Independent author Justin Nead is building the Project Titan Universe outward rather than strictly forward, approaching superhero science fiction as a living, continuous environment. Rather than tying a sprawling setting to a single recurring protagonist, Nead launched his interconnected world with two immediate perspectives: SHIFT, which follows Carter Barnes as he discovers density-manipulation powers, and IMOGEN, which follows Sarah Killcannon as government hunters and hidden factions close in.
That multi-strand approach is set to expand further with ALTERED, the upcoming launch title for the mature, street-level Chimera imprint, alongside Black Moon, a third strand that introduces vampires, werewolves, and magic under the same shared physics. Geek Native caught up with Nead to discuss operational power limits, managing continuity without creative confinement, and potential tabletop roleplaying adaptations of the setting.
You released SHIFT on 2 September 2026 and followed it with IMOGEN just three days later on 5 September. Why did you decide on an almost simultaneous release schedule for two distinct points of view, and what production demands did that place on you as an independent author?
First of all a small correction. The first edition of Shift was published on July 25th 2023. It was poorly edited and quite repetitive in some places. So while I was working on Imogen I was also reediting Shift. That’s why the second edition and Imogen came out so close together.
As far as why they ended up that close together, it actually worked for what I wanted Project Titan to be. Carter was never supposed to be the main character of the entire universe. He’s the main character of SHIFT. Sarah gets IMOGEN. Other characters will get their books as the universe keeps growing.
One of the things I’ve wanted from the beginning is for the world to feel like it’s actually moving whether you’re watching a particular character or not. Our world doesn’t stop because we’re not in the room, so theirs shouldn’t either. Moving from Carter into Sarah’s point of view helps establish that pretty early.
It also gives Sarah the chance to actually be Sarah instead of just being someone we see through Carter. That’s a big part of why I like changing points of view. Two people can be standing in the same world, dealing with some of the same events, and still have completely different stories.
The independent publishing side was a lot, though. When you’re doing this yourself, there isn’t really a point where you just hand the book to somebody else and say, “Okay, you handle the rest.” There’s editing, formatting, covers, uploading, distribution, the website, promotion, social media, and whatever decides to break that day. And I was doing all of that while still trying to write.
Would I intentionally release two new books three days apart? Probably not. But in this case, with one being the second edition of SHIFT and the other being IMOGEN, it worked out pretty well. And it showed something I want readers to understand about Project Titan from the start: this isn’t Carter’s universe. It’s everyone’s.
In your press announcement, you stressed that Project Titan is built to grow outward rather than just forward, swapping protagonists rather than keeping one hero indefinitely. What made you step away from Carter Barnes immediately in book two to explore the fallout from Sarah Killcannon’s perspective?
It was always the plan. Carter was never supposed to be the center of the whole universe. He’s the main character of SHIFT because SHIFT is his story. That doesn’t mean every book after it needs to stay with him.
Sarah made sense next because by the end of SHIFT, a lot has changed for her too. The difference is we don’t really get to see what any of that means to her because we’re still seeing everything through Carter.
And that’s one of the biggest reasons I wanted to move away from Carter right away. If every book stayed with him, then eventually every other character would only matter because of how they fit into Carter’s life. I didn’t want that.
Sarah has her own life, her own family, her own problems, her own reasons for making the choices she does. Carter can’t tell that story for her.
That’s really how I look at the whole universe. The world keeps moving even when we aren’t watching a certain character. People are doing things. Other problems are happening. Choices are being made somewhere else that might matter later.
Our world doesn’t stop when we leave the room, so theirs shouldn’t either.
Carter matters. Sarah matters. Trisha matters. All of them do. But none of them are the center of everything.
Sometimes it’s just someone else’s turn to tell their part of the story.
Shared universes often collapse under the weight of their own continuity. How do you track the internal timeline across Project Titan, Chimera, and Black Moon to ensure off-screen events remain coherent without trapping your writing in spreadsheet micromanagement?
I track a lot, but I try not to track things just for the sake of tracking them.
There are certain things I have to know. Where a character is, what they know at that point, what has already happened to them, who is alive, what relationships have changed, and where the major events fall in relation to each other. With a universe this size, those fixed parts matter.
But the stories themselves aren’t fixed.
That’s the important part for me. I need to know the things that can’t move, because that keeps the continuity straight. But once I start writing, the story is really shaped by the characters and who they become.
