A TIME OF KINGS - What's it about?

UPDATE: Both editions are now LIVE! <click

I wrote this long epic tale from ideas originating when I was a teenager. I kept the idea alive all of these years waiting until I had time to devote to writing it in the manner in which it deserved. On the way I made a screenplay version, then tried to novelize it twice but failed for lack of identifying the best narrator. Such a grand project as this was supposed to occupy the remaining years of my life. Instead, filled with the Muse, I wrote it out in about six months. 

I know the story backwards and forwards, who does what and when, and what the results are. I can stand back and see the entire stage in a single glance. I can craft a blurb that hints at the content of this vast stage play. But what is it about? Really about? Aside from the setting in a future America (c. 3000) where the states we know today have become kingdoms, who are these people? What do they do?

I see A TIME OF KINGS as really being four stories. 

The first is about our narrator and how he comes into the story. A boy lost on a battlefield is adopted by the young King of Louis - and by extension also becomes a brother to Princess Cristianna and Prince Fridrick. The first part ends when our narrator, given the name Jack, goes with Cristianna when she elopes with the rugged prince of the Illini, Rodrick, who lives in New Cago - the rebuilt city beside the mounds of old Chicago - capital of the Realm of Chicageaux. (Don't get me started on the Quebecker insurgency!) Jack goes with them as a physician, trained in lieu of being eligible to be a prince. The year is 3000 - New Year's Eve. 

The second story could be said to begin with the birth of the twin princes, Nicholas and Darius - although we are not sure who came out first - causing trouble later. They grow as boys will, along with two younger brothers (Argos and Ulris) and a sister (Lira), from rough and tumble antics to sword-fighting lessons, to standing in the Court to watch their father, King Roderick, hold his audiences. In time, daughters of the Minnesot chief come to New Cago and Evina and Jillian become enamored with Nicholas and Ulris. Young love and Courtly romance ensue. They become betrothed, planning to wed in the next year. However, events at Court disrupt those plans. In the disruption, Rodrick decides it is time to divide the Realm among the four sons to rule their own provinces - and keep them away from each other. Lira will wed Duke Tristan and help rule his province.

Nicholas weds Jillian and Ulris weds Evina. All seems well with the Realm. Until evil arrives as the city of New Cago suffers destruction. The insult is personal for Nicholas. Thus begins the third story: the war. Nicholas and Argos know who is to blame: his twin brother Darius who reigns in Cinnati, the city where Jack trained as a physician. Nicholas insists on remaining civil and asks for reparations, yet Darius rebukes him. Finally Argos gets through to Nicholas that only war can settle his grief, and the army marches to Cinnati. Narrator Jack goes as the Chief Medical Officer for the army. The conflict draws in neighboring armies until the Realm is awash with troops. But the battlefield victories do not solve the problem of breaking into the walled city. In the aftermath of victory, a trial is set - trying to keep to Rodrick's system of laws. 

The fourth story could be said to begin when the army returns to New Cago and our narrator, Chief Medical Officer Jack becomes a duke for his service. He gains a wife and has a child on the way. Returning to his duties as Royal physician, Jack finds himself engaged in treating the king's melancholy. The effort troubles Jack, but he takes joy in his growing family, wife and children making demands on him. The years turn over and one day someone from the past arrives. All seems to return to the years before the war, but the new arrival instead brings menace. Jack is brought into schemes by Court ministers and prepares for his own end. As the Realm suffers, Jack does what he can to keep matters in balance. Not until the arrival of another person from the past does everything come together. 

An epilogue brings us back to the beginning of our story. Jack, reclaiming his rightful birth name of Frank Baumann (yes, of the family at the center of the FLU SEASON Saga), tells his tale to the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of the Court. It is a long and dedicated life he's lived, and he tells his kin to remember and tell the next generation all that has transpired in the Realm of Chicageaux up to that year of 3079.

