A Medieval Trilogy . . . of a sort!

Last month I formally introduced my forthcoming epic novel A TIME OF KINGS. Its premise is a war between twin princes which tears apart the realm. The war is fought between Chicageaux and Cinnati. Simple enough, I thought. Based on a story idea I had in junior high school and fully realized as a screenplay in college, with attempts at novelization that failed, I finally have finished this labor of love and now find the great tome complete in every way. In fact, much to my satisfaction. Better than I ever could've imagined as a 13-year old who never expected to write novels in his later years. You can read more about the story and its origins in my previous blog post. In this post, I shall discuss some interesting statistics I've found.

I began The Book of Mom back in 2020 - what turned out to be the first book of the FLU SEASON Saga. That was the start of our beloved pandemic, the source of six books of family drama. Well enough. First a trilogy. Then a sequel, and another book, and a final book to complete a second trilogy. Then it got interesting when I jumped head-first into the future by a couple of centuries to offer a medieval world where two brothers, descendants of the Flu Season Saga's Baumann family, set out on a journey across Missouri to the capital city of Louis in 2353. 

THE WARRIORS BAUMANN is written as a ribald comedy, the humor unhidden and often bordering on the ridiculous, with twists and turns that no reader would expect, right up to the final unlikely scene sometime in the past. Is this novel the final volume of the FLU SEASON Saga, or is it the start of a new trilogy? A trilogy with each volume set in the future medieval America where former states are now kingdoms and wars are fought with swords and arrows? Could it be so? Following THE WARRIORS BAUMANN (intro post here), we go further into the future, deeper into a medieval society that America never had but will have in the future. Like, maybe try 3000 AD - long enough for survivors of catastrophe to rebuild and eventually reach the level of a medieval society.

Hold on! Wait a minute. That's never been tried before. Stories set in a future America, sure. They tend to be full of technology, perhaps oppressive technology, the true dystopia disguised as utopia. Yet has there been a future America, with places named, which is based on a medieval society? I think not. Show me the scrolls where scribes tell it, if you can! This was my idea back in the late '70s when the Oil Crisis had me predicting we would eventually be back to riding horses. No gunpowder would force us to use swords (I was into fencing at that time). And the rest followed logically. Jump to 2020 and we have instead a convenient pandemic to crush civilization (in the FLU SEASON Saga the pandemic goes on for 10 to 14 years depending on location).

I was finalizing my apocalyptic Western, THE GRANDSONS (Book 6 of the FLU SEASON Saga) when I got the "crazy" idea for THE WARRIORS BAUMANN. I began taking notes on Sept. 10 in 2025 and made a file to begin writing the book on Oct. 14, 2025. I completed the full draft of the novel on Dec. 6, 2025 - a truly quick write. I was having so much fun the book practically wrote itself while I got credit for slapping the keyboard 2-3 hours each day. At a "slim" 290 pages, my computer notes that I spent 24 hours in total for editing it (time with the file open following the date it was first completed). The published book came to 94,000 words. As a cross-over or genre-mashing novel, it is having a hard time finding its best audience. Yet a few have come upon it (see this review from Goodreads).

While I waited for a new artist to [not] deliver the cover art (not my usual, trusty artist), I began what I had been planning to work on during my retirement years: A TIME OF KINGS. I knew it would be a bear of an epic, so I decided to wait until I had the time to devote to it completely. Fancy that! I finished this most magnificent epic in record time. I felt the story flowing through me, straight onto the page. I made the file for the manuscript on August 6, 2025 - knowing I would write it next. I came to the end of the full draft on March 7, 2026 - a few weeks ago. Again, my computer counts 340 hours of editing! Final page count is 545 with 187,000 words - an epic for sure!

The way I write is to compose new scenes each morning, then edit previous scenes. Or vice-versa. Thus, I do not write and rewrite full drafts. There is no true "second draft" and "third draft" - only when I've finished the whole thing do I go back over an already well-edited manuscript to make changes. By working constantly on revision and editing even while writing new pages, the finished manuscript is close to its final form. That's is my method, and the more I write and the more "natural" the story flows from me, the fewer changes are needed in the final reading.

