UPDATE (9/15): Due to the vagaries of the internet the paperback version's availability will be delayed by 2-3 days.
UPDATE (9/16)! The book gods have ruled! The paperback link is here. Thanks for your patience.
You can get the entire series (five books) here.
Does that end the series? Hmmm. I thought I was writing a stand-alone novel when I wrote the first book, THE BOOK OF MOM, but I realized half way into it that the story would have to continue. Because I couldn't see a two-book series, I immediately went for a trilogy while writing Book 2 THE WAY OF THE SON. However, as I was concluding Book 3, DAWN OF THE DAUGHTERS, I had ideas for another book. Then, while writing Book 4, THE BOOK OF DAD (out this past June), I had ideas for Book 5 THE GRANDDAUGHTER. I began to wonder when the madness would end while hoping it never would. (I am currently well into the writing of Book 6, THE GRANDSON, which should be the final book in the series.)
Does that end the series? Hmmm. I thought I was writing a stand-alone novel when I wrote the first book, THE BOOK OF MOM, but I realized half way into it that the story would have to continue. Because I couldn't see a two-book series, I immediately went for a trilogy while writing Book 2 THE WAY OF THE SON. However, as I was concluding Book 3, DAWN OF THE DAUGHTERS, I had ideas for another book. Then, while writing Book 4, THE BOOK OF DAD (out this past June), I had ideas for Book 5 THE GRANDDAUGHTER. I began to wonder when the madness would end while hoping it never would. (I am currently well into the writing of Book 6, THE GRANDSON, which should be the final book in the series.)
FLU SEASON is a series. Each book follows after the previous book. Each book, however, is a stand-alone novel, complete in itself. A lot of series are set up this way: yes, you are meant to read them in order for the best experience but each volume can stand as its own story regardless of having read other volumes. A character may appear in more than one book and the timeline traverses the series, and in that way they are linked. But standing as individual novels, the characters do catch you up and give you what you need to know from earlier books so you're not left confused. (Note: I never make use of the infamous "As you know, Bob..." constructions.
Here is a look at what you can expect in each novel of the series, as tweeted previously.
Everything was fine, just me and Mom. And her precious tuba. Then the pandemic came and everyone had to adapt to a new normal. Until the new normal became unbearable.
We awoke one morning and the news was worse than before. Food rationing, no power, gas lines. Mom decided we should leave, wait it out at my grandparents' farm, but danger followed us, all the way to the coast, trying to find safety with family members who instead needed our help more than we needed theirs.
I had to trust Mom to find a sanctuary - hopefully not an island where other survivors are trying to set up their own society with rules as strict as back in the city. And definitely not a place where our family secrets will be exposed.
That's the last thing we need as we wait for this pandemic to end.
Everything changes when you lose your mother, even more if you lose her during a pandemic when everyone is fighting for survival and it is your responsibility to protect her and you fail.
Now you have a wife and baby to protect in the savage outerlands - where danger lurks in every shadow, and it's every man for himself.
I call it the Way of the Son - definitely not the way Mom would've gone.
The road is finite, and well-marked, so you only need to go along it, following the path that’s already set before you. Yet sometimes it will lead you in the wrong direction. Sometimes you will end up in the wrong place. You have to find your way back home again, wherever that may be - even through a deadly pandemic.
It was hard enough trying to start from scratch after the pandemic destroyed half of everything. Best to settle far from anyone, hiding in the forest of a national park.
But with militia from the new government coming by, rebels still on the loose, and new neighbors settling nearby, the new normal was a mix of intense danger and surprising joy.
But which kind of life would win in the end?
How can you raise a bunch of daughters in this kind of world?
Hiding away in the forest of a national park, Sandy's family (from Books 1 & 2) waits for the world to return to normal.
But they soon discover other families have the same idea. As the survivalists of the national park work together, his family faces challenges and opportunities. They suffer through the vagaries of an on-going civil war between North and South territories.
The conflict splits the family into convergent destinies, leaving Sandy's daughter, Isla, to carry the family into the future, living to witness the reconstruction of a new society.
Fritz is sent for rehabilitation, then assigned a street cleaner job in the city, just for making a video exposing the true history of the ten-year pandemic and civil war that followed - based on everything his mother, Isla, has told him all his life - whether he wanted to hear it or not.
Now he finds himself in trouble again in the capital city as he tries to make sense of this Ideal Society. With weekly counseling and constant surveillance, Fritz is going crazy. Only getting back his family's tuba might save him.
That crime sets him up for a crucial act which lands him in the Department of Social Order. Only a reprieve by the Governor herself - the self-styled Big Sister - can save him this time. But it comes with a cost, one he may not be able to pay.
The next chapter in the FLU SEASON saga follows Isla's youngest child, now grown and a husband and father, as he fights for truth, justice, and a way out.
FLU SEASON 5: THE GRANDDAUGHTER
Isla Baumann is born in the seventh year of the great pandemic (Books 1-3). Her last child, Fritz, goes to the capital (Books 3-4) and suffers under the restored government's oppression. His children escape to a small town in the western corner of the nation.
THE GRANDDAUGHTER (Book 5) follows Maggie's life as a young woman with ambition stuck in a dusty cowtown. She decides what this post-pandemic town needs is a children's band. But first she must return to the dirty capital to claim the family's tuba.
Following in her great-great-grandmother's footsteps, she vows to play the tuba and gets a musical instrument salesman to help her start the band. But there are plenty of obstacles to achieving her goals, a struggle which brings her to the ultimate decision that will save the capital and the nation.
I hope you enjoy this pandemic/post-pandemic/dystopian family saga which, back in March 2020, I didn't intend to write. But I had some time on my hands while staying home the rest of the year. This is the result and I'm quite pleased with it. Even as I get older and other things work less well, my twisted mind can still dream up twisted stories to entertain myself - and you, if you so choose. Thanks as always for your support all of these years.
I expect FLU SEASON 6: THE GRANDSON to be finished sometime in 2025, likely toward autumn as I'm not in any hurry.
(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.
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