A TIME OF KINGS is an old-fashion tale of Court life, the medieval battlefield, power and glory, schemes and vile ruses, what turns a man over and what the costs are for setting the world right. Although focused on the twin princes and their conflict, several women's roles are noteworthy: the queen herself, princesses, Court servants, city folk and even women warriors - for those who may wonder "What about the women?" As always, I have strived to create a full-fledged world on all classes and views, as complete as fifty years of rehearsal can bring to bear on a manuscript. I wish you a pleasant read and, if so moved, a review on Amazon or Goodreads or on your own site, would be gratefully appreciated.

BONUS UPDATE: Although I had scheduled the launch of A TIME OF KINGS for August 8, 2026, I inadvertently pushed the launch button early. Thus, the Kindle edition of the novel is now available. The print/paperback edition will still launch in August 8. 

Next up: The sequel to A TIME OF KINGS follows the "cozy romantasy" misadventures of Baron Haron, a grandson of Jack now grown up and seeking a worthy wife. Haron meets Nelda, a washer woman in search of a fit husband! Available by the December holidays. 

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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 Odyssey vs A TIME OF KINGS

This weekend the new Odyssey film launched to much controversy. Pre-launch buzz complained about everything from taking liberties with the plot to casting actors who didn't fit the historical characters. I could understand how many fans wanted their expectations met - expectations groomed from school readings and past films. I just wanted an epic movie. I got one, albeit different than what I'd expected. In art we like to judge the product for itself, free from other influences. At least I do. Hence, as a movie it worked well, in my opinion - if I wasn't trying to compare it to Homer's poem. It was a good three hours of entertainment regardless of what nitpicking I may wish to do.

So how does this film and its source material relate to my forthcoming novel A TIME OF KINGS? 

First, they are both stories about war and its aftermath. In the greater picture in both the movie and my novel, the war our major players go through changes them and impacts all that follows. That is a common theme in most war stories: how the event affects the men (and women) involved in it, including those not directly on the ground for the violence, those who remain back home. In the film and poem, Odysseus strives to reach home after ten years at war but is delayed by many misadventures. In A TIME OF KINGS the war is short-lived yet devastating for those involved. The travel home is less eventful or lengthy. Yet our narrator is morally wounded by what transpires.

Second, both are stories about redemption (in my humble opinion). That is: how each hero wishes to be seen - in these cases - even after all the badness they have perpetrated. We want to return home and see it like it was before - yet we have changed in the interval and so home necessarily changes by reflection. Therefore, how do we reconcile the two versions of us - the before and the after? In A TIME OF KINGS the question permeates the second half of the novel as our narrator seeks to resolve the conflicts within him.

Third, the technical issues some critics have raised regarding events, ship design, weapons and armor, scene settings, and so on. Granted, most of us wouldn't know or care what may be historically inaccurate. What is presented on screen is engaging enough to draw us through whatever technical issues may cloud the experience. 

In A TIME OF KINGS, I have pledged to be historically accurate. As a dramatic epic set in the future, I can guarantee its accuracy. For a medieval story, I need not depend on what was historically accurate in the past; it is all in the future now and subject to change as needed. Suppose after the collapse of civilization all that remained were books on King Arthur from which to draw plans for a new civilization. (This is not the case in my novel but some might speculate.)

I've spent my time this week promoting the launch next month of A TIME OF KINGS all while entertaining various opinions about The Odyssey film. I see some parallels, as I mentioned above. Mostly, the tale of Odysseus trying to get home, to find that origin point as a place of comfort, is different from what my narrator does. 

As a boy stumbling onto a battlefield and saved by the king, "Jack" has a unique perspective. He grows up in the Court of Louis, gets training as a physician, and becomes the Royal doctor in the Court of Chicageaux - named after the Quebecker insurgency of the late 2400s. At first he's a flaneur, an observer of life, then a minor player as the drama unfolds, to master of his own story after the war. "Jack" is an adopted name; he is actually descended from the Baumann family line of the FLU SEASON SAGA, especially The Warriors Baumann. Jack becomes the hero of his own tale in the second half of the epic. It is a kind of homecoming: to return to who you once were, who you always wanted to be, fresh and without sin, everything settled.

For more background on A TIME OF KINGS, including its own origin story, click here. This epic novel about the kingdoms of the Americus in 2988 to 3079 features twin princes warring against each other, Royal deceit and Court intrigue, young love and old wisdom, the vagaries of society in that future era, and most of all: how we live our lives surrounded by forces we cannot control nor hide from. Our narrator, Jack, learns those lessons well. More on the major players in the next blog post.