Today I finished my final read-through of A TIME OF KINGS, making minor changes as needed (a changed word here, a cut sentence there, a line of dialogue added, a pesky error corrected). Now we proceed to the beta reader while I occupy myself on...what? Another new novel? Seriously? I'm like a shark: if it doesn't keep swimming it dies. If I don't keep writing, I will probably get bored and fall asleep. 

So I started a new novel, set in the same world as A TIME OF KINGS. I see it as a quest/journey story, a kind of Canterbury Tales where multiple characters appear, tell their tales, and exit while our narrator continues on. That narrator is [spoiler] the offspring of a major player in A TIME OF KINGS. Furthermore, I can say - because a certain faction of fellow authors may wish to know - this final book of my Medieval America Trilogy(tm) seems to be turning into a "Cozy Romantasy" even as I type this blog post. Pshaw! 

Just you wait and see! 

A TIME OF KINGS comes out later this year, as early as July, as late as September.

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(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.

The Origin Story of A TIME OF KINGS

Greetings and Salutations, my dear Readers! Have I got a story for you. (Unless you want to go for the usual March events and selected commentary - in which case, please go here: March blog post, where you will fine all you want to know about Pi Day and St. Patrick's Day.) Otherwise, let us move on into the future.

March used to be a time of Spring Break, a week of merriment and mirth serving as not only a transition between winter and spring but between the hard work of a school semester and the slow slide into summer vacation. The last time I experienced this Spring Break was in 2020, oddly when we started our famous pandemic. I've told the tale before and lived to tell it. The administrators at my university instructed us to complete the semester exclusively online once we "returned" from our week off. I did that as best I could while being caught unprepared (no camera, no mic).

Then I retired and now I cannot keep track of the days of the week, all rushing together like a rollercoaster. In my idle time, I started writing a pandemic-focused novel - but I started further along on a more extensive crisis. One book became a trilogy, extending our story a couple generations into the future. I thought I was done but new ideas pestered me into writing a "sequel" and then another "sequel" and then, yes, a so-called "conclusion" to the series. The conclusion had barely launched when I was hard at work again on a new novel set much further into the future - a future that saw further degradation of civilization to a medieval society - and it was a ribald comedy, too! 

So now that 7 books have been written on this one timeline (trying to connect them with my previously published fantasy novel EPIC FANTASY *WITH DRAGONS (2017) or at least provide crucial background for it), I thought I was done. But those of you who know me know I'm never done. 

I had one more book in me - saved from my adolescence for a time when I could do it justice. Given the massive story and the vast scope of the drama, I had to wait until I was an experienced novelist with life maturity to bring to the epic. 

That book, as I introduced in my previous blog post, is A TIME OF KINGS.

There are two things you must know before anything else:

1. The narrator/protagonist is a Baumann descendant - although it isn't revealed until later. A hint is given at the beginning but you will forget it until later.

2. Because the story is set even further down the timeline from the FLU SEASON Saga than even THE WARRIORS BAUMANN (2025) - and given its origin story from back in my sordid youth - I will not tie it to the series in an obvious way. It is, but it isn't (wink). But it would be Book 8 if you still want to keep counting them.

The origin story of a story, hmm?

Back in my 7th grade days I tried writing stories. Stupid stories little more than copies of the sci-fi stories I read voraciously at the time. It was true for me: write the stories you want to read. And yet, somehow, an idea came to me that was so huge, so complex, I could not write it. Not at that time. It overwhelmed me. I pledged to write it later, when I retired and had the time to devote to it. And so I have. And so I did: it is finished now.

What's A TIME OF KINGS about?

Back in 7th grade, I suffered from teen angst. The world was against me. So were some other guys in my school. I transformed all of that reality into a fantasy I could control. I saw myself as the good prince beset by evil doers bent on my demise. You could fashion a book out of such themes. I scribbled a few scenes in a spiral-bound notebook with a ballpoint pen, often during classes. I thought it through. Had the whole story in my head from start to finish. But I couldn't do much with only a manual typewriter. An electric typewriter I got later did not make it easier.

