HONOLULU, Hawaiʻi — July 15, 2026 — Today, author Ray Culver releases H2ONU, a debut mythic eco-thriller eight years in the making — published not as a book alone, but as three connected experiences: a 752-page, full-color first-edition hardcover; a cinematic online descent; and The Signal, an interactive Archive that allows readers to question the novel’s characters, symbols, technologies, and the patterns running beneath them.

Most books ask to be read.

H2ONU asks to be recognized.

“I didn’t want to build a campaign around a novel,” Culver said. “I wanted to build a world that could only exist because the novel exists at its center. The book is the artifact. The website is the descent. The Signal is where the questions begin.”

The Machine Is Fiction. The Warning Isn’t.

Inside the novel, an inventor in Hawaiʻi named Keoni completes H2ONU — a fictional machine that turns water into clean, portable energy. If released, it could free billions from dependence on oil. If buried, it would preserve the interests of governments, corporations, and intelligence networks built on keeping energy scarce, controlled, and profitable.

Ray Hershey never asked to stand at the center of that conflict. He was looking for connection, purpose, a life that finally felt like his own. Instead he finds himself carrying knowledge that could change civilization — and placing the woman he loves directly in the path of the people determined to bury it.

Governments move. Alliances fracture. Warnings separated by centuries begin pointing toward the same impossible conclusion. And the deeper Ray goes, the starker the choice becomes: protect the future, or protect the person who makes the future worth reaching.

Culver describes the novel in one line:

“A love story wrapped inside a thriller wrapped inside a warning.”

A Book Built as an Artifact

The first edition of H2ONU is not a conventional hardcover. All 752 pages are printed in full color, with imagery, typography, and recurring visual patterns woven through 80 chapters — design that operates as part of the narrative, not decoration around it.

Some patterns are explained. Others are left for the reader to find.

The complete novel is available exclusively in the first-edition hardcover. The digital world extends it: a cinematic descent at h2onu.com, character pathways, and The Signal — an interactive companion, already open ahead of launch, where visitors interrogate the story’s symbols, motives, faith, technology, and the connections linking events across generations.

The progression is deliberate:

The book is the artifact. The website is the descent. The Signal is where the questions begin.

The Life Behind It

Culver’s years in Hawaiʻi changed the way he understood love, faith, reinvention, and the invisible systems shaping the world around us. A writer, skydiver, scuba diver, and collector of artifacts with histories of their own, he draws on Philadelphia grit and Pacific perspective to work the uneasy space between what humanity knows, what it believes, and what it refuses to see.

He did not simply write the story. He had to become the person capable of finishing it.

The book took eight years to build. The life behind it took longer.

A Purpose Beyond the Page

The honu — the Hawaiian green sea turtle — moves through the entire project as a symbol of endurance, navigation, and inherited memory. A portion of every direct purchase is designated to support Hawaiian sea turtle conservation through the H2ONU Initiative.

Availability

H2ONU by Ray Culver — available July 15, 2026

First-edition hardcover · 752 full-color pages · 80 chapters
$79.99 · ISBN 979-8-9922333-0-8
Available directly through h2onu.com · distributed to the global book trade through Ingram

For Editors — Five Ways In

The format story: a debut indie author printed 752 pages in full color and built an interactive world around them — against every economic rule of publishing.
The eight-year story: a midlife reinvention that produced a novel about reinvention.
The technology story: fiction about energy abundance arriving amid real energy politics.
The Hawaiʻi story: local author, local mythology, local conservation stake.
The interactive story: readers can question a novel’s archive directly — The Signal is live now.

Review copies (print only), hi-res artwork, trailer, and the full press kit: h2onu.com/press

About Ray Culver

Ray Culver is a writer, skydiver, scuba diver, and collector of artifacts with histories of their own. His years in Hawaiʻi reshaped his understanding of love, faith, and reinvention. H2ONU is his debut novel.

Some of it is fiction. Some of it is not.

Media Contact

Ray Culver — Author & Creator, H2ONU
press@h2onu.com · Press kit: h2onu.com/press

###