The Future of Sequels

It is a fate worse than death: to be undead yet stuck with your vampire parents. After 13 years Stefan Szekely can stand them no longer. He wants to get a castle of his own. But first he must make his way to his family's bank in Budapest.

With endless strife across Europe, Stefan hardly recognizes Budapest. Nevertheless, he embarks on the reign of terror he always denied himself, living the playboy lifestyle, being a bad vampire. Until he gets a stern warning from the local vampire clan: You are not welcome!

Should Stefan fight for his right to party like it's 2027? Or flee to the spa resort he bought and ignore the world? Or will an encounter with a dangerous stranger change everything? Or will State Security actions ruin this vampire homeland?

In 2014 my medically accurate vampire novel A DRY PATCH OF SKIN came out to a rave review. My main purpose was to counter the hysteria of the Twilight experience with some medical research crossed with established legends. I wanted to tell a realistic vampire tale. I even set the story in my own city and the action in the story followed the actual days and months I was writing the story. The story and my writing of the story ended the same week. Of course, I revised and edited after that.

Then I thought . . . what would happen next? So I chose a gap of, say, 13 years (the number seems significant in horror stories). Where did I leave my protagonist? How is he doing? What could have happened since then? What has changed in the world during these 13 years? How would what's different in the world affect his own corner of the world?

As I started out on another vampire story I quickly realized that I had to also write a science-fiction story. If I were setting the story 13 years after the end of the previous novel, then this sequel would be set in 2027. 

What did I know of 2027? Not much. Like many sci-fi writers writing about the future, I took the present circumstances, the way things are now, and extrapolated how they might logically progress. Remember that novel by George Orwell, 1984? It was published in 1948 just as fears of a Communist takeover gripped Europe. It was supposed to be a warning.

With the current strife in Europe, mass immigration, the increase in crime, the open warfare between left and right groups, I could see that extending, continuing and growing through the following decade. The moral question that arises is whether the author should follow his/her own beliefs, that is, how the world should be, a Utopian view - or choose a path of development which would be the best setting for the story (given the plot that would unfold), however the society might become - or try to take an honest look at current events and let things fall where they might, for good or ill.

I chose both. For the sake of the story and for the way I think society will continue to "progress" or develop or evolve over the next 10 years, I'm letting the European conflicts play out in the sequel: my now less-medically accurate vampire novel, titled SUNRISE.

Today, Hungary and Poland are resisting accepting refugees and other immigrants and the European Union chastises them for it. Both nations have refused to comply with orders from Brussels and are threatened with economic punishment. Jump ahead 10 years (from now; 13 from the end of the previous novel) and these countries have broken away from the European Union, formed their own economic block and run business as usual in ways which are more to their liking. 

As described in this sequel, the Hungarian Federation (Poland is a separate nation but an ally) is a strictly run Euro-centrist society. The State Security apparatus runs a tidy ship and getting in is very problematic. Staying in if you are a "diseased" resident such as a vampire is dangerous. However, our hero, Stefan Szekely, is already within the boundaries of the Hungarian Federation at his family's estate in the former Croatia; therefore, I, the author, must deal with the vagaries of that location.

Needless to say, our hero has difficulties - or there wouldn't be a story. Yet as I charge through the final chapters, the look and feel, the horrors, and the dystopian ambiance seem right. Will he escape from the repressive Hungarian Federation? Or will evil powers greater than himself and the vampire clans of Budapest have the final say?

Regardless, in SUNRISE the world gets darker before the light shines again.



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(C) Copyright 2010-2017 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.

Got Fortunate Serendipity?

I had seriously expected to begin my blogcation by now, but thought to give it one more post before I do.

This is all because of a fortunate turn of events, what I like to call a fortunate serendipity. 

It is fortunate in that I, being a fictioneer of boundless imagination, occasionally run dry. Not to worry! I was minding my own business recently at my local B&N bookstore when I was forced into an altercation. Yes, that's correct: me, a fight, a coming to blows, in a public arena of all places! Rather than tell you what happened in police procedural style, I was able to turn that true event into a moment the protagonist in my current work-in-progress gets to experience.

Art imitating Life, as it were.

The irony of the episode was that I was in that bookstore doing research, as I often do, and so the items in question were related to the very book I am working on. Thus we have a real experience of researching in a book store for a new novel being written whereby the real author has a run-in with a real villain (curse you, strange man!) which becomes a scene (rather, a dream) the protagonist has in the book for which the author went to the book store to conduct research and thus happened into the episode where.... Yes, it's an endless circle of serendipity.

Here is what happened:

(Well, here is the scene that came about because of what happened.)

(To recap: In this novel, A DRY PATCH OF SKIN, our hero is transforming against his will into a disfigured monster, appearing rather like a hideous [i.e., non-sparkly] vampire, and thus he is desperate to reach a special spa in Hungary for treatment, hoping he can cure his awful affliction and return to his former beautiful self as well as be with fiancée Penny once more.)

The nightmare shook me and I fell from the seat [of the train], rolled on the floor and got quickly up again.

I was relaxing in the café section of our usual Barnes & Noble bookstore, my home away from home—and the world. It was more than half-filled with young people studying for exams, old people chatting, assorted others browsing magazines or books they had brought to their tables. I had a short stack of items on my table, as well. I shook my head, as though I had been napping on that table. I stood and stretched. At that moment, a man was getting up from his table. He stepped past my table and the top item on my stack of materials caught his eye. A map of Hungary. Without saying a word, without scarcely a blink of his eye, he picked up the map and took it with him. Just took it right off my stack of items!

“Excuse me!” I cried out after him. Everyone looked at me, the crazy person. “I was going to buy that.”

The man slowed, turned and, seeing me standing with an angry look, stopped and said, “But you haven’t bought it yet, so it’s available to anyone, like me.”

“What? Are you mad? Possession is nine-tenths of the law!”

But the man grinned as though he knew the law backward and forward, and stalked off to the cashier with my map.

So right then I gathered up my remaining items: travel books on Hungary and Croatia, a Croatian phrasebook, and a couple of magazines, presumably to read on the way, and took them to the cashier, too. I wanted to purchase them before anyone else could steal them. When I arrived, the man with my map had gone, but I continued with my purchase.

Then, as I took my bag of books and magazines across the store, returning to the café to get a latté for the road, there was Penny Park, ace reporter, in her news station logo jacket, sitting at the same table I had sat at, her own latté in hand. Across from her sat the indefatigable Tommy, ball cap reversed on his head, a stupid grin on his face, his gnarly hand laid casually over the hand of my Beloved. I stood like a statue, frozen at the sight of them. As I watched, I saw her lift her hand and admire the ring on her finger. Tommy stretched across the table and she rose to meet his kiss—

The train was slowing, rattling, hissing, as it rolled into a station. I scooted up on the seat, and parted the curtains to see where we were. We rolled and rolled through the station. Finally I saw a sign. We were only in Düsseldorf.

It's all true--except, for me, it was in a real bookstore and there were no book cops to come to my aid. That final bit about him seeing Penny and Tommy, I should note, was added for plot purposes; I did not actually see them there in the store that day. I did, however, return to the map rack and was fortunate (there's that word, again!) to find a second map--but as I opened it at home later, I discovered the map I was lucky to get had several tears in it, requiring me to apply tape so as not to make the situation worse.

The lesson for us all is to mind your unpurchased intended-purchases with tooth and nail, for there are scum out there (scum, I tell you!) who would steal the things you have not yet purchased! There oughta be a law! So be careful what you do; you might actually dream of it someday, or cause someone else to dream it.


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(C) Copyright 2010-2014 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.