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The year is 2353 and our story focuses on two brothers on a mission (see previous posts) first on the Royal Road (what remains of Interstate 44), and the walled city of Louis with its giant silver arch - what once was Saint Louis in the state of Missouri, now the kingdom of Missoura. Life is good in Louis, especially if you are part of the Court crowd, where all manner of decadence is arrayed for your pleasures. Into this melange, our two brothers appear: the older, shorter brother believing he will wed the princess and his larger brawny brother ready to remove a dastardly duke who is in the way of nuptials.
That is our story and we have sworn to stick with it.
I have mentioned in previous posts how THE WARRIORS BAUMANN (Dec. 2025) is connected to the FLU SEASON Saga. Our two brothers are descendants of two Baumann sons in Book 6: THE GRANDSONS (2025), set in the "wild" western territory of a destroyed nation. The book ended with them settling in the north-central area of today's Oklahoma. Now, in THE WARRIORS BAUMANN, we follow mighty warrior Stanley K. Baumann as he leaves Wichita in the Kanza territory, heading east to meet up with his brother, the conniving redhead Rory Baumann. The year is 2353.
How did this whole timeline begin? It's fair to ask, here in this year of 2026. In Book 1: THE BOOK OF MOM (Nov. 2022), our story opens in the sixth year of a pandemic. Modeled after our own pandemic experience, I extended the worst effects of it for six more years - until Mom has had enough and knows it will never get better. She takes her teen son and her tuba and flees the city for the hope of safety with relatives in the countryside. But things do not go as planned. In Book 2: THE WAY OF THE SON (May 2023), that teen son sets out on his own with wife and baby, seeking a safer place to survive. They encounter all kinds of misery, including warring factions trying to control a town. They end up hiding in the forest of a national park. In Book 3: DAWN OF THE DAUGHTERS (Sept. 2023), that baby, named Isla, has grown into a young lady as the family works with other survivors who have settled in the national park. But marauders and militia come to disrupt what is almost an idyllic life. That teen son, now a grown man, is taken away to fight in the final civil war between north and south forces but he manages to escape. Then the mother, daughters, sisters are captured and taken away from the national park to the rebuilt city in the north where they suffer the hardships of the new society. Isla escapes and makes her way back to the national park and eventually further south to the marshes where she lives out her final days. That concludes the first trilogy of the series.
How did this whole timeline begin? It's fair to ask, here in this year of 2026. In Book 1: THE BOOK OF MOM (Nov. 2022), our story opens in the sixth year of a pandemic. Modeled after our own pandemic experience, I extended the worst effects of it for six more years - until Mom has had enough and knows it will never get better. She takes her teen son and her tuba and flees the city for the hope of safety with relatives in the countryside. But things do not go as planned. In Book 2: THE WAY OF THE SON (May 2023), that teen son sets out on his own with wife and baby, seeking a safer place to survive. They encounter all kinds of misery, including warring factions trying to control a town. They end up hiding in the forest of a national park. In Book 3: DAWN OF THE DAUGHTERS (Sept. 2023), that baby, named Isla, has grown into a young lady as the family works with other survivors who have settled in the national park. But marauders and militia come to disrupt what is almost an idyllic life. That teen son, now a grown man, is taken away to fight in the final civil war between north and south forces but he manages to escape. Then the mother, daughters, sisters are captured and taken away from the national park to the rebuilt city in the north where they suffer the hardships of the new society. Isla escapes and makes her way back to the national park and eventually further south to the marshes where she lives out her final days. That concludes the first trilogy of the series.
I thought I had finished the series, a trilogy being enough work on one story idea. But there was more to contemplate. And I soon was starting a new book in the series.
I chose to follow Isla's last son born in Book 3. In Book 4: THE BOOK OF DAD (June 2024) I let him, now a father, tell about his life in the tyrannical capital, where the first return of lost technology is pushed into surveillance and punishment of citizens. His daughter, Maggie, escapes the city for a home in the western territory. In Book 5: THE GRANDDAUGHTER (Sept. 2024), Maggie, now grown into a young lady, takes on the role of school teacher and decides what their sorry town needs is a kids' band. Her adventures eventually lead to her success as an orchestra conductor in the capital she once fled. However, she retires to her western home, content to compose music. It's a bit of a spoiler for Book 5 but her teen son insists on going on a posse with her brother the sheriff in Book 6: THE GRANDSONS (June 2025) only to never return. That story of Bart Baumann makes up the bulk of the book with a frame story in the 'present' narrated by Jake Baumann, Maggie's grown nephew, where a trial lets all the pieces of the puzzle come together. The book ends with the grandsons. Now we are surely done with the series - right?
