Epoch Times

“The Big Empty captures a moment when Big Tech seemingly promised everything. By turns funny and painful, Steffy’s story builds like an accelerating freight train, reaching a fast-paced climax.”

Read More

The Big Empty

Silver Winner — Best New Fiction, IBPA’s Ben Franklin Awards

The Big Empty is a novel by Loren C. Steffy and a silver winner for Best New Fiction in IBPA’s Ben Franklin Awards. A ranch manager and a semiconductor executive collide on a West Texas highway, and then keep colliding over the future of Conquistador — a dying town one of them intends to save by building a chip plant in it.

Epoch Times

“The Big Empty captures a moment when Big Tech seemingly promised everything. By turns funny and painful, Steffy’s story builds like an accelerating freight train, reaching a fast-paced climax.”

Read More
About

When Trace Malloy and Blaine Witherspoon collide on a desolate West Texas highway, their fender bender sets the tone for escalating clashes that will determine the future of the town of Conquistador.

Malloy, a ranch manager and lifelong cowboy, knows that his occupation-and his community-are dying. He wants new-millennium opportunities for his son, even though he himself failed to summon the courage to leave familiar touchstones behind.

Witherspoon, an ambitious, Lexus-driving techie, offers a solution. He moves to Conquistador to build and run a state-of-the-art semiconductor plant that will bring prestige and high-paying technology jobs to revive the town-and advance his own career.

As the two head toward an inevitable collision course, they’re forced to confront their deepest fears and conflicting views on technological progress —facing the choice to become enemies or, ultimately, to unite in a shared search for meaning across the sweeping Texas landscape.

Details

Category: Fiction, Westerns

Publication Date: May 25, 2021

Publication date: May 25, 2021

ISBN (Hardcover): 978-1-7340822-4-1

ISBN (Paperback): 978-1-7340822-9-6

ISBN (Ebook): 978-1-7340822-5-8

List Price: $17.95

Pages: 304

Trim Size: 6 x 9

Reviews
The Epoch Times

"The Big Empty captures a moment when Big Tech seemingly promised everything. By turns funny and painful, Steffy's story builds like an accelerating freight train, reaching a fast-paced climax."

Southern Review of Books

"Like the titular land itself, Steffy's novel is uncompromising in spotlighting the strains that the drive toward material achievement puts on the individual in the face of nature's whims."

Booklife

"The story hurls forward with a steady momentum, culminating in a heady-yet still persuasively realistic-climax. At the end, what lingers are the characters themselves, whom Steffy peers into with such love and empathy that readers can't help but root for them."

FAQ

What is The Big Empty about?

The Big Empty follows Trace Malloy, a ranch manager who knows his work and his town are ending, and Blaine Witherspoon, who arrives to build a semiconductor plant that will save Conquistador and his own career at once. Malloy wants a future for his son that he lacked the nerve to seek himself. The book puts the two of them in each other’s way.

Has The Big Empty won any awards?

It is a silver winner for Best New Fiction in the Independent Book Publishers Association’s Ben Franklin Awards.

Is Conquistador, Texas a real place?

It is invented, though the pressures on it are not — the novel is set against the real decline of ranching towns and the real arrival of high tech  manufacturing in Texas. In 2023, Loren Steffy discussed the real-world themes of The Big Empty with podcaster Tom Fox. A transcript of those discussions is included in the paperback version of the novel.

About the Author

Loren C. Steffy

Loren C. Steffy is the author of five books of nonfiction: Deconstructed: An Insider's View of Illegal Immigration and the Building Trades (with Stan Marek); The Last Trial of T. Boone Pickens (with Chrysta Castañeda); George P. Mitchell: Fracking, Sustainability, and an Unorthodox Quest to Save the Planet; The Man Who Thought Like a Ship; and Drowning in Oil: BP and the Reckless Pursuit of Profit." He is also the author of a novel, The Big Empty, which combines a sweeping appreciation for history and the struggles of small-town America with an examination of technology and the social and economic changes that come about when the two meet head to head.

Steffy is a contributing writer for Texas Monthly and a managing director for the communications firm 30 Point Strategies, where he heads the 30 Point Press publishing imprint. He is the founder of his own imprint, Stoney Creek Publishing, a company committed to stories and narratives from unique voices. Stoney Creek has an award-winning team of editors and designers who are committed to producing high-quality books in less time and with fewer hurdles than traditional publishing.

He writes a Substack newsletter, The Accidental Publisher, about the writing and publishing industry, and Life in the Word Mines about anything else that strikes his fancy.

Prior to his current positions, Steffy was the business columnist for the Houston Chronicle, and his writing has been published in newspapers and other publications nationwide. He has appeared on CNBC, Fox Business, MSNBC, the BBC and the PBS NewsHour, and is regular guest on local television and radio news programs in Houston and Austin.

Before joining the Chronicle, Steffy was the Dallas bureau chief and a senior writer for Bloomberg News for twelve years. He covered a variety of business topics in Texas and across the country, including the collapse of Enron. His reporting on the demise of Arthur Andersen was selected for the 2003 edition of the "Best Business Stories of the Year." Before joining Bloomberg, Steffy worked at the Dallas Times Herald, the Dallas Business Journal and the Arlington Daily News.

Steffy holds a bachelor's degree in journalism from Texas A&M University. He and his wife, Laura, live in Wimberley, Texas, and share their home with two rescue dogs.

www.lorensteffy.com

In the Media

Epoch Times

“The Big Empty captures a moment when Big Tech seemingly promised everything. By turns funny and painful, Steffy’s story builds like an accelerating freight train, reaching a fast-paced climax.”

Reviews

The Epoch Times

"The Big Empty captures a moment when Big Tech seemingly promised everything. By turns funny and painful, Steffy's story builds like an accelerating freight train, reaching a fast-paced climax."

Southern Review of Books

"Like the titular land itself, Steffy's novel is uncompromising in spotlighting the strains that the drive toward material achievement puts on the individual in the face of nature's whims."

Booklife

"The story hurls forward with a steady momentum, culminating in a heady-yet still persuasively realistic-climax. At the end, what lingers are the characters themselves, whom Steffy peers into with such love and empathy that readers can't help but root for them."