10-2-26 — Special Report - Interview with Disco Barrington
I had the amazing honor of interviewing the author of my #1 book of 2026, Disco Barrington. Check out their answers below and then go snag the book that will be living rent free in your head for long time to come.
Christina Pfeiffer: First and foremost, where did the idea for the novella begin and how did you decide the setup/formatting?
Disco Barrington: In April 2025, I was sitting in an airport when I got the news that the UK Supreme court had ruled that the definition of a woman was based on biological sex. I was furious. Then I got a text from a friend saying she’d just run a 10k, which sounded as horrifying as it was impressive. I opened my notes app and wrote a short story about a British trans man forced to run a deadly race.
I was also working on a time travel manuscript at the time and had extracted a chapter from that to turn into a short story. Then I looked at another dystopian work in progress, with a standout chapter that read like a vignette.
I realised that these pieces all took place at different points in a timeline, so I put them together and retained the multi-narrative format, linking them with documents, transcripts, flash fiction and so on, to create a novella.
CP: The opening chapter sets up such an unnerving series of images but also a familiarity - reminding us of THE LONG WALK by Stephen King. Was this intentional?
DB: Not at all! I’m ashamed to say I’ve never read any Stephen King. Multiple beta readers told me about the comparison, so I then watched The Long Walk movie adaptation, which was traumatising. I think the chapter was more influenced by ‘death game’ movies like The Running Man (again, I’ve never read the book), Battle Royale and The Hunt, as well as M.I.A.’s music video for Born Free. I also did a module on gladiators while studying classics at university and became fascinated by the whole system. With The Race, I was trying to envision a modern day, brutal “bread and circuses” for the masses.
CP: The commonality of the family we follow somehow makes it so much more personal and the reader becomes a part of the Cartwrights - how did you decide which family member would be in each perspective?
DB: The book was initially written without the family connection – they were all individual, separate people, experiencing the worst or most impactful days of their lives. Then I wrote a chapter about a man in a flooded house who was writing a letter to a loved one, and that sparked the idea – what if they were all one family? So, I went back through the book and linked them together. It happened quite naturally, which is lucky.
CP: TIHTWE is heavy with social commentary but it’s not hitting the reader over the head. From diminishing resources to asylum seekers, desperation to the accelerated decline into chaos, the reader closes the novella with a heavier heart. Was there a commentary that was harder to write? Was there one you chose not to include?
DB: The central chapter, about a woman having a crisis of faith and struggling with the doctrine she’d been led to believe her whole life, was very hard to get right. I think I made more than ten revisions to that chapter. The rest of the book runs along at breakneck speed, but this chapter was more internal, taking its time to show seeds of doubt, resistance to change, and the eventual breaking point. I don’t know if I’ll ever be fully satisfied with it, but I think it’s one of the most important things I’ve written.
I realised that once the book was done I had subconsciously avoided point-of-view characters in positions of power. Millionaires and tyrants are viewed as they are now, from an inaccessible distance, wreaking havoc from afar. The book focuses on the results of their corruption, greed and so on, from the perspective of regular people whose lives have been destroyed.
CP: There are some heartbreaking quotes on these pages. A few standouts for me:
“Grace was on the wrong side. It was all a lie.”
”Something you know is ‘good’ will win out over something you’ve only heard is ‘bad.’”
Is there a quote that stands out to you and why?
DB: There are two that come to mind:
“And our corpses will disintegrate into mush, and the mush will meld together, and their maggots will be my maggots, and their mould will be my mould, and we’ll become one beautiful, green-grey pile of never-parted goo.”
This one shocked me after I wrote it. I was in the flow, typing away, and then stopped, read it back and though, “oh my god, I’m writing a horror. I’m writing gore.” I never thought I’d be a horror writer, I thought I would stick to sci-fi. But this book goes to dark places that really surprised me.
The other one is different:
“We can’t live in captivity. We won’t be their puppets. We demand to be free.”
I worried that this was overly simplistic, but then I thought – how many protests have I been to in my lifetime? How many simple chants have I yelled, over and over, for hours while marching? Sometimes simple gets the point across. This is the essence of the book, so laying it out clearly is no bad thing.
CP: What is next for Disco? Any plans for the next novella/novel?
DB: I recently finished book two! It's still in the draft stages, but should hopefully be out next year. It’s not a direct sequel (book one is complete), but an interconnected standalone in the same world. I’m very excited.
Other than that, I have a few different projects on the go – a transgender historical romance murder mystery with cannibals, and a biblical time travel horror. Both of those are proving a little difficult to wrangle, but I’m enjoying the journey.
CP: What do you hope readers take away from the novella?
DB: Although the book focuses on the demise of humanity, and the terror and pain that comes with it, I hope readers see that people are trying. That it’s the trying, in the face of inevitability, that we should cling to. The book is really about my belief in humanity, despite everything.
CP: Where can readers find you or see you next?
DB: I’m very active online, as @discobooks on TikTok and BlueSky, where I hype up queer, BIPOC and disabled books and authors. I will also be attending Fiction Fest, my first convention as an author, in April 2027 in Manchester, UK.
ABOUT: Disco Barrington (he/they) is a British-Trinidadian, queer, trans, disabled author and content creator living in London, UK. His debut novella This Is How The World Ends was released September 2026 by Nefarious Bat Press. He reviews diverse sci-fi, fantasy and horror books as @discobooks on TikTok and BlueSky.
My website:
Link to buy the book direct from Nefarious Bat Press:
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