I don’t want to decide every choice they’re going to make before I get there. I build who they are, what they’ve been through, what pressures are around them, and what the world looks like at that moment. Then I let them react to it.
Sometimes that means a character goes in a direction I didn’t originally expect. And if it makes sense for who they’ve become, I’d rather follow that than force them back onto some outline I made months ago.
The same thing applies to the larger world. Characters don’t stop existing because they aren’t on the page. Their lives keep moving. Things keep happening in other places. So I need enough continuity in place to know what’s fixed and what’s already happened.
But I don’t want that continuity to become a cage.
For me, it’s really about knowing the fixed points and then giving the characters room to write the space between them.
In SHIFT, Carter’s core ability is density manipulation—shifting between intangible and impenetrable. How do you establish hard operational limits for powers like that so encounters maintain genuine physical tension rather than narrative hand-waving?
For me, the biggest thing is that powers have to have rules. If Carter can just shift every time something goes wrong and suddenly nothing can hurt him, then what’s the point? There’s no real danger anymore.
So I needed to know what his power actually did and what it couldn’t do. He can change his density in both directions. He can pass through solid objects or make himself incredibly dense and hard to hurt. But neither one makes him unbeatable.
There are things he can’t do. He can’t just grab somebody and take them through a wall with him. There are limits to what his ability affects outside of himself. So even if Carter can save himself from something, that doesn’t mean he can automatically save the person standing next to him.
And especially in SHIFT, Carter having powers doesn’t mean Carter knows what he’s doing. That’s a big part of the book. He and Miles are basically figuring this out as they go. What can he do? What can’t he do? How far can he push it? Early on, he barely brushes Miles’ hand away and breaks bones because he doesn’t understand what he’s doing yet.
That matters to me because powers shouldn’t replace the person using them. Carter can be extremely difficult to hurt and still screw up. He can make the wrong choice. He can misunderstand what somebody is doing. He can protect himself and realize that doesn’t help the people around him.
And once I’ve established a rule, I try to stick with it. I don’t want Carter to suddenly be able to do something new just because I wrote him into a situation that would be easier to get out of if he could.
Sometimes the rules actually make the scene harder to write, but I like that. Now I have to figure out how Carter gets out of it instead of just making his power stronger.
That’s really how I look at powers throughout Project Titan. They can give a character an advantage, sometimes a huge one, but they shouldn’t make their choices stop mattering.
You describe a living world where characters continue moving even when the “camera” leaves them. In roleplaying games, tabletop designers call this a living campaign setting. How much of your world exists as concrete background notes before you start drafting a novel?
A lot of it exists before I start writing, but not every little detail.
I know the big things. The history, the major events, the characters, the relationships, the organizations, where people are, and what has already happened around them.
Some places are really detailed because the story needs them to be. Other places might just be a name and a basic idea until somebody actually goes there.
Same with the characters. If somebody is off-page, I usually know enough about what they’re doing that when they come back into the story it makes sense. But I’m not writing an entire second book in the background just for them.
I think the important part is that the world already feels like it’s moving before the story gets there.
I know the fixed parts. Those matter because they keep everything from contradicting itself. But I don’t want every part of the story decided ahead of time.
The characters still have to become who they’re going to become.
And sometimes who they become changes what part of the world matters next.
So yeah, there’s a lot of background material. Probably more than most readers will ever see. But I don’t build things just to fill a file with information.
I build what needs to be real, keep the parts that have to stay true locked down, and then let the characters decide where the story goes from there.
Project Titan is rooted in science fiction and superhuman abilities, but Black Moon introduces magic, vampires, and werewolves into that identical world. How do you write supernatural elements into a hard sci-fi framework without breaking the established laws of physics you laid out in SHIFT?
I don’t really see Black Moon as breaking anything that was established in Project Titan.
The science in Project Titan explains Titans. It explains where they came from, what happened to them, and gives the characters a way to understand the abilities they’re seeing. But that doesn’t mean science explains everything that exists in this world.
Black Moon is basically showing that the world was bigger than the characters realized.
And magic still has rules. That’s important to me. I don’t want to be able to say, “It’s magic,” and suddenly anything can happen because I need it to. Vampires have rules. Werewolves have rules. The different supernatural entities have rules. Magic itself has rules.
The characters just don’t necessarily know all of those rules when they first run into them.
