RUSSELL ANDERS: WHERE IMAGINATION MEETS REALITY ON THE PAGE

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED | DE MODE OF LITERATURE JULY 2025 V1 GLOBAL

Article Published on: 12TH AUG 2025 | www.demodemagazine.com

DAEMONES EX MACHINA BY AUTHOR RUSSELL ANDERS

In a brutal near-future where corporations wield more power than nations, Daemones Ex Machina explodes onto the scene as a high-octane, dystopian thriller that asks: what would you sacrifice to survive betrayal? When a top-secret sabotage mission goes sideways, three elite operatives—once the prized assets of a ruthless weapons-tech giant—are marked for death by the very company that trained them. Now fugitives, they scatter into the anarchic maze of New York’s Five Hives, a decaying urban sprawl crawling with gangs, mercenaries, and surveillance drones.

Jon is the smooth-talking master of deception. Friedrich, a reclusive hacker prodigy, speaks in code and chaos. And Guion? He’s the cold-blooded strategist who sees all angles—until the rules change. Desperate and cornered, each man strikes a dangerous, otherworldly pact for power and protection. But their deal with darkness comes at a cost. Jon begins to notice disturbing shifts in his teammates—glimpses of something not entirely human. As paranoia builds and loyalties fray, he must confront the terrifying possibility that the real enemy isn’t outside their circle—it’s already inside. And it’s waking up.

What follows is a nerve-rattling descent into a conspiracy that could unravel the fabric of the world as they know it. Private armies clash with ganglords. The city burns, and alliances shift like sand beneath their feet. As the trio digs deeper, they uncover secrets buried not just by the corporation, but by ancient forces eager to reclaim dominion. Each man is tested, physically, mentally, spiritually—as the infernal pacts they made begin to exact a terrible price. Jon watches his friends change in terrifying ways, unsure if they’re evolving or unraveling. The deeper they go, the more the line between man and monster blurs. With the future of humanity teetering on the edge, the fugitives must decide whether to confront their demons, or give in to them. Part sci-fi noir, part supernatural reckoning, Daemones Ex Machina is a haunting, high-stakes thriller that asks: what if the real enemy is already inside you?

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JOURNEY OF THE AUTHOR RUSSELL ANDERS

At the age of four, Russell Anders started telling stories, often interrupting his mother during bedtime reading to ask, “Then what happened?” She always answered, “You tell me,” and his imagination conjured fantastical tales of dragons and dinosaurs. Storytelling remained a part of his life as he grew. Though his early work, scribbled in Mead notebooks during study hall, swung between self-insert wish fulfillment and imitative fan fiction, it helped him develop a lifelong writing habit that included not only writing, but passionately studying the craft of writing.

Despite all the reading, classes, and practice, Russell struggled to find his voice, one not only his own, but one capable of effectively telling a story. While he continued to cultivate this, however, he found a sharpening sense of narrative that first manifested as a deeply critical eye toward modern entertainment. Too many times, friends cut into his post-movie diatribes with “Russ, can you ever just watch a movie?”

No. No he couldn’t. Instead, after he finished railing about the narrative missteps they’d all watched, he’d rewrite the story over dinner, making alterations in character structure. Ever more often, his gathered friends greeted his alterations with silence, then: “Actually, that’s a lot better.”

Finishing a bloated manuscript that took a decade to complete, Russell finally made his foray into the world of publishing by daring the slush piles. The publishing industry universally praised his writing, but no one felt the book was right for them. He eventually let that book go and started over, this time with an eye on precision and pacing. More reading. More courses. More in-person lectures. More workshops. Eventually Russell encountered the same lessons he’d already heard from others and he realized the best thing he could do for himself as a writer is study less and write a whole lot more. His study guides went from books about writing to books that exemplified the craft, everything from historical fiction to fantasy to, of course, sci-fi and cyberpunk in particular. He forged his own path in developing a writing system that worked for him and took the advice of Aerosmith and Dan Brown: give yourself permission to suck. You can always fix it later. A year later, he had a new book, one that didn’t just receive nice words, but an offer letter too.

