it possible aliens were visiting our little blue planet? 

It had been forty years since I was on that roof in Ossining staring at the stars… but even now,  I catch myself glancing to the heavens while pondering those childish questions of life outside our universe. 

IN December 2013, while my friend and I were driving through our upscale neighborhood in the Town of Belleair, I got my answer. I had the sense of being watched.

WE were outside Hulk Hogan’s palatial home when I saw it. There, hovering silently just a few thousand feet above, I took in the magnificence of a gigantic triangle UFO (not the one shown above). Grabbing my android phone, I snapped off two pictures and glanced to my buddy who was busy staring at Terry “Hulk Hogan”  Bollea who stood in the driveway. 

I, however, was more interested in the UFO. I’d seen The Hulk hundreds of times in Publix. But this thing hovering in the sky transfixed me. I’d never seen THAT before.

Then, just a quick as it arrived, it disappeared.

BATTLING pain, we went back to my house where I scribbled out the ending of my 2014 disaster/conspiracy book, Cataclysm. 

THAT 400-page end of the world novel was eventually released JULY 1st, 2014. It has gotten GREAT REVIEWS and is selling on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Books-a-Million and most major retailers. 

You can currently get the e-book for the paltry price of $4.99. 

THIS morning, when I woke up, that experience of seeing the UFO was on my mind, and I decided to give you guys the inside scoop on how the storyline for Cataclysm came about. ENJOY this book… I worked REALLY hard  working through a lot of pain and agony to get this novel out to you all.  

“What’s it like to destroy the world?”

That’s the question my literary agent, Joyce Keating, asked earlier this year when I flew

to Manhattan to deliver Cataclysm to her agency.

“Destroying the world is a nasty business,” I replied. “For one, you have to find a reason to end everything man has worked so hard to build, and second… I have to leave some people behind or else nobody will read the book.”

She laughed, and then. “Mankind is doing a pretty good job of ending life on its own.”

It was  a joke, of course.

Or was it?

                                                      I still question this.

Sitting in the elegance of Faces and Names on West 54th Street, I wondered if Joyce wasn’t far of the mark. With all the talk of global warming and polar ice melting… I knew storms were getting worse, earthquakes we more frequent and floods would eventually submerge Manhattan, Kill Devil Hills and eventually, all of Florida.

Everything was going to hell in a hand-basket.

What might the end of the world look like?

How would humanity behave during the finality of it all?

I’d just spent the last twelve months pounding out Cataclysm and knew the nuts and bolts of evacuation procedures. There was a mountain of natural disaster research crammed into my head.

I knew U.N. code-words, understood the science behind societal collapse, and yet, the end of the world seemed something out of a Hollywood Production.

But it’s not just talk anymore.

There is something happening.

Last year the National Weather Service met to discuss one of the catastrophe’s facing the East Coast of the United States, and  some scientists now believe the CATACLYSM I describe in my book is sure to happen at some point.

The end of the world may not happen tomorrow, next week or a year from now.

But it will end, and the question I pose is this… are you ready?

RJ SMITH is a Hollywood Screenwriter and the Author of three novels