Later, in college, I took a screenwriting class and I finally got the whole story down from start to finish - albeit as film instructions plus dialogue. Getting all of what I could think up into the movie made it 3 hours long. Of course, I thought that would be worth it. We see several 3-hour movies these days and nobody seems to mind. Then, from that screenplay, I tried to novelize it. But I started at the wrong place and got stuck, put it away. I tried a different novelization attempt later but again got stymied soon into the story. The problem, as I now understand, was that I started with history, too much backstory, and written in a droll voice of a minor scribe who seemed less interested in what was about to happen.

Problem solved. After writing 7 books with mostly 1st-person narration, I found the way into the epic novel. (Read it for yourself: an exciting prologue that introduces the setting and the situation of the novel.) I tried to keep to the flaneur narrator (one who describes what is seen, what happens, without being a part of it) but couldn't keep it going after a while, so gradually our narrator becomes aware to us (who he is). As the epic goes on we get to know our narrator better and gradually follow his own actions and motivations and regrets within the greater story.

So what is this greater story?

In the far future, after civilization has collapsed and survivors have rebuilt up to the level of a medieval society, we find the states of America have become kingdoms with walled cities and  armies to protect them and wage war against other "city-states". Pressures from north and south help unite the states of "the Americus" (roughly Missouri across to Ohio). Our story begins in a battlefield where a lost boy becomes the ward of the young King of Louis (St. Louis). Named Jack by this King, he grows up at Court as the adopted brother to the prince and princess only to be sent away for training as a physician so he can be useful. 

Thus begins the true story. Eventually the princess runs away with the rugged prince of the Illini who now resides in New Cago (the new city built next to the ruins of old Chicageaux). Being about to give birth, the princess insists on physician Jack accompanying them on their flight to New Cago, pursued by her angry grandfather and his regiment. They must stop, the birth imminent, as fighting ensues at a small village. The princess gives birth to twin sons - the princes who will eventually tear apart the Realm. Later two other sons and a daughter are born and the rugged prince who becomes King of the Realm tries to teach them how to be leaders. 

As boys will be boys, they pass through adolescence, youth, and young adulthood with its many trials and ladies to woo. Which brings us to the insult and the revenge at the core of the story. Justice must prevail!

A medieval society with Court intrigue and palace drama, with armies clashing in the field and a siege of the walled city of Cinnati, the aftermath of the war and all that follows and how it greatly impacts our narrator in his own personal life, as he is tasked with monitoring the King and managing the Court into his elderly years.

I have avoided almost all possible spoilers. This is a rough outline only. The enjoyment in reading is in the details. The how and why of the plot points, the turn of the story, the thoughts and feelings, motivations and regrets of our major players. I have crafted a rich story using a large cast and a fertile setting. I'm certain you will enjoy it. I will say about the conclusion of this epic drama that it is satisfying - neither a happy ending nor a tragic ending. As is usual for a book written by me, life is not so tidy. Endings are merely the end of the story, while life for the characters may continue beyond the final page. It is best, therefore, to provide an end which is perfect in its conclusive form.

A TIME OF KINGS is not a Game of Thrones clone (my idea came in 1973) nor does it draw anything from current medieval dramas (which I have not seen). It is medieval in setting but everything happens in the middle states of America. And in the future, say 3000 AD. It features a Baumann descendant as narrator/protagonist who observes, analyzes, comments on what these twin princes do in trying to destroy each other. It has romance (young princes wooing their ladies) but also warfare (a few grisly scenes). Court intrigue (ministers scheming) and palace drama (the staff and their quirks, the Royals and their proclivities). There are strong female characters: princesses, the Queen, barmaids, the doula, various wives and daughters with strong personalities. And guiding us is a youth trained as a physician becoming Chief Medical Officer in the prince's army, becoming palace doctor to the King while trying to live his own life full of regrets as the Realm crumbles around him and he is helpless to stop the fall.

A TIME OF KINGS launches later this year (2026). Perhaps as early as summer but definitely by September. And, let me whisper this, I already have ideas for the next novel.... 

