Today is Lansing’s Pagan Pride Day! If you’re of that persuasion, or are interested in the community of people that are, head on out to Valhalla Park in Holt to check out flaming sword fighting, DJs, awesome vendors, and great food! Full disclosure – my wife had a large hand in planning and making it happen, so I’m completely biased. You’re crazy if you don’t try out her apple or banana breads at the bake sale.

Two Vampires is up on the iTunes book store! If you have an iDevice that can support iBooks, you can grab a DRM-free EPUB for $0.99! The process was easy, so future releases should be available through this store at the same time as the others.

I got stuff done! I’m so excited about it, I’m going to tell you!

• Todd’s Story is now available as an EPUB. It’s just as free as the PDF!
• Two Vampires has been submitted to the iBooks store!
• The Remembrance rewrite Chapter 1 FINAL READTHROUGH is complete!
• The Glass Crown is two and a half chapters away from a completed first draft! Yay second novel!
• Exclamation points!
• I have officially retired the publish runs of The Remembrance (hardcover, trade paperback, and eBook)!
• It’s apple cider season! My favorite places to get it are Quality Dairy, Uncle John’s Cider Mill, and Biggby’s!

Rewriting the Remembrance, from 16 May.

I spoke with Nikki about this over the phone. She loved the idea of Schuler hallucinating about the real enemy far before it actually shows up on the Homeland’s doorstep. She says that Schuler, while homeless, should have one prized posession – a battery operated radio. That first day, after the TV and radio signals went away, when the cities were getting hit, Schuler was scanning the dial, just like Jason was, and “got lucky”. He picked up Diane’s broadcast.

He would obsessively tune into it, listening to all of the rebroadcasts. He’d learn about the meteors that had wiped out (or very nearly so) the major cities all over the world. He would learn about the Locusts, and what survivors were learning about them as they fought back. He would learn about how cunning and nearly insurmountable of an enemy they were, and their seeming need to wipe out humanity. Here was an enemy worse than the VC! Here was an enemy worth fighting!

I’ve decided to split up my Writing Journal entries into two parts. Part the first, where I write about my own writing thoughts, will still be called Writing Journal. Part the second, where I react to something that Nikki has brought up as an issue in my writing, will be called Editor’s Note.

Rewriting the Remembrance, from 13 May

If a scouting party is easily defeated, or, I guess, defeated at all by Schuler alone, it’s not much of a threat. Even if he had the help of a hastily-assembled crack commando team, civilians would dismiss the threat as defeatable – nothing to worry about. After all, if they can be defeated once, they can be defeated again. There would be no cause to rally together as a community, no “Them” to define an “Us” against.  Okay, if the “Them” isn’t the Locusts, who could it be?

Reality shifting is a possibility. It’s come up a great deal in the first two chapters. Could Schuler – the entire Homeland – be formed by the fever dreams of a drunk, homeless Vietnam veteran?

If Schuler is a way to express teenage angst about father figures (don’t ask), it’s important to consider who he is to be now, because changing how he came about will change who he is at a fundamental level. His motivations will change. Perhaps his reactions will change as well.

If Schuler modified reality, there would be plenty of justified paranoia. A threat would lurk around every corner, just waiting to strike. People would be being followed by lurkers in bushes, behind corners, on rooftops. Lives would constantly be in danger; the civilians would need to be protected at all costs. Only with his demented fantasy made flesh, given reality, will Schuler be able to regain his agency and interact with the world around him constructively.

Who should the enemy be? Viet Cong? Urban gangs? Corrupted military pencil-pushers and those who were gullible enough to be led by them? Could the Locusts figure in? Could he hallucinate about the real, actual enemy? How would that work?

I’ve decided to split up my Writing Journal entries into two parts. Part the first, where I write about my own writing thoughts, will still be called Writing Journal. Part the second, where I react to something that Nikki has brought up as an issue in my writing, will be called Editor’s Note.

Rewriting the Remembrance, from 04 May.

In Chapter 3, shortly after the caravan of survivors battles its way through the advancing line of Locusts, they stumble on the Homeland. Nikki raised the point that since we had shortened the timeline, she wasn’t sure if they now had enough time to be as organized as they are written to be.

I went back through it, skimming for the battle and the Homeland. I was relieved to find that I at least had it in the right order. The Caravan wanders into the Homeland directly after the battle, which means that the line of Locusts had been through only hours before. My first read through had me thinking it was fine. The barricade was hastily constructed, Schuler was just setting up his command and control in the TV shop, so they hadn’t had much time to put together any sort of infrastructure. They were just using what still existed from before.

Right?

For everything to still be functional, the Locusts can’t have made it inside. For the Locusts not to have made it inside, several things need to happen. There have to be borders to be guarded and patrolled. That means that in the week since the meteors landed, the Homeland must have come together as a like-minded community, in reaction to some outside force. Even then, to have enough defenders gathered to keep the locusts entirely at bay is a tall order.

Schuler has to have his wake-up call. Before, his wartime experiences burst through the years of alcoholism, depression, and homelessness when the Locusts attacked the suburb he was wandering through. He can’t have rallied and protected the Homeland in the hour since the wave went through. Even saying that an advance scouting party of Locusts had come through and triggered Schuler feels half-ass, and unlikely to produce the desired result.