Debut Novel — Coming Soon
Jeff Alexander writes speculative fiction grounded in real science and real emotion. His debut novel, Project Chronos: The Observer, asks two questions: what is humanity owed by the species that shortened its life, and what survives, if anything, when something is done to erase a person from your life.
Discover the Book
About the Book
Kael-7 is three hundred and forty-seven years old, a veteran Aeleon observer forty-three years into his Earth assignment. His species created humanity by deleting three genes from their own genome, slashing an eight-hundred-year lifespan to eighty, then embedded observers like Kael to watch the experiment unfold. His job is simple: document, report, never intervene.
Then he meets Dr. Faith Martin.
Faith is an MIT geneticist who has spent six years studying human aging without knowing she is mapping the consequences of deliberate genetic deletion. When Kael falls for her, he breaks centuries of protocol to tell her the truth. Faith is now armed with the most dangerous knowledge in human history, and the organization that has managed that secret for six millennia is not going to let it surface without a fight.
When the Council closes in, Kael surrenders himself to protect Faith and the work she has built. The cost is absolute: a memory adjustment that removes every conversation, every late evening, every moment that had become something neither of them had words for yet.
For readers of Becky Chambers, N.K. Jemisin, and Justin Cronin's The Ferryman.
Cover art by Kori Alexander, who also happens to be my wife.
The Author
Jeff Alexander researches plant viruses and their vectors that infect wheat, with an extensive background in genetics. That scientific foundation informs Project Chronos directly. The novel's central premise, in which a geneticist uncovers that three deliberately deleted genes are responsible for the human lifespan, grew from a deep familiarity with how genomic architecture works and what its absence means.
He grew up on a farm in small town rural Nebraska, which probably explains both the plant science and the stubborn streak. Before research, he spent twelve years in the Army, including two deployments to Iraq, which taught him something about what it costs to be away from the people who matter and the mistake of taking that for granted.
He is an avid Husker fan, constantly searching for a time machine to take him back to the 90's, and when he is not in the lab or at his desk he is most likely on a golf course or a riverbank. He lives in Nebraska with his wife Kori and their seven children, which has given him strong personal opinions about what it means when time starts running out.
Project Chronos is his debut novel.
Get in Touch
Whether you are a reader, a fellow writer, or a literary professional, I am glad you found your way here. The best way to reach me is by email.
Jealex1514@gmail.com →For literary agents and publishing professionals: the full manuscript for Project Chronos: The Observer is available upon request, along with outlines for the second and third books in the trilogy.