More story details in the next blog post.

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(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.

Love in A TIME OF KINGS

With the honoring of the Valentine saint once again, we can turn our attention to the meaning of all of it. As the years turn over, from childhood delight at receiving cute cards and cuter candy to our adolescent throes and expectations of receiving romantic cards and more expensive candy, to our young adult ambitions to only share the customs of this day with a special someone, to the truly adult situations where we may decide to simply relax and watch some romantic comedy to celebrate the day, to our later years where it is all too much trouble to put forth the effort - or else the significant other is gone - we strive to make something of this day, not so much for a long-dead priest who married couples in secret but instead for nothing but our own modern trifles. 

If you are not so predisposed, you might enjoy an old blog post where I ranted about the day. You can find it here - thanks is unnecessary.

When last we indulged in blogging, I concluded a four-part series on the writing of my ribald comedy set in a medieval future time titled THE WARRIORS BAUMANN. 

As the culmination of the FLU SEASON Saga, I turned toward a lighter story yet one in which serious matters still occur. First of those serious matters is why, 200 years after the conclusion of my apocalyptic Western epic THE GRANDSONS (Book 6), has the states of America devolved into rival kingdoms. The answer is multifold: social unrest, collapsing economy, and natural disasters reduce civilization to survivors who must rebuild. In our tale of two brothers on a mission, we find them on the road to Louis, the capital of the Kingdom of Missoura, a fine example of the rebuilt civilization albeit a decadent place. What happens in Louis tends to stay in Louis, of course. 

Set entirely in the year of 2353, THE WARRIORS BAUMANN has a satisfying conclusion, one which is not so obviously linked to my next novel, titled A TIME OF KINGS. Except for the exceptions. Let me explain....

Our future medieval epic opens with a battle scene in which a wounded king takes a boy found on the battlefield back to Louis, puts the boy into his family as brother to the king's own son and daughter. The adopted boy is given the name Jack, and he uses it throughout most of the book. His true name comes out later when we learn he is one of the ling line of Baumann descendants (there are earlier hints). Hence, a connection to the whole FLU SEASON Saga. However, this epic drama is not intended to draw from the earlier books any more than to recount the fall of civilization that occurs in them. There are no direct references back to those other books (unlike in THE WARRIORS BAUMANN where a stage play is performed based on an earlier character's opera, itself based on a much earlier character's notebooks recording events).

Thus, we have a wholly new story: an epic of vast scope covering the lifetime of our narrator, Jack, who becomes the Royal physician, giving him access to much Court drama, and thrusts him into the war between the twin princes. More crucially, Jack witnesses the aftermath of the war's outcome. Although the chief matters are settled, the Realm slowly succumbs to its liege's increasing melancholy despite attempts to intercede. No need to offer spoilers at this point. It is enough to offer this overview: a three-part novel - before, during, and after the great war between Chicageaux and Cinnati - with a vast scope (the kingdoms of the Americus) and a large cast of memorable characters living in the medieval society of the time. 

Background. In my early days of grandeur, around thirteen, when I thought i was on the verge of world domination, I opened a spiral-bound notebook and put Bic pen to lined page, and scribbled out the opening scenes of a big book that filled my head so full I feared drowning in the story. I didn't get far, writing by hand. Instead, I set myself to planning the story. I put some of my notes on paper using my manual typewriter. The main thing at that time was to record as much as I could of everything that happens, knowing that the scope of the epic story was too great for me to tackle in my adolescence. Also, I had yet to experience life in the way that's necessary to portray so many different people in the story with accuracy and verisimilitude.

I kept at it, held it in the back room, and in college wrote it as a screenplay - in those days where I believed I'd end up in Hollywood. At least in that format I was able to get the whole story down on paper: all the dialogue, all the twists and turns - and camera angles, fade outs, etc. From that screenplay, I began trying to novelize it - after being rejected by Hollywood. I started in the wrong place, and gave up. I gave it time and tried to write a novel version again only to run aground. In 2017 I published my only fantasy novel: EPIC FANTASY *WITH DRAGONS. In that story, the characters recount the infamous "War of the Five Princes" as a turning point in their ancient history (ancient to the characters in the far future where dragons fill the skies, but I digress...).

