THE BOOK OF DAD celebrates Father's Day!

Below is a reprint from last year's Father's Day blog post....

But first, an Update!

It seems appropriate that a novel titled The Book of Dad be launched around Father's Day. When I wrote the book and then spent time revising and editing it, I didn't expect to tie it to Father's Day. However, as things work out, it was finished close to the day so I deliberately held off launching it so it could be the same weekend.

(The ebook is available now and the paperback version will be available on June 18.)

This sequel to my FLU SEASON trilogy follows the unfortunate exploits of Fritz, Isla's last child, now grown and in trouble for making a video of his mother in which she tells about the 10-year pandemic and the hard decades that followed. Those facts now run counter to the restored government's version of history. The video is removed from streams and all copies confiscated while Fritz, a husband and father of three, is sentenced to rehabilitation. 

Returning to the cold, gray city, assigned to a single worker's unit, given a menial job, he finds his wife has filed for dissolution and his sons are stuck in a government school facing the radical new policies of Big Sister, the cruel governor. Fritz tries to stay out of trouble, seeing a counselor weekly to continue receiving his food rations, but he can't help but get into trouble again. He devises a caper to get back his tuba and his grandfather's notebooks - but it goes bad and he winds up in the Department of Social Order. 

What will happen to him there? What will happen after? Can his life get any more miserable? All he has are painfully brief meetings with his 6 year old daughter, Maggie - who takes over as main character and narrator in the next book in this series, coming later in 2024. Fritz can only solve his problems, save his family, by making an unfair deal with Big Sister - and accepting the lie about everything that happened during his mother's life. 

Yes, there is a deliberate effort to have the story mirror, not parallel, Orwell's "1984". Rather than a different version of "1984", I considered the natural, logical ways a restored society might develop and depicted the result in the cold, gray capital city. I allow a few aspects which could be said to be "like" things in "1984" but those act as Easter eggs for the careful reader. In the end, this is a unique story of one man's fight against the system that wants to remove him from history - not merely get him to agree what 2+2 might equal.

FLU SEASON 5: THE GRANDDAUGHTER'S TALE (available later in 2024) picks up the story, following Fritz's daughter, Maggie, now an adult. She's determined to start a children's band in her dusty western town, efforts which lead her to face a variety of problems....

Fictional Fathers for Father's Day (June 18, 2023)

(Purely for comparison, you can read here my blog post on different mothers for Mother's Day.)

"I've just finished a dystopian trilogy, FLU SEASON, about a quirky family dealing with a pandemic and the violent fallout from that devastating reality.

Book 1 and 2 are out and Book 3 is finished and coming out this fall. The narrator of Book 1 and 2 is a teen son, describing in Book 1 his sassy never-married mom ("The Book of Mom") and in Book 2 his own family ("The Way of the Son"). So far the story is about this teen boy becoming a man and with that title a husband and father (no spoilers; it was inevitable).

I've done a lot of thinking about that arc as I wrote this family drama. The ideas a boy has about becoming a man and all that comes with that role. The criteria to be met. The duties and responsibilities. The joys and regrets. The fact that the roles keeps changing: son, father, grandfather. Because I've borrowed liberally from my own thoughts and feelings, these novels are deeply personal to me - even though they are, of course, totally fiction. (We know our pandemic ended officially in 2022. But what if it didn't? How would everything be, say, six years on? Eight years? Eleven years? What would remain? How would people carry on?)

Book 3 ("Dawn of the Daughters") is narrated by the daughter of this boy/man/husband/father and tells the continuing story of the family through her entire life, including views of how society has changed post-pandemic. I have ideas for a Book 4 which would be narrated by her grown son, now a father, and describe how he deals with the dystopia of the post-pandemic rebuilt world as well as the effects of having her as his mother. It truly is a vicious circle.