A TIME OF KINGS launches on August 8, 2026 in both paperback and for Kindle.

*I would be remiss were I to not remind everyone of this modern take on the Odyssey story: After Ilium (2012).

Three thousand years ago Greek fought Trojan below the fortress of Ilium. Now it is 1993 and new college graduate Alex Parris cruises to Istanbul, seeking his own adventure at Ilium. He meets Elena, the mysterious older woman who easily draws him into an affair only to force him to fight for her. For Alex, escaping from the local jail is the first of many obstacles to returning to his lover, as the cruel odyssey across the Turkish coast tests his will to survive.

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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.

A Medieval Future in Mirth & Madness!

Greetings, weary readers! 

I hear your claims, feel your pains, and in most ways agree. You have need of summerly encounters with worthy word-hoards. You have found the fare lacking thus far. Yet fear not for the summer has yet to conclude and in the interval we may yet partake of a tome or two.

Those of you who have followed this blog may have already found a means by which to endure the summer days. I speak of the ribald comedy THE WARRIORS BAUMANN. This comic relief has been available since this past December (2025) though it is rightly a summer tale. You may read about its origins and some of its delicious content hither (part 1) and thither (part 2).

Next on our future medieval line up we have the might epic A TIME OF KINGS, which shall become available to you and yours upon the 8 of August in this summer. Much has been said about this dramatic turn, according to those responsible for and those so engaged in the War of the Five Princes. This seminal event in our future history is mentioned in my earlier written work: EPIC FANTASY *WITH DRAGONS - where it is treated with the reverence of an ancient legend. And so I have emboldened a fine descendant of the family Baumann, a Royal physician, to tell us this great tale in impressive and passionate detail.

While A TIME OF KINGS is true to its realistic nature, a brief mention of dragons is included in order to anticipate the scourge of  aerial beasts in that earlier written tome which is set much later in the timeline. While THE WARRIORS BAUMANN is set in 2353 Missouri, A TIME OF KINGS covers the range from Tulsa to Louis, from Chicageaux to Cinnati, from 2988 to 3079. This leads us to EPIC FANTASY *WITH DRAGONS set in the year 8000. 

However, behold the sacred interval! 

Between the end of A TIME OF KINGS and the start of EPIC FANTASY *WITH DRAGONS, we have a brand-new book of the kind oft called the "cozy" version of a "romantasy" (romance + fantasy; yet are not all romances actually fantasies? I ask you.). This tale sees the wayward grandson of our fine narrator in A TIME OF KINGS set out on his own quest across the remnants of the upper midwest region of the Americus. This lively tale has just concluded and should be available for the winter holiday gift-giving event. Let us title it thus: BARON HARON TELLS THE TALE OF "A POET, A PRIEST, AND A PRINCE GO INTO A TAVERN". 

It should be noted that this 93,000 word "romantasy" novel began on March 15 and the complete draft was finished on June 15. It bears some sort of a notable accounting. All this was done while awaiting beta reader feedback on the final version of A TIME OF KINGS. Now the revision and editing work begins on Baron Haron's fine tale. More details revealed soon.

And then, just as we put the final word count upon this quest/cozy/romantasy novel, we have suddenly proposed the next book in a series which had not existed only seven years ago. It should be a story of desperation, of survival of the fittest, of the extended Baumann family in, say, the year 3220. But I get ahead of myself. 

To Recap: When Polly Baumann (music professor and tuba player) takes her teen son Sandy out of the city in the sixth year of a worsening pandemic, our grand narrative is set in motion. All does not end well in each volume's entry, yet some member of the family carries on, pushes the narrative forward, and so we come episode by episode through the lawlessness, the civil war, the reconstruction of a new "Ideal Society" - only to have to escape from its tyranny to a western enclave in what many may know today as southwest Kansas. Descendants of that Kansas family hold on....

