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Tulsa-based author Courtney Buchanan has entered the literary scene with a provocative debut, THRIVE, a near-future thriller that reimagines the landscape of medicine, power, and freedom. Set in a society rebuilt after global collapse, the novel explores a world where a revolutionary vaccine promises to eliminate disease and extend life—but at the cost of unseen control.
Weaving together themes of surveillance, obedience, and the buried history of Black Wall Street, Buchanan challenges readers to question what happens when survival becomes conditional. We sat down with Courtney to discuss the systems that replace truth, the legacy of Greenwood, and why THRIVE is built for a global audience.
Q: THRIVE is set in a post-collapse world where a revolutionary vaccine offers unprecedented potential but also enforces quiet compliance. What inspired this specific vision of the future, and why did you choose to explore the tension between medical advancement and personal freedom?
Courtney Buchanan: THRIVE was inspired by the idea that the future wouldn’t arrive through chaos, but through comfort with white coats, good intentions, and a needle full of promises. The truth is simple, every empire learns the same lesson: people don’t resist what heals them. I didn’t imagine a world where medicine failed; I imagined a world where it worked too well, where pain disappeared and so did questions, where survival became conditional and obedience felt like relief. History taught me this control never announces itself as control; it arrives as protection, as progress, as something you’d be foolish to refuse. And freedom? Freedom doesn’t vanish all at once; it erodes, one convenience at a time. So THRIVE lives in the tension between a cure and a command, between saving lives and owning them, between what we’re promised and what we’re asked to forget. Because the most dangerous futures aren’t built by villains; they’re built by systems that work exactly as intended.
Q: A central theme in the novel is the idea of “conditional survival,” where a system decides who advances and who is erased. You’ve said, “We’re already living closer to THRIVE than we’d like to admit.” Can you elaborate on the real-world parallels regarding surveillance and convenience that influenced the book?
Courtney Buchanan: I was thinking about the deals we make without reading the fine print, privacy for convenience, freedom for access. I grew up in the ’90s, when you could leave the house, disappear for hours, and still be alive in the world. No pings. No tracking. We were good. Then cell phones showed up, and nobody thought twice about it. We thought it was just convenience. We didn’t see the leash. Now leave your phone behind and it’s like you don’t exist, no proof, no access, no pass. That shift stayed with me. In THRIVE, the vaccine is that same evolution taken to its end. When something is sold as essential, the price isn’t obvious at first. The real cost shows up later, when opting out stops being a choice and starts feeling like exile.
Q: The story integrates the legacy of Greenwood—formerly known as Black Wall Street—into its futuristic narrative. Why was it important for you to weave this specific historical memory of “brilliance, independence, and progress” into a speculative thriller about the future?
Courtney Buchanan: Growing up in North Tulsa, I didn’t just inherit a neighborhood, I inherited a narrative that somebody else wrote. The world was quick to label it dangerous, broken, behind, but those labels didn’t happen by accident. They were engineered. I was surrounded by brilliance that never made the headlines, people who knew how to build, create, survive, and still dream inside a system designed to keep them invisible. That contradiction became my why.
I remember being in middle school when the local police gang task force came into our classroom. They didn’t ask us who we wanted to become. They didn’t talk about opportunity or potential. They stood in front of a room full of kids and predicted how many of us would be murdered before 21, how many would end up in prison, and the odds stacked against us. It was all numbers. All negative. All delivered like prophecy. In that moment, it felt like our futures had already been decided by people who never knew our names. I want the world to know, I’m one of those kids.
That experience never left me. And it’s why weaving Greenwood—Black Wall Street into THRIVE wasn’t about nostalgia; it was about correction. Greenwood proves that progress didn’t skip us, we were erased from it. Long before the future tried to sell us innovation, our ancestors were already living it: independent, educated, economically powerful, and self-sustaining. The destruction of Greenwood wasn’t just historical violence, it was a warning shot to the future.It was a message about what happens when a community becomes too free, too successful, too ungovernable.
THRIVE carries that memory forward because the same systems that stigmatized North Tulsa are the systems the story interrogates, systems that predict failure, normalize loss, and disguise control as protection. By placing Greenwood in a futuristic thriller, I’m saying this clearly: the future doesn’t make sense unless you tell the truth about the past. And the brilliance they tried to bury didn’t disappear, it still echoes.
Q: You describe THRIVE not just as a book, but as having the “DNA of a premium, multi-season television franchise.” How did this cinematic approach to storytelling shape the way you developed the world and its characters?
Courtney Buchanan: From the beginning, I didn’t create THRIVE like a book that ends, I wrote it like a world that keeps breathing. I approached it the way premium television is built: layered characters, long arcs, unanswered questions, and a universe that feels bigger than what’s on the page. Every character carries history, contradiction, and future consequences, not just plot function. The world had to feel lived in, systems running in the background, power structures moving even when the camera isn’t on them. That cinematic mindset forced me to slow down, to let tension build, to let silence matter, and to trust the audience to connect dots over time. THRIVE isn’t about quick payoff, it’s about immersion. You’re not just reading a story; you’re stepping into a franchise where every choice echoes forward, and every season reveals what was always hiding underneath.
Q: As a debut author blending cultural history with sci-fi, what is the core message you hope readers take away about the relationship between “silence, fear, and forgotten truth”?
Courtney Buchanan: At its core, THRIVE is a warning and a remembrance. I want readers to see how silence is never neutral, it’s often the first tool of control. Fear keeps people quiet, and when people stay quiet long enough, the truth doesn’t just disappear, it gets rewritten. Whole histories get buried. Whole communities get mislabeled. And eventually, people forget not because they’re ignorant, but because forgetting becomes safer than remembering.
The relationship between silence, fear, and forgotten truth is cyclical. Fear creates silence. Silence allows systems to operate unchecked. And over time, that silence turns lies into history. THRIVE asks readers to sit with an uncomfortable question: What truths were lost not because they weren’t powerful,but because they were too powerful to be allowed to survive? My hope is that readers leave more aware of what goes unsaid, more willing to question comfort, and more committed to remembering, because remembrance is the first act of resistance.
THRIVE is available now on Amazon. For more information, visit www.courtneybuchanan.com.
