About North River Publications

North River Publications is an independent publisher of near-future political thriller novels that feel close to the world readers recognize from today’s headlines. North River Publications is built for readers who want suspense and momentum without losing realism. The focus is on power, institutions, and the people caught in the machinery when rules change.

North River Publications grew out of a simple premise. When real events already carry the tension of a political thriller, fiction should be honest about how quickly systems can fail. These novels are not written as escapism. They are written to show what happens when pressure tests the guardrails and ordinary people are forced to make hard decisions.

Our Mission

North River Publications publishes political thrillers that take consequences seriously. Each story is designed to feel plausible, not symbolic. The writing aims to be clear and direct, with enough detail to earn the stakes without burying the reader.

North River Publications prioritizes near-future settings that feel imminent. The stories treat institutions as active forces, not background scenery. Plot decisions follow real incentives, including law, money, enforcement, and public pressure. The goal is to respect the reader’s time and attention while delivering a story that holds together.

What North River Publications Publishes

The flagship project is The Vanishing State series, a near-future political thriller trilogy that follows a fractured United States as democratic norms weaken under stress. Book 1, The Vanishing State, tracks voter suppression, media capture, and institutional breakdown through the eyes of veterans, journalists, organizers, and officials trying to hold the line.

The world of the series continues outside the novels through Vera2 News, a companion project that covers real-world events and highlights the same fault lines that drive the fiction. Vera2 News focuses on elections, courts, policing, money, and information. It draws parallels when the match is obvious, and it avoids forcing the story when it is not.

Together, the novels and Vera2 News are meant to give readers two experiences. The fiction carries the emotional stakes. The companion work provides context that is grounded in what is already happening.

The Vanishing State Series

The Vanishing State series is built around near-future pressure points that already exist in the real world. The books focus on how institutions respond when legitimacy breaks, information fractures, and enforcement becomes uneven. The stakes rise through policy, money, and coercion, not fantasy solutions.

Vera2 News

Vera2 News is a companion project that tracks real-world developments connected to the same institutional fault lines explored in the novels. It is written as straight reporting and analysis, with an emphasis on primary sources and credible investigations.

Who Is R.W. Calderin?

R.W. Calderin is the pen name behind The Vanishing State series and the first author published by North River Publications. The pen name keeps the focus on the work rather than the author’s personal history or online footprint.

The writing is shaped by long exposure to technology, systems, and organizations that often behave differently in practice than they do on paper. That background shows up in the stories through attention to process, incentive structures, and the ways official narratives leave people out. The books aim to deliver that level of realism without drowning the reader in technical language.

Author Image Disclaimer

The author image used online is an AI-generated likeness created for branding purposes only.

Why a Pen Name

The pen name exists to protect privacy. It helps maintain separation between personal life and public work. It also creates a single consistent author identity for readers who want to follow the series without turning the author into the product.

Fiction and Reality

The novels are fiction. The machinery behind them is drawn from real laws, real political conflict, and real institutional failure patterns. When the books touch on democratic backsliding, polarization, or public trust, the goal is to reflect documented trends rather than guesswork. When corruption, enforcement gaps, or accountability failures appear in the story, they echo problems that investigative reporting has already put on record.

That is also why Vera2 News exists alongside the books. The novels explore the “what if” in human terms. The companion work points to the “this is already happening” side of the picture.

If you read one or read both, the intent is the same. North River Publications is built for readers who want political thrillers that feel earned.

Further Reading

North River Publications follows a mix of straight-news reporting and primary-source research when building the real-world scaffolding behind our fiction.

Daily Reporting and Investigative Coverage

For daily reporting and investigative coverage, we regularly reference Reuters (https://www.reuters.com), the Associated Press (https://apnews.com), The Wall Street Journal (https://www.wsj.com), Bloomberg (https://www.bloomberg.com), and the Financial Times (https://www.ft.com). For long-form investigations into institutional failures and accountability gaps, ProPublica is a frequent starting point (https://www.propublica.org).

Nonpartisan Data and Trend Research

For nonpartisan data, surveys, and trend research that help separate signal from noise, we rely on the Pew Research Center (https://www.pewresearch.org) and the Brennan Center for Justice (https://www.brennancenter.org), along with policy and governance analysis from Brookings (https://www.brookings.edu). When a topic touches election administration and official guidance, we check primary sources such as the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (https://www.eac.gov).

Contact

[email protected]
northriverpublications.com