Then, as fate would assign it, many things happened in life and I wrote the FLU SEASON series. Then THE WARRIORS BAUMANN came along and I linked it back to the post-pandemic/collapse-of-society/rebuilding series of books. By the end of THE WARRIORS BAUMANN I knew that A TIME OF KINGS was inevitable. There are only a few minor references back to THE WARRIORS BAUMANN or the earlier books - easy to miss even if you've read those books. I intend for this newest epic novel to be a work on its own, but it's always fun to have a few ties to other works. No, this epic is completely serious (but with moments of natural humor, romance, wisdom, and so on like any good novel) and takes its subject seriously: the rivalry between twin princes that destroy the Realm in a future version of America built up from survivors' struggles to medieval kingdoms.

A TIME OF KINGS is finished. Complete. Undergoing the usual revision stage as I blog, with the cover artwork coming soon. Expected to be available in Fall 2026.

Next time: More on the plot, background in the story, and various connections. 

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(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.

THE WARRIORS BAUMANN & The Writing Life, part 4

You have likely finished reading THE WARRIORS BAUMANN by now. I have described my latest book as a ribald comedy (i.e., humor often based on naughty references) set in a future-medieval age of the Americus, a collection of kingdoms mirroring the former states. Future-medieval is meant to describe a medieval society which has developed many years from our present day - into the future, not brought forward from the past. How does that happen? Well, simply put, after a great plague ravaged the population, survivors were forced to rebuild. At the time of our story, society has gradually risen from the struggle to survive to a more civilized era of a medieval society - featuring castles and kings, swords and armor, horses and hounds. They have not intentionally taken their ideas from the past but have come upon them freely as daily life became more settled.

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. 

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 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.

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(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.

THE WARRIORS BAUMANN & The Writing Life, part 3

Rather than a 'Welcome to 2026' post, I'm continuing promotion of my newest novel THE WARRIORS BAUMANN, a ribald comedy set in medieval Missouri. Although this book is the latest installment in the FLU SEASON Saga, it is only tangentially connected. Our main characters are two Baumann descendants, brothers on a mission in the year 2353 - long after civilization has collapsed and then risen again but only to a medieval level, where former states are now kingdoms. The story is ripe for ruse and witty wiles, with a burly warrior, his clever brother, an out-on-his-luck actor, a girl warrior, a pouty princess, a dastardly duke, a wily wizard, a wayward traveler of the timestream, and a Waffle House waitress. Most of the action occurs along the Royal Road and its towns and in the capital city of Louis. (click to enlarge)

Even as I type this blog post, work continues on my next novel, a more serious epic titled A TIME OF KINGS which concerns the war between Chicageaux and Cinnati in 3030 AD, as told by another Baumann descendent. As I near the end of the initial draft, sitting at 165,000 words with two chapters to go, I am deepening and enriching the original story which I thought up at age 13 and typed up in a screenplay format while in college just to get the whole thing down on paper. More on this medieval story in a future blog post.

Where we left off in the previous blog post about my writing life, I'd thought my novel writing was done. I had published all of my books written prior to the ABNA competition (Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award) in 2011, 2012, and 2013 (The Dream Land, Book 3: Diaspora was newer than ABNA but it piggybacked off Book 2, obviously.). I had achieved my goal and could sit back satisfied as I continued my teaching career. Then we discovered vampires. Rather, my daughter did: the Twilight series, which became her obsession - to the point of collecting everything and writing fan fiction.

I told her what I knew about vampirism, based chiefly on a TV magazine show about a poor fellow who suffered from porphyria, a hideous disease which caused many of the terrible symptoms we typically associate with vampires. Rather than glittery skin as in the Twilight books and movies, real vampires had dry, scaly skin from a lack of blood flow. They also, based on my research, tended to be from one blood type and that blood type happened to be most concentrated in a little place I like to call Transylvania. Perhaps Bram Stoker also did his research and located his famous vampire in that region. So I sought to write a medically accurate vampire novel just to show my daughter the truth. 