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INTERVIEW OF AUTHOR RUSSELL ANDERS WITH DE MODE

Q: What inspired Daemones ex Machina?

A. Desperation. Early cyberpunk called to me, but I wanted to dial up the tension beyond the classic “run gone bad” scenario. I wanted a sacrifice so intense it was nearly profane. Your typical cyberpunk is desperate enough to willingly undergo invasive surgery to swap out flesh for tech. What’s one step past that? What about the human soul?

Q: What themes are you exploring in this story?

A. I hit all the classic cyberpunk tropes, though wealth concentration and the societal effects of the ubiquitous datasphere get the most attention. I also touch on the privatization of public works and the philosophical fallacy of unchecked corporatism. But there’s a whole human side to it too, including wrestling with your inner demons (of course).

Q: Are the “daemones” heroes, villains, or something else?

A. “Daemon” is an antiquated spelling of “demon,” so they’re definitely not heroes. They aren’t the antagonists, either, though. The villains are largely man or man-made, organizations and institutions. The daemons are spotlights that illuminate the heroes’ inner struggles and test them with moral quandaries. You learn a lot about the heroes by seeing how they interact with their demons.

Q: How do you connect fictional worlds to real-life issues?

A. The real world is my starting place. I take issues that challenge us now and carry them forward into an exacerbated future, distant enough to give me creative license, but close enough to still feel familiar. “Five minutes into the future,” per the genre saying. The tech, the social structure, the human woes, they all come from the real world.

Q: Which character did you enjoy writing most?

A. That’s a hard one because all the characters had something about them I really enjoyed delving into. That said, Steve, one of the demons, was tremendous fun to write. It’s a serious story set in a grim world, but it’s all one straight man for Steve to joke about.

Q: What do you want readers to take away from this book?

A. This is a story about the dangers of normalizing malignancy. The demons make that case pretty bluntly, but you can see it in the mundane world as well. The world is unkind, and it is that way largely because people collectively decided that was okay. They accepted institutionalized poverty and oppression as normal and it was allowed to spread.

Q: How does this book differ from your past work?

A. It got published! I’ve actually written two fantasy novels prior to this, and while agents and editors said nice things about my writing, no one bit. Writing in the near future instead of a pseudo-medieval past narrowed my focus. I write tighter in this genre, which concentrates the story and gives it more punch.

Q: Do current world events influence your writing?

A. First and foremost, I write about people. This means my own struggles often seed what my characters must face internally. As for the tech, I’m still interested in the human component of it, so I take inspiration from societally disruptive technological innovation. Social media changes the way we interact. AI changes the way we work. Etc.

Q: What role does allegory play in your storytelling?

A. All of it! I like to say that I write about this world by writing about other worlds. I think you can make a point more forcefully and more entertaining through story. Look at 1984. Orwell didn’t give you 328 pages of “authoritarianism bad”; he wrote a story that showcased how a fictionalized authoritarian regime impacted human lives.

Q: Do you outline your worlds in detail before writing?

A. I try to keep the world development to what’s relevant to the story, but it’s hard to know where to draw that line in the beginning. What happens is that I sketch out enough of the world to ground my emerging tale, and then let it grow alongside the characters and plot as I write.

Q: If you could visit one of your worlds, which would it be?

A. Euch, no thank you. The worlds I’ve created are interesting, but they’re not pleasant. They’re displays of our own problems run even more amok. I like to put my heroes in very dark places to let them shine all the brighter. So I’m happy to read about these worlds, but that’s as close as I’d ever want to get.

Q: What books or authors have shaped your writing the most?

A. William Gibson’s sprawl trilogy introduced me to cyberpunk and remains the bar by which I judge all others in the genre. Shakespeare and Poe gave me an appreciation for poetic expression. The two books that influenced me most also come from the writer who impacted me most: Stephen King and his books On Writing and The Wizard in Glass.