This covers the six books of the FLU SEASON SAGA. We then advance to 2353 with THE WARRIORS BAUMANN in a medieval Missouri, then to 2988-3079 with A TIME OF KINGS. You can see the pattern: try and try again yet fail and fail again to set our world aright, ever and ever, each in its interval, each in its turn, until we are at the year 8000 with dragons reigning the skies.

In other news, we can now report that this grand narrative and its timeline include the largest novels I've written: EPIC FANTASY *WITH DRAGONS (233,000), DAWN OF THE DAUGHTERS (Flu Season, Book 3) (151,000), THE GRANDSONS (Flu Season, Book 6) (178,000), and A TIME OF KINGS (187,000). And yet they each read surprisingly quick; the story moves along. Sandwiched between these are a pair of thinner works of equal delight: THE WARRIORS BAUMANN (94,000) and the just-finished BARON HARON TELLS THE TALE... (93,000). 

Furthermore, I can reveal that in all 23 of my published or soon-to-be published novels I have composed collectively with 2,755,000 words. For those deeper into statistics, I can declare that the 6 books of the Flu Season Saga + The Warriors Baumann, A Time of Kings, and Baron Haron consist of 1,129,000 words in total. For those interested in my smallest books, they are AFTER ILIUM (79,000) and A GIRL CALLED WOLF (86,000).

NEXT TIME: All about A TIME OF KINGS: A Who's Who of Ne'er-do-wells!

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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.

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.

Novel vs Short Story?

In my writing life, I've been confronted many times buy this age-old question: to write short or to write long. If you've followed my so-called career, you likely know that I prefer the longform writing. I suppose it's because in the longer format I have room to tell a full story according to my imagination. The short story format, in my humble opinion, is meant to present a singular incident. The longform presents a series of incidents. In that way, a short story could, if a writer had a mind to do so, be simply one of many incidents that could be expanded into a novel.

Let me give you a little history of my writing. In my younger days I had pen and paper to write my stories. That was a limitation: my ideas had to be short. When I gained the technology of a typewriter (first the Smith-Corona manual, then an IBM Selectric, an electric machine) I could write with more ease and my output expanded.

However, I still faced limitations. Hit the wrong key and you had to type the whole page all over again. I regularly typed my homework nevertheless. In high school, in fact, I typed out my ideas once in the form of a 66-page single-spaced rip-off of 1984. I stapled the pages together and let a friend read it. He passed it to other friends. Before I got it back, it probably had been read by half the school (a small student body in those days).

I planned a long epic book in middle school, started writing by hand in a notebook, made notes and planned the rest of it. With a typewriter, I could (a few years later) type out a screenplay version of the novel I had planned. It was a quicker way to complete the story, get it on paper, with the expectation I could novelize it later. (Still haven't done that!) 

So in my typewriter days, a short story was merely a novel in outline form. Later, with my first computer (Tandy 1000) - enabling me to save my writing and return to it later for editing - my stories gained length. I composed a pair of novellas (short novels), trying to write longer works. My advancement to a full PC machine with Windows 3.1 completed my transformation into a novel writer.

By then I knew I wanted to write books - not merely stories. I read a lot of novels (mostly sci-fi an fantasy) and knew I wanted to tell big stories. Epic stories. With my acceptance into an MFA program - where I'd hoped to learn how to get a break into the wonderful world of novelism - I was forced to write short stories. 

We crafted the New Yorker magazine's style of story: urbane, subtle, restrained, focused on thoughts and feelings rather than overt action. Translation: not much happens yet it devastates a character in the story. I got it: it was a fair exercise for learning to write fiction. I switched from sci-fi and fantasy stories (my mini-novels) to these "literary" fictions. I saw the light, as it were, and became a true believer. Characters before cool stuff.

Point taken. I switched from the cool idea being the center of the story to a main character who readers would care about and follow through the story as said character dealt with the cool idea. My MFA thesis was a novel I titled A BEAUTIFUL CHILL which is a fine example of literary fiction: the action is almost exclusively in dialog and sublime moments of relationship conflicts. I also tried to skewer the English department and its vagaries. It remains one of my most favorite novels.