And I actually like the idea of somebody from the Project Titan side seeing something supernatural and trying to explain it scientifically. Because why wouldn’t they? If Titans are real and you’ve already seen people do things that should be impossible, your first thought probably isn’t going to be, “That’s a vampire.”
You’re going to try to figure out how it works.
Sometimes there might be an explanation for part of it. Other times they’re going to have to accept that what they thought they understood about the world wasn’t the whole picture.
That’s the big thing for me. Black Moon isn’t another universe and I’m not changing the rules when I get there. All of this was already part of the same world.
The rules didn’t change. The rules I live by and the rules you live by could be completely different. But we still occupy the same world.
We just started following people who knew about a different set of them.
In IMOGEN, Sarah’s father hunts Titans for the government. How did you structure the institutional response to powered humans so law enforcement and state agencies feel like plausible, dangerous organisations rather than comic-book canon fodder?
I think the biggest thing for me is that the human side of things adjusts and adapts to what is needed.
And in Project Titan, the government already had a head start because they created the First Generation.
They knew what they had made, and they knew there was always a chance one of those people could become a threat. So they created ways to deal with them. Containment methods, tactics, procedures, ways to track them and ways to take them down if it came to that.
Then the Second Generation started showing up, and that changed things again.
The First Generation had a more predictable baseline. The Second Generation could manifest abilities that were completely different from what came before them. So the government took what they already had and pushed it further. They had to keep learning, changing equipment, changing tactics and preparing for abilities they hadn’t dealt with before.
That doesn’t mean they always have the answer. Sometimes they’re facing something completely new. But they’re not starting from zero either.
That’s important to me because I never wanted the human side of the world to suddenly become useless because people have powers. Training still matters. Experience still matters. Intelligence, preparation and resources still matter.
Damion is part of that system. He isn’t just some guy the government sends after Titans with a gun and hopes for the best. He’s working inside something that has been developing since the First Generation existed.
And the people involved aren’t all going to look at Titans the same way. Some believe they’re protecting people. Some see Titans as weapons. Some are afraid of them. Some are just doing the job they were trained to do. And some are willing to cross lines because they think it’s necessary.
The government made the First Generation, so they also made ways to deal with the First Generation.
When the Second Generation came along, they took those steps further.
That’s how I look at the human side throughout the universe. Something changes, they adjust to it. Something new appears, they learn from it. They aren’t standing still either.
Self-publishing an interconnected, multi-genre shared universe is an ambitious gamble compared to writing a standalone trilogy. Where do you see your books sitting in an indie market that frequently rewards rapid-release single-trope series?
I know I’m probably making this harder on myself than I need to.
It would probably be easier to pick one kind of story, stay in that lane, and keep putting out books that all appeal to exactly the same reader.
But that isn’t what I wanted to make.
Project Titan was always bigger in my head than one series or one character. The main Project Titan books, Chimera, and Black Moon are all different kinds of stories, but they’re happening in the same world. I like that somebody can read SHIFT and get one kind of story, move into Chimera and get something much more mature and grounded, and then go into Black Moon and suddenly we’re dealing with vampires, werewolves, magic, and everything that comes with that.
They’re different, but they’re still connected.
I’m sure that makes marketing it harder sometimes. Someone looking for superheroes might not automatically be looking for a supernatural story. Someone who finds Black Moon might not normally pick up something like SHIFT. But I also think that’s part of what makes the universe interesting.
I’m not trying to write the same book over and over with different names on the cover.
I want readers to be able to find a character or part of the world they connect with and then realize there’s a whole lot more out there if they want to explore it.
Obviously, I still have to think about the business side. I want people to find the books. I want this to grow. The goal is absolutely to eventually make this something I can do full time.
But I don’t want to get there by chasing whatever happens to be popular at the moment and changing what I’m writing to fit it.
I’d rather take the harder route and build the thing I actually wanted to build.
I don’t just want people to read one Project Titan book.
I want them to finish one and wonder what else is happening in this world.
Chimera is designed as a mature, street-level line, while the core Project Titan books aim for a broader audience. How are you managing reader expectations and age-appropriateness across your branding so audience crossover does not backfire?
The main Project Titan series was originally written for my kids. That matters, because it shaped the tone from the beginning.
I wanted them to be able to read it. So even though there are fights, danger, death, and some heavier moments, I was always aware of the audience I was writing those books for.