You might think so but you'd be wrong. Story ideas have always come to me. In writing the FLU SEASON series, I was beginning the next book even as I was revising the current book. Each story built off what came before so it was easy to keep going. I chose the best character to tell the story and launched into a new narrative. But much of the series is dark, often violent, so I sought something lighter. I tried to tell a lighter story in Book 5 with Maggie and her friendship with musical instrument salesman Hal Hill mirroring the plot line of that old musical The Music Man, which I had enjoyed as a boy. Then the next book, THE GRANDSONS, took us back into a violent, dark epic.
I didn't need to tie THE WARRIORS BAUMANN to the FLU SEASON series, but it was fun to make some associations - and why couldn't they be descendants? Certainly after our real pandemic experience and writing this pandemic apocalyptic saga I needed - really needed - something lighter, a fun story. In fact, writing THE WARRIORS BAUMANN was so much fun I finished it in record time. I relished the ruse as much as the potent puns and witty wiles of the decadent society in the capital city of Louis. There is normal violence and sexual references for such a setting, in that time and place, yet nothing is told in a graphic manner; thus it is suitable for even adolescent readers. I made ample use of all manner of comedic effects, going deliberately for the joke, letting ridiculous situations compound, stitched scenes together with lavish wordplay. I even employ a play within the story: the handwritten notebooks of the son in Book 1-3 that is the source material for an opera composed by Maggie in Book 5, become a theater stage-play, a somewhat mythologized telling, in this Book 7. So many connections. But it's all in good fun!
Thus, we see the real experiences of our 2020-22 pandemic era led to a series about a pandemic ravaged society which, not actually specified, goes from presumably 2026 (Book 1) to sometime in the 2190s by the end of Book 6, to a major leap to 2353 for Book 7. It has been my most productive era. Granted, I've had nothing more to do with my teaching career now that I've retired. Yet, it is the writing which keeps me going. I get depressed when a book is published and sent out into the world. Then I have nothing to do. During the writing of these 7 books, with each one starting before the previous book launched, that was not a problem. Even now, a new book has taken hold of me. In fact, I've just finished the complete draft of it and now I begin revision.
I didn't need to tie THE WARRIORS BAUMANN to the FLU SEASON series, but it was fun to make some associations - and why couldn't they be descendants? Certainly after our real pandemic experience and writing this pandemic apocalyptic saga I needed - really needed - something lighter, a fun story. In fact, writing THE WARRIORS BAUMANN was so much fun I finished it in record time. I relished the ruse as much as the potent puns and witty wiles of the decadent society in the capital city of Louis. There is normal violence and sexual references for such a setting, in that time and place, yet nothing is told in a graphic manner; thus it is suitable for even adolescent readers. I made ample use of all manner of comedic effects, going deliberately for the joke, letting ridiculous situations compound, stitched scenes together with lavish wordplay. I even employ a play within the story: the handwritten notebooks of the son in Book 1-3 that is the source material for an opera composed by Maggie in Book 5, become a theater stage-play, a somewhat mythologized telling, in this Book 7. So many connections. But it's all in good fun!
Thus, we see the real experiences of our 2020-22 pandemic era led to a series about a pandemic ravaged society which, not actually specified, goes from presumably 2026 (Book 1) to sometime in the 2190s by the end of Book 6, to a major leap to 2353 for Book 7. It has been my most productive era. Granted, I've had nothing more to do with my teaching career now that I've retired. Yet, it is the writing which keeps me going. I get depressed when a book is published and sent out into the world. Then I have nothing to do. During the writing of these 7 books, with each one starting before the previous book launched, that was not a problem. Even now, a new book has taken hold of me. In fact, I've just finished the complete draft of it and now I begin revision.
I call it A TIME OF KINGS. It concerns twin princes battling each other for the King's throne, set in the Americus, the collection of kingdoms between Missouri and eastern Ohio. This epic is centered on the Realm of Chicageaux and in its capital of New Cago. When the twin princes and their siblings take provinces of the Realm to rule, war begins between New Cago and Cinnati, with forces from surrounding city-states joining in. The ungainly outcome of the war sweeps down through the history that follows. In this medieval epic, our narrator is a Baumann, though his identity is hidden for much of the book: starting as a boy caught in a battle in Chapter 1 to an old man in the epilogue. That roughly covers the years 2975 to 3080. Such is life. Such is the writing life. Now - finally - I have no further ideas.
More about A TIME OF KINGS in a future blog. Thanks as always for your support. Enjoy these tales told for your entertainment and enlightenment.
More about A TIME OF KINGS in a future blog. Thanks as always for your support. Enjoy these tales told for your entertainment and enlightenment.
(C) Copyright 2010-2026 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.