Here is my blog posting for 2020's Father's Day:

Last month, for Mother's Day, I waxed poetic on the three kinds of mothers I happened to have in my novels. Well, turnabout seems fair play, so let me ponder the types of fathers I find in my novels and consider their source.

So I'm sitting comfortably at home this summer, counting the sales of my latest novel, and it hits me! I should be promoting my Father's Day novel, the one titled AIKO. It's a kind of Father's Day story, after all. And because Father's Day is here again, everyone is doing a grad and dad marketing blitz. My just launched novel EXCHANGE has a dad at its center. Unfortunately he has lost his wife and his daughter in a mass shooting, but there are many "dad" tropes as he struggles to put his life back together and find meaning in what remains.

Everyone knows that grads are tired of reading. Dads tend to be reading averse, too. So maybe books do not make the best gifts. Job search books for grads, perhaps. A book on whatever is dad's current hobby, maybe. But fiction too often falls to the dark, dusty shelf of well-intended gifts. Beside the neckties. My own father would rather read through a stack of history and politics books before he would ever crack the cover of a novel. He is ok with wearing a necktie, however.

So how many books are there that feature Father's Day, anyway? Or about fathers in general? Mothers are easy. Brothers and sisters are common. The sweet aunt and the generous uncle are often seen in literature. Fathers are generally the bad guys, villainous, cruel, authoritarian, mean, and uncaring. They are more often than not portrayed as abusers. Sometimes they only appear as the bad memory of a protagonist and we get a couple of graphic incidents to showcase dad's unpleasantness. (I had to do that in A BEAUTIFUL CHILL and A GIRL CALLED WOLF because they were based on real people and their lives; however, fathers in my other novels are thankfully less abusive.) It's almost a stereotype. Fathers get a bad rap, I think. We tend to only hear about the bad ones. Think of Darth Vader, a.k.a. "Dark Father", and others of his ilk.

I think about the fathers in my other novels. My protagonists seem to relate to their fathers very much like I relate to my own father. Funny, that coincidence, right? Write what you know, they say. Or am I drawing on the only role model I have? (Curiously, I'm an only child and my protagonists tend not to have siblings, also - or siblings that are throw-away characters, mentioned but not active in the story. In AFTER ILIUM, the young hero dislikes his dentist father's strictness and is glad to be on his own touring Greece and Turkey after college. In EPIC FANTASY *WITH DRAGONS, our dragonslayer hero's father was a military commander killed in battle, so our hero carries only the memory of a violent, frightening man. In A DRY PATCH OF SKIN, the first volume of my vampire trilogy, our poor hero is transforming into a vampire. He is angry at his father for not warning him and for sending him away to live with an aunt. Otherwise, that fictional dad sounds an awful lot like my own father: haughty, disinterested, aloof. In volume 2, SUNRISE, the father comes across disturbingly like my own father at the time I was writing the book: well-meaning but still authoritarian to an uncomfortable degree.

In AIKO, our hero discovers he is a father, then struggles to find his child. There is a brief mention of his own father being stationed in Japan after WWII - like my own father was. After the war, my father went to college on the G.I. Bill and became a social studies teacher, then later a librarian. Now he is deep into retirement, having put his books away for poor eyesight and sleepier days, not to mention the devastation of a hurricane.

When I think of my father, the image that comes most readily to my mind is of him sitting in his reading chair, reading: reading in such a focused, determined manner that I could get away with literally anything because nothing could disturb him. Thus, he was separated from my everyday activities, always there but on the sidelines, uninvolved in my youthful experiences. And that is what I learned of fatherhood: 1) provide the family income, 2) relax at home after the job, 3) fix things around the house and yard. Also, 4) be master of the castle, 5) enforce the rules, and when necessary (6) represent the family like a knight in shining armor when some authority or institution challenges us. He is the (7) champion, the protector, the lord of the manor. And that is, for better or worse, how I portray the fathers in my novels: powerful yet distant. 

