Dear Fifthers,
It's been a while. A while since I last posted the 5th paragraph of the 5th page of the 5th chapter as a blog post. That was in 2019 - right before I had to bow out for the illness that months later was called Covid-19. You can find that old blog post here, and read the 5th of the 5th of the 5th of my books published up to that date.
When that situation developed in March 2020, when my university switched from in-person classes to online only classes, I was about to publish my next book, a crime thriller called EXCHANGE. Due to the crisis I delayed the launch by two months - only then deciding that people stuck at home might like to read a book.
Then, still stuck at home, I worked on two novels that remained unpublished pending revisions. First was YEAR OF THE TIGER* (the last book on the older 5-5-5 blog post), the THE MASTERS' RIDDLE - the most sci-fiy of all my books as it concerns a non-human protagonist: the captured alien being who fights against his captors and tries to return home.
Then comes the FLU SEASON series. At first it was to be a stand-alone novel of a Mom and her teen son escaping from a city in chaos in the sixth year of a pandemic. The one-off became a trilogy, then another trilogy was added, then a sequel - taking our family members across a couple hundred years.
And that will bring us up to date - as I prepare to launch my next novel, a mighty epic of medieval America, A TIME OF KINGS. You can read about it here. It is not your descendant's medieval drama.
The 5th paragraph of the 5th page of the 5th chapter!
EXCHANGE (2020)
“Have a seat,” he offered, and Bill sat, pulling a worried mask over his face. These were the chairs where people got a talking-to. Angry parents, surly students, the odd Board member or two. The Griff was good at that kind of talking. “Bill,” the principal began, “I’m surprised to see you back so quick. You really need to take time off. Now, I’m no counselor but I think you could do with some counselling. You know? You’ve gone through a heckuva lot. The shock phase is just ending but there’s a long way to go to get you—”
The Masters come as they choose, the shaman explained, and they take who they choose. She should not let cuts enter her heart or stones grow in her belly. Allowing that would make her as silent as those who had unexpectedly left the community of Aull, those who had vanished like the cool out-breath whenever a mind-cave collapsed.
THE FLU SEASON SAGA
If the towers were still active we would likely only get official announcements and out-of-service messages. No room for idle chat on private apps. They had blocked ordinary citizens, non-essential phone users before. Calling in food deliveries was allowed, but people sent a list which was quicker. Otherwise, they would be happy to collect our chats to add to their databases, to sort us into good and bad. That was how they determined who’d spread the virus, sector by sector, then sent health police to detain the bad ones and reward the good ones. Mom said it was a racket.
Book 2: THE WAY OF THE SON (2023)
“They sure can,” said Hannah and referenced a song by one of her favorite pandemic bands, Viral Dark: ‘Black Lab, under a viral sky / Breathe in deep, you’re gotta die / Cooking soup / Sneaky group / Spreading their poison all over the world’ – meaning the laboratory, not the dog.
My daddy taught me numbers as we cleared the area of marauder bodies. He taught me adding and subbing. We pulled one body over the slope to what he called the graveyard – where the wolves knew there would be food – so four bodies with one rolled over the ledge left three bodies, for example. He kept quizzing me and I kept giving him the right answers.
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Book 4: THE BOOK OF DAD (2024)
It had been Mother’s habit to go over to her parents’ grave at the edge of the clearing, kneel and talk to them each day. She made me kneel beside her, put my hands together for prayer. She told them about her latest child: “This is Fritz,” she told them, “named for our long ago ancestor on account of him being this kind of some new beginning for us, all us, like that ancestor did long time ago, him and that tuba.” She apologized to Grandma Hannah for getting together with Frank, my father, the same man who had a daughter with Hannah: my big sister Cherie, who I’d never met because she was so much older that she was already married and lived far away before I was born.
Book 5: THE GRANDDAUGHTER (2024)
We stand on the production line, Eve across from me, as paper boxes move along in strict order. Other women, wearing aprons, stand to either side of us. Each of us places an item into the box as it moves past us. Eve’s job is to fold down the top of the box after I place the final item in: a cracker in a clear wrapper. But the lid has wings which always catch on the side walls and crumple the box. She was trained for an hour before put on the line but she gets admonished countless times by supervisors wielding slapsticks. I offer to trade tasks with her but our supervisors say they can’t allow it based on our papers. So we have to endure it.
Book 6: THE GRANDSONS (2025)
“You know I went to the dentistry college in Kanza City,” I like to remind him. “No matter that I’m Sheriff Baumann’s grandson, I made top marks in the classes there. No matter that my mama was Kanza. I’m the best of both of them.”
THE WARRIORS BAUMANN (call it Book 7 if you like) (December 2025)
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He tramped along the trail. The vegetation closed on him, twigs brushing his arms and knees as he rode on. Perhaps this was the wrong trail. Wasn’t the one he and Rory had traveled going to the fort. He sensed he might be lost. Better to return the way he’d come, start again from the gate.
And so the world lay as if carved into stone: the central Realm of Chicageaux, their capital New Cago, the Royal family and their kin, and allies spreading across a fair portion of the Americus, making a grand kingdom – a Realm! King Rodrick sat pleased upon his great throne in his great Hall within his great palace, growing bored upon his soft seat with the world at peace. And a steward would keep his goblet filled with beverages from across the Realm. Another of the staff would bring him reports of news from other lands. One night or another he would take his rest with the Queen.
There is another book that follows A TIME OF KINGS, with only a working title until I find the perfect name for it. And I do have the fifth chapter written already. Thus, I could include the fifth paragraph of the fifth page, but let's not rush into it. Let it go through the thorough review process and be sent to the launch pad before we subject it to blog posts.
*YEAR OF THE TIGER, although launching in 2020, was listed on the 2019 "5 of 5 of 5" post because those books were listed in chronological order of when they were written. Year of the Tiger, a dramatic story of hunters competing to kill a man-eater, has a sordid history of revision and submission and more revision and more submission before finally being perfected for 2020.
(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.
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