Chimera and Black Moon weren’t written for them.
Those stories deal with different kinds of characters and different kinds of problems, and I didn’t want to hold them to the same limits just because they exist in the same universe.
With Chimera especially, Trisha’s story gets into things that are more mature, more personal, and sometimes a lot harsher. If I tried to force that into the same tone as the main Project Titan books, I think I’d be doing the story a disservice.
Same with Black Moon. That side of the universe is darker by nature, and I’m not going to pretend otherwise.
So for me, managing expectations really comes down to being clear with readers. The branding should show that these books are connected, but it should also show that they’re not all meant for the exact same audience.
I don’t want somebody to pick up Chimera or Black Moon because their kid enjoyed SHIFT and assume it’s automatically going to be written for the same age group.
At the same time, I absolutely want readers to cross over between the different parts of the universe if they want to.
I just want them to know what they’re getting into before they do.
Same world. Different stories. Different limits.
Readers of comic books and roleplaying games often demand exhaustive setting bibles, faction guides, and technical schematics. Are you planning supplementary world dossiers, gazetteers, or tabletop sourcebooks to let fans explore the lore beyond the novels?
Yeah, definitely. A lot of that material already exists behind the scenes because I need it to keep the universe straight.
I have character information, timelines, maps, organizations, locations, supernatural lore, Project Titan history, and a lot of other things that probably won’t ever fit naturally into one of the novels.
And I don’t want to force that information into the books just because I think it’s interesting. If the character has no reason to know it or talk about it, then it probably doesn’t belong there.
But that doesn’t mean it has to stay hidden forever.
We’ve already started putting some of it into dossiers and guides, and I can see that continuing as the universe grows. Character files, organizations, locations, maps, history, things like that. There’s a lot of material there that readers could explore without it needing to become part of a novel.
At some point, I’d also really like to turn Project Titan into a TTRPG. The world already has a lot of the pieces that could work really well for that—different organizations, locations, Titans, supernatural elements, different kinds of characters and conflicts.
That’s definitely a “when I have the time” project, though. Right now the books come first.
And even with the extra material, I don’t want to reveal everything just because I have it written down somewhere. Some things need to come out through the stories first.
So yeah, I’d like people to eventually be able to explore the universe beyond the novels. Dossiers and guides are already part of that, and a TTRPG is something I’d love to get to down the road.
I just have to find the time to actually do it.
You have argued that “the person wearing the suit matters more than the suit”. When you are developing a character like Trisha Valdren for ALTERED, do you build the civilian trauma and emotional conflict first, or do you work backwards from the external plot?
Character first. Almost every time.
I have to know who the person is before what happens to them really means anything.
Trisha is probably the strongest example of that for me. ALTERED became something I wasn’t expecting when I started writing it.
I knew Trisha. I knew the fixed parts of her story and where certain things had to fall. But I didn’t have everything she was going to feel or every choice she was going to make planned out.
I walked through it with her.
And as I did, her story affected me. It took me into emotions that nothing I’d written before ever had. There were parts of ALTERED that were genuinely hard for me to write because by that point Trisha wasn’t just a character I was moving through a story. I cared about what was happening to her.
I think that’s a big part of how I write characters. I don’t start with, “I need Trisha to become Medusa, so what do I have to do to get her there?”
I start with Trisha.
Her life. Her family. Her friends. The people she loves. The future she thinks she’s going to have. Then things happen, she makes choices, those choices affect her, and she changes.
And sometimes she changes me a little while I’m writing her.
That’s really what I mean when I say the person wearing the suit matters more than the suit. Medusa can be cool. The suit can be cool. The missions can be cool. None of that matters nearly as much if you don’t care about Trisha first.
So I didn’t create Trisha because I needed someone to become Medusa.
Medusa is who she becomes because of everything Trisha lived through to get there.
Superhero stories are everywhere across film, streaming, and comics, yet many fans complain of genre fatigue. What is missing from modern mainstream superhero media that Project Titan deliberately attempts to deliver?
I grew up on comic books. I love the movies. I love superhero stories.
So I don’t look at Project Titan as me trying to fix the genre or say everybody else is doing it wrong.
I just know what I want my readers to remember.
The fights should be awesome. The powers should be cool. I want those moments where somebody does something that makes you sit there and think, “That was badass.”
But when the book is over, I want the people to stick with you more than the fight did.