I began with a protagonist who transforms over a short time into a vampire - unaware that his parents did the same and hid away without telling him the family curse. I lived in Oklahoma City at the time, which was 2013, and so I set the story right in my own backyard, and in the same time period as I was actually writing it. Therefore, A DRY PATCH OF SKIN was published on Halloween 2014 - at the very moment he completed his transformation in Zagreb, Croatia - while searching for a cure. It was a big hit, vampires being popular in those years. Even my own doctor deemed it medically sound and praised my research and extrapolation of the cause and effect of the syndrome.

Then life turned strange. I was invited to come and teach a summer course at a university in Beijing, China. The course I chose to teach was American Business English. The university paid for my airfare and my hotel across from the campus, and gave me a salary.  When I was not in the classroom for a couple hours on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, I was free to go sightseeing. Or stay in my hotel room and write a new novel.

The equally strange story of how I came to write A GIRL CALLED WOLF (2015) should be made into a movie. A relative of a Facebook friend saw my vampire book, read it and liked it. We "talked" online and I learned of her background, which seemed like a fascinating story. I encouraged her to write it for 

NaNoWRiMo (National Novel Writing Month [November]) of which I had participated as a way to push myself to write. She tried but didn't get far. So we agreed to work together because I felt her story was interesting and deserved to be told. We started a collaboration where she told me about her childhood and youth, and I wrote it as a novel - fictionalizing where necessary. What was amazing was how I packed up all my Greenland maps and books to take with me to Beijing in the heat of the summer so I could keep on writing it! I cranked down the A/C in my room to better get in the mood for writing about life in Greenland.

That semi-biographical effort was followed the next summer in Beijing (2016) teaching the same course again with EPIC FANTASY *WITH DRAGONS (2017), what was to be my epic tome that said everything I wished to say about life, the universe, and dragons. Again, I toted my materials to that hotel in Beijing and wrote when not in class. The story that I'm sticking to is that my fellow authors at Myrddin Publishing, mostly of the fantasy genre, challenged me to also write a fantasy novel. I'd written sci-fi before (The Dream Land trilogy) but I knew I had to follow some tropes for my book to be fantasy. At the last moment, I was told my epic fantasy had to include dragons - so it did. 

I took the story as a spoof of epic fantasy (think Tolkien) at first, but as I got myself into the story I became compelled to tell a deeper narrative - with dragons. I treated the dragons as real biological creatures (no talking, no hoarding of gold, no sacrificial virgins). An exiled dragonslayer is determined to locate the dragons nesting place and kill them all to be rid of the menaces once and for all - only to discover on the journey a lot of truths that make him realize things about the nature of the universe. The novel was long enough, but during that month in Beijing I also wrote a novella which I broke into chapters to insert as interludes in the novel, making the work my longest novel. 

Whew! That was an effort, although I was very proud of the story I produced. I thought I really said some things that needed to be put into words. I felt satisfied with this "final" book. Again, I thought I was done writing books - and continued my teaching. But thoughts nagged me about my vampire hero. I wondered what he would be doing now. So I got back into the story - now 13 years into the future (what would be 2027-8) when he leaves his dour home in Croatia (an abandoned villa) for life as a playboy in Budapest, Hungary. In SUNRISE (Book 2, 2018), things happen, obviously, which leads to the third book, SUNSET (Book 3, 2019) in what became a trilogy. A problem which developed later was that I never described the 2020-22 pandemic when a character mentions what she has done through the years up to 2027 in the story. I learned never to give exact dates in a story and followed that advice for the FLU SEASON Saga.

I completed the vampire trilogy, and felt NOW I was finished writing. But then things happened again. A couple of events came together to spark a new idea for me: a crime thriller, which would be a new genre for me to wrote. But I love a challenge (dragons, anyone?) and so I set myself up to write it - only to be stopped in the middle by falling sick with what turned out to be, named a few months later, as something called Covid-19. More on the next phase of My Writing Life in the next blog post. Next time: the covid-era novels.

Meantime, get your copies of the FLU SEASON novels + THE WARRIORS BAUMANN.

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