But I did write short stories, measured by length of pages and number of words. Also counted by the plot or conflict in them: a single thing/problem/incident/episode/ moment-in-time. For me, the story idea came to dictate whether it would become a short story, a novella, or a full novel. I liked big ideas and that is why I've mostly written novels. However, I did write enough stories to fill an anthology. That may be my next or final project once this final volume of my FLU SEASON Saga comes out later this year with THE GRANDSONS.

As a Myrddin author, I've shared a few stories in the anthologies we've put out over the past few years (click on the covers for links). One of my better short stories was deemed so good (effective, compelling) that I built a whole novel around it. Another short story came from a prompt the anthology editor gave us. Others were more silly passages, humorous even, like a writing exercise and yet they were worth the reading. 

I fashioned a short story from 2 chapters in my novel A BEAUTIFUL CHILL and titled the story "Lust" because it illustrates a variety of definitions of that word. So, again, the idea determines the format I use; most of my ideas require the larger format of a novel. I need elbow room to tell the complete story.

This is my one and only TEDTalk. Thank you for coming!

Oh, wait! There's more! Speaking of my final volume in the FLU SEASON Saga, I am deep into a thorough revision - usually the word count expands during this phase as I fill out scenes and make the narrative richer - and will set it aside for a month before returning for a close final edit. I expect the finished novel to be available by the end of this year (2025).

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(C) Copyright 2010-2025 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 Usual February Blues

In the greater scheme of things, February is clean-up time. Saddled with both fresh starts and fading glory, the second month is inexplicably stuffed full of many major events. 

First comes Groundhog Day which applies only to Pennsylvania but for whom many other folks rely. 

Next comes the Super Bowl, the biggest bowl ever to be filled! This year, however, the vaunted champions did not capture the trifecta. Never fear, I fully expect the team to return to the big game next season, perhaps facing the same opponent.

After the big game comes the little one's birthday, although she is not so little now, all grown up and on her own in an exciting career. 

Then we have the Day of Presidents, formerly Mr. Lincoln's birthday. Rather than celebrate the two most important presidents, Lincoln and Washington, Congress swept all the top politicians into a single day. Thus, such chief executives as Millard Fillmore and William Henry Harrison (president for only eight days) get equal billing with the heavy hitters, like Mr. Taft and Mr. McKinley.

It is a slow slog into March and hopes of Spring Break after that, but we need those two weeks to rest and prepare for what we've all been waiting for. And what is that, you may be wondering?

The completion of the first full draft of the final volume in my FLU SEASON Saga (formerly a trilogy and two sequels), THE GRANDSONS (a.k.a. Book 6).

Now I shall read and revise, as is my usual routine, ready or not. THE GRANDSONS is a long story, a novel within a novel, but I trust the story will be sufficiently engaging to keep the pages turning as you experience the post-apocalyptic landscape though a host of Western tropes and outlaw vibes, futuristic cities, religious fervor, territorial conquests, nuclear disaster and impending doom for everyone! Yes, an uplifting epic for everyone!

Here is an excerpt from the first chapter:

A crowd gathers to see who this figure might be, as none have come from the east for years – none worth addressing, at the least. Stragglers with tales of flameless fire and putrid illness. A wave of death. Fleeing criminals hoping for a break. The rare lost tax man or some ignorant seeker of opportunity, random scalawags and bold outlaws. A gunslinger or two. A foolish family hoping to survive.

Dark in road-rough garb, the figure glares from beneath the rim of the felt hat at the townsfolk gathered: passersby, the curious, morning shoppers, businessmen going to offices. Another cow town, the stranger seems to acknowledge with a disappointed shift of chin. They’re harmless, and unarmed, the dark figure notes.

The figure, looking more to be a woman in man’s clothing as the people examine, lays her hand upon the grip of one of two pistols set upon her hips, ready to use it.

“Skinner Canyon?” asks the stranger in mild tone.

“Yes, ma’am,” says an older man, wiping his moist brow, beady eyes set in a permanent squint. “This’s the place.” He gives her a long look, not approving. “What’s yer bidness in town?”

Townsfolk can see the two pieces of cargo lain in the cart. There is a crudely constructed wooden box, looking like pine, large enough and in the shape to hold a laid-out man. The wood is well-smudged with dirt, grimy like it was dragged up from the earth. A coffin, they presume, nailed tightly shut. Who could be inside? 