I want you to remember Carter because of who Carter is, not just because he can shift his density. I want you to remember Sarah for the choices she makes and what she goes through, not just because her powers look incredible. And with Trisha, I want people invested in her long before Medusa ever means anything.
That’s the part that matters most to me.
Powers can make a scene exciting, but they don’t automatically make a character worth caring about.
I want the relationships to matter. The losses to matter. The choices to matter. I want what happens to these characters to stay with them instead of everything resetting once the fight is over.
Because those are the parts of superhero stories that have always stayed with me.
I might remember an amazing fight scene, but the characters are why I cared about the fight in the first place.
That’s what I want Project Titan to do.
I want readers to enjoy the awesome fights and powers, but I want them to remember the people.
If an independent creator approached you wanting to build their own sprawling multi-strand setting from scratch, what single production or storytelling mistake would you warn them to avoid?
I’d probably tell them not to try to build everything before they start writing.
It’s really easy to get caught up in maps, timelines, characters, organizations, future books, all of it, and feel like you have to have the entire universe figured out first.
You don’t.
You need the fixed parts. You need to know enough about the world that things make sense and stay consistent. But you also have to leave room for the story to become what it’s going to become.
That’s a big part of how I write.
I know certain things that have to happen or have to stay true. But I don’t want every choice already decided before I get there.
The characters have to have room to change things.
I’ve had characters go places I didn’t expect. I’ve had parts of the world become more important because of what happened while I was writing. If I had everything locked down from the beginning, I would have either had to ignore that or force the characters back into what I originally planned.
I don’t want to do that.
And don’t build a character just because you need a certain power or need somebody to fill a spot on a team.
Build the person first.
You can always add more to the world as you go.
Just don’t get so busy building the universe that you forget to actually tell the story.
Outside of your own writing desk, what independent authors, indie game designers, or creative communities are doing exceptional work right now that you believe more readers should follow?
There are definitely a few.
Skylar Ramirez, Shane Purdy, and Zogarth are probably the first three that come to mind. I read a lot of their work before I started putting almost all of my free time into writing my own.
I don’t get to read nearly as much anymore. Honestly, that’s one of the things I miss about having more free time. Now if I’ve got a few hours where I can sit down and disappear into a story, I’m usually sitting down to write one instead.
But I spent a lot of time reading those three, and they’re definitely people I’d tell someone to check out.
Becoming an independent author myself has also given me a lot more respect for other independent creators in general.
You see the finished book. You don’t see everything that went into getting it there. The writing is only part of it. Then there’s editing, covers, formatting, publishing, promotion, social media, trying to get people to actually find the thing you spent all that time making.
I understand that side of it a lot better now than I did when I was just the reader.
So I’d say give independent creators a chance. There are a lot of good stories out there that don’t have a huge company putting them in front of you.
I found authors I enjoyed that way.
Now I’m hoping somebody finds mine the same way.
For readers wanting to begin the Project Titan Universe, where can they pick up SHIFT and IMOGEN, and where can they follow development updates on ALTERED?
The easiest place to start is the Project Titan Universe website at ProjectTitanUniverse.com. I try to keep everything there so people don’t have to go hunting all over the place trying to figure out where to find the books or where to start.
SHIFT and IMOGEN are both out now, and the website has the current links for them.
If you’re completely new to Project Titan, start with SHIFT. That’s where all of this started.
ALTERED is what I’m working on now, and I’ve been sharing parts of that as I go. Artwork, character stuff, trailers, some of the behind-the-scenes work, things like that. I try to show enough that people can see the world being built without giving away the things I want them to experience in the book.
We also have the Project Titan newsletter, and I want that to be more than just another place where I repeat whatever I already posted on social media.
We’ve planned things specifically for the newsletter that people won’t get anywhere else. Special dossiers, extra universe material, behind-the-scenes information, things that let readers dig a little deeper into the world.
You can sign up for that through the website.
And then we’re on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube too. That’s where a lot of the regular updates and development stuff goes.
So if somebody wants to watch ALTERED go from what I’m writing now to the finished book, they can pretty much follow along as it happens.
But if you’re asking where to start?
Start with SHIFT.
Then see where you end up.
Thanks, Justin!
Readers can explore the setting directly through the Project Titan Universe portal, pick up SHIFT and IMOGEN via Amazon, and track progress on ALTERED across the official newsletter and social feeds.