If you've been following this blog you probably know I'm a dad. It's a weird feeling knowing there is someone living in the world partly as a result of my actions. Sure, we can imagine clones, or cyborgs, but another human? That's crazy. Like us and yet not like us. And eventually they go their own ways and have their own lives and we scratch our heads and think What just happened? Now my offspring is finishing college, studying to be something in the medical field. This is after going through Army training to be a combat medic.
UPDATE: Well into her professional career. 

As I think back over the past  years, I can pinpoint a few things I did that might have helped raise this baby to adulthood. But there are just as many other things I did about which I have no clue. Maybe they helped, maybe not. Only my grown child can tell. I'm pleased, even proud, of how this googly little bundle of joy overnight became this awesome adult who vaguely resembles me in appearance and words and behavior. 

So for now, I must pass the reins to my protégé. No longer do I need to concern myself so much with me doing great things and achieving this and that and telling my child about, you know, the things I can boast about. Now it is time for me to boast about my grown child, to note what this new adult is doing, and praise the new things, the new deeds, of this adult - to praise and be proud of what my child has done more than being happy at what I have done. I've actually inserted this idea into the thoughts of my protagonist dad in EXCHANGE. Oh, I will still write books, of course - until the keyboard is ripped from my cold, dead fingers. But now it's no longer all about me. It's about the generation we produce and what they will do as we fade gently into that good night.

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(C) Copyright 2010-2024 by Stephen M. Swartz. All Rights Reserved. No part of this blog, whether text or image, may be used without me giving you written permission, except for brief excerpts that are accompanied by a link to this entire blog. Violators shall be written into novels as characters who are killed off. Serious violators shall be identified and dealt with according to the laws of the United States of America.

FLU SEASON, a pandemic/post-pandemic series! Where are we now?

It has been a long time coming. I wasn't sure I could do it. But then there was the first book, coming when I was good and ready by 2022. And I knew by the middle of writing it that there would be a second book - and with a second book it had to be a trilogy. Then came the hard part: a fourth book. 

My first two trilogies (THE DREAM LAND TRILOGY and the STEFAN SZEKELY VAMPIRE TRILOGY) both lent themselves to a fourth book. However, while I started a fourth book for each trilogy, they went nowhere due to other things taking my time. This time, I have time and plenty of it, plus a multigenerational cast that loves to throw plots at me.

Now I'm thrilled to say that not only is Book 4: THE BOOK OF DAD launching this coming week, timed to Father's Day, but I have completed Book 5: The Granddaughter's Tale, coming later this year. And, if I dare suggest it, another book has been started. These three books would make a whole 'nother trilogy!

I know it can be confusing with news and updates on Books 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 scattered around the platforms. Let me do a quick summary of each book and make clear the status of each without giving away too much of the story.

The initial idea came, obviously, from the very real pandemic we experienced early in 2020. I wanted to write such a story but it was too immediate for me to create fiction. A couple years later, with further thought and planning and the return to normal, I had a way to start it and knew how the story would proceed - without any consideration at the time of it being more than a one-off stand-alone novel. I would begin the story in a pandemic much like what we experienced, using references we can all identify, but start my novel after six years of it, now a lot worse and with a lot more collapsing of society.

Books 1, 2, and 3 are available now in paperback and for Kindle.

1 The Book of Mom

Autistic teen son Sandy narrates what he and his sassy single mother go through in deciding to flee the city and what they endure once they leave. Mom is a professional tuba player and music professor; Sandy just started virtual college. Heading for his grandparents' small farm, they discover that the ravages of the city have spread into the countryside. What was to be a safe place to wait out the rest of the pandemic becomes a dead end. Plan B goes into effect. They travel on to find other relatives and discover how they have been managing, with plenty of tales of horror and grief. Plan B becomes Plan C. A lot goes wrong as they continue seeking a sanctuary. Eventually, they return to the coastal island where they've vacationed during past summers, a place now with its own unsettling rules. (More here.)