The trend these days when querying agents and publishers is to construct what is called a Mood Board or Vision Board using snippets of images, perhaps brief text, to help entice would-be investors in the story. I get it. Like a Pinterest posting, which I did long ago. Here is one I threw together last night. It should give you a good feel for the story.

More details next time. I'll give away some of the plot but with no spoilers. You will recognize some characters from Book 5: THE GRANDDAUGHTER and some of the setting from that novel. This novel, however, moves far from that town into truly sci-fi territory without (I hope) getting too sci-fi techy or relying too much on familiar tropes of a post-apocalyptic world (zombies, etc.). I have an overall positive view of the future, but one which turns away from the technology that kills us all in most sci-fi movies. The ending here may not be "happy" in a Mary Sue sense, but will be satisfying.

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(C) Copyright 2010-2025 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.

It can now be revealed! (The Long Game Plot)

When I was thirteen, I imagined a grand epic with a medieval setting. (I had been an avid reader of Roger Zelazny's Amber Chronicles around that time, full disclosure.) The story I came up with involved twin brothers, princes of the realm, who grow apart and then are forced to battle each other, winner take all. I dabbled with starting the story as a novel (when I had barely written short stories by typewriter or by hand). I quickly realized it was too big a project for me to write at that time. Sadly, I set it aside with the intention of working on it when I retired and had lots of time. (Now retirement has come....)

One major feature of my medieval epic was that the setting was in the future, around the year 3000 AD, as I determined. And the place of the story was in a collection of city-states or kingdoms formerly known as the good ol' USA. So we have the Kingdom of Chicago at war with the Kingdom of Cincinnati as the main focus, with other kingdoms coming into play, as well. From the 1970s and 80s - when I got the idea and planned it out, through my effort to get the story down in some complete form by writing it as a screenplay - I believed that after some disastrous event it would take about a thousand years for civilization to devolve to something akin to a medieval society. (I would take no responsibility for said disaster....)

[This will have been well-documented soon after my demise, I shall presume.] 

Here is the revelation part of this blog post: I've been sneaky.

In 2015-2017, when I was dared by fellow authors to write an epic fantasy, which would have to include dragons, titled EPIC FANTASY *WITH DRAGONS, I conceived of a future world - again set in what characters called "the Americus", a collection of small realms. I set my epic fantasy tale there, basically a quest where an exiled dragonslayer seeks the dragons' nesting grounds so he can wipe them out all at once and win his return home. Along the way, as fantasies tend to go, he has various encounters and meets different people. However, it comes out in pieces what occurred in the era prior to his own. Reference is made by the characters of a great war between five brothers and how the result of that war shaped the era he now found himself in. Ah hah!

Yes, folks! That same story I invented in my youth reappears as a backstory in my epic fantasy novel. The five princes consist of the twin brothers who are at odds, their two younger brothers, and an older-&-wiser cousin who may be their illegitimate brother. I borrowed my original story and put it into my 2017 novel. Scandalous, I know. Apologies!

But guess what happened next. We experience a pandemic in real life, and we know what that did to society. Yet it ended fairly soon. After initial hesitancy, I started a new novel in which I imagined an extended pandemic which would bring a lot more trouble to society. What would that be like? The characters suffer through much worse situations than most of us did, to a desperate degree, enough to make them finally flee the chaotic city. (Main character kept thinking it was about to end only to find it continuing....)

And so the FLU SEASON trilogy was born, beginning with what was expected to be a single, stand-alone, one-off novel titled The Book of Mom. In what became Book 1 of the series, a teenage autistic boy narrates what he and his never-married mother, a tuba player and music professor, do in escaping a ravaged city for the hope of survival in the countryside. Plan A doesn't work out, of course, nor does Plan B, so they have to head to a coastal island where the family has a vacation home. They will wait out the pandemic there....