[Note: Unlike a lot of pandemic/plague and apocalyptic stories, FLU SEASON doesn't rely on zombies or other tropes of science fiction but strives to present a realistic world not far from what we might actually experience in the immediate future.]

2 The Way of the Son

Sandy narrates the journey he and his teen cousin Hannah are forced to undergo through the savage 'outerlands', bearing Mom's tuba and Baby Isla. They seek sanctuary but find the land even more dangerous, lawlessness everywhere, and face dangers that make them tougher. They also encounter the start of fighting between factions of the remnant government and rebels while finding other friends and relatives. Sandy must quickly become a man, to make his mother proud and his wife confident of his ability to protect them. (More here.)

[Note: Although our pandemic began in late 2019, in order to keep the story from becoming dated, I do not give a specific year in the series. You can think of Book 1 as beginning in 2026, if you like; count up for the next 80 years to cover subsequent generations.]

3 Dawn of the Daughters

Narrated by Isla - at the beginning she is a child of four, old age by the final pages. She hides out with her parents in the forest of a national park. They soon meet other survivalists and agree to work together and protect each other. Believing they may be the last of humanity, they try to have more births. Adapting to the lawless post-pandemic world is difficult enough, but then Sandy is taken away to serve in a militia - escapes, captured by the other side to fight for them, then put in a POW camp. Later marauders come, taking the women away. Isla grows up in the idyllic forest as a child but she must become strong as a teen and as a young woman in order to survive the traumas of the newly reconstructed society. She only finds comfort and safety in her later years - as documented by her last child, Fritz, who becomes a video technician in the rebuilt society. (More here.)

4 The Book of Dad (available June 14)

Fritz returns to the capital from rehabilitation, bitter and disillusioned, unsure why he was sent there or who sent him. He knows it is because of the video he made of his elderly mother telling her stories of the pandemic years and the lawlessness that followed. Now the government says none of it happened and Fritz must learn the 'true' history. As he struggles to settle into his new life, miserable and paranoid, his neurotic behavior gets him into trouble again - until Big Sister herself confronts him and offers a hard bargain. (More here.)

5 The Granddaughter's Tale (complete; coming later in 2024)

Fritz's daughter Maggie moves out west to Skinner Canyon with her mother and brothers, a place where their cousin Faith fled from the national park years before. Now grown up, Maggie gains a sister in her cousin Eve, as she plans to start a town band, trying to follow the legacy of her great-great-grandmother Polly (Sandy's mother). First, she must return to the capital to reclaim the tuba. It seems an impossible task, especially when she makes a few missteps. But her staunch determination takes her into the post-pandemic music world.

6 A Grandson's Revenge (tentative title; drafting)

Leaving Skinner Canyon, Fritz's grandson goes with his uncle's posse in pursuit of a notorious outlaw, then gets separated, finds himself in trouble and suffers through dangerous situations which change him into an outlaw himself.

I'm certain that by the time I have finished Book 6 and launched it, I may be out of ideas. This plan also thwarts any attempt I have considered of finishing a few unfinished works sitting on my computer. For example, when I was 13, I mapped out a vast medieval epic - too large for me to start in those days of manual typewriters so I put it aside for my retirement years. Then I write this Flu Season series instead!

However, in Book 5, I manage to tie the story to the way things will be in the future that is that unfinished medieval epic (starts in the year 3000). I also let characters mention the way things are over in Europe during the Book 5 time period, thus linking Flu Season with the Stefan Szekely Vampire Trilogy (Book 2 starts in 2028, Book 3 starts in 2099). (More here.) 

Aren't words amazing?

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(C) Copyright 2010-2024 by Stephen M. Swartz. All Rights Reserved. No part of this blog, whether text or image, may be used without me giving you written permission, except for brief excerpts that are accompanied by a link to this entire blog. Violators shall be written into novels as characters who are killed off. Serious violators shall be identified and dealt with according to the laws of the United States of America.