So far, so good, as disaster stories go. The first book birthed a second book, forcing me to plan a trilogy. I knew by the run up to the conclusion of Book 1 that a second novel would be necessary; I wanted to know what happens next. I knew what would happen in Book 2: The Way of the Son. The autistic son is on his own in the pandemic-stricken world, fighting for survival, on a harsh journey to sanctuary. As I closed in on the conclusion of that book, I knew what Book 3: Dawn of the Daughters would be about: the next generation's story. It became a tome in itself - my second longest novel after Epic Fantasy *With Dragons - covering the end of the pandemic, the decades of lawlessness, a civil war, and the rebuilding of society, plus the reinvention of "modern" gadgets and utilities. I felt it was a bit like Gone With the Wind but set in post-apocalyptic times.

However, that reconstruction period allowed those who were in position to grab power to build a new society in the mold of an authoritarian regime that worked to repress its citizens, forcing people to believe that the pandemic never happened, like a perverted mirror of Orwell's 1984 novel. In Book 4: The Book of Dad [coming June 2024], the youngest son of the Book 3 heroine tells how the next generation of their family struggles to endure the repressive city. But, as is the case each time, another story springs forth....

Book 5, which I'm calling The Granddaughter's Tale (with a wink at Chaucer), follows the daughter of Book 4's tragic hero as she attempts to start a children's band in a small western town called Skinner Canyon, set on the edge of the wilderness. As it nears completion, I'm pleased that I've managed to keep it significantly lighter than previous novels in the series. I've borrowed a plotline from the old musical The Music Man but flipped it on its side. Later in the story, when our heroine travels east, she learns of the advancement of armies from Quebec down across Ontario and over Michigan to claim the city of Chicago and rename it Chicageaux. What? Mon Dieu! Quelle folie! You see, in that story of the twin princes, the Quebecois have indeed conquered the northern tier in the future, requiring the combined armies of the Americus to push them back in the 2900s; however, the city of Chicageaux retains its by then centuries-old name.

Over the course of the whole FLU SEASON series, we have lived through more than 130 years since the pandemic started.

And now you know the rest of the story! I have tied in once again the vast timeline of the long-planned medieval epic of my youth. This is how that timeline begins. 

Back as a teenager, amidst the on-going oil crisis, I had imagined a lack of oil destroying civilization. The idea still works: the collapse of society because of the long pandemic shuts down all industries, including drilling and refining. There is no more fuel for vehicles, as we experience in FLU SEASON Books 1 & 2. In Book 3 everyone is using what horses remain yet uneaten. In Book 4, we have reinvented electricity but its use is limited to the major cities. In Book 5, moving out west, we have even more restriction on electricity - almost as though we had returned to the 1890s.

This is how my grand timeline begins. Although I avoid stating years in the FLU SEASON series, I measure the pandemic (real and in the series) as beginning from 2020 - and six years into the pandemic, it would be 2026 when Book 1 starts. Several generations tell their stories. It is therefore around 2150 when Book 5 ends. More happens, thus preventing civilization from truly returning to what it was before the pandemic, and by the years approaching 3000 we find the land divided into city-states that battle each other over resources. My vision is thus rewarded, rekindled, and fulfilled. Now (already into my retirement), I still have the opportunity to write that youth-created novel - if I am not seen as copying G.R.R. Martin's Song of Ice and Fire series, a worry which has put me off from digging into my epic. 

However, I will need something to work on in the final years lest the final years hasten to their end before I am ready.

There could be a Book 6. I have ideas - two, in fact. I might even merge them. That would take us further into the future, say another 50 years, to about 2200. That should be far enough ahead in time that I won't be tripped up by real events happening or not happening within the publication window of the book.

Anyway, happy reading and, for me, happy trail writing!

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(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.

The Retirement Project vs The Sunset

When I was thirteen and full of stories, I had one idea which I knew was too big for me to work on as a teenager. I started writing the story at thirteen, then put it away, overwhelmed by its scope. When I was in college, I wrote more on it before putting it away again. I knew I had plenty of time. Then I wrote it all out as a screenplay because at that time I was interested in going into the movie business. From that screenplay, I started a novelization but put it away. I never felt bad about putting it away because I designated that story to be my "retirement project" - what I would work on during my retirement to keep me busy and out of trouble. So now that retirement has arrived....

I have kept to that plan, except I haven't returned to it. Honestly, the whole Game of Thrones series of books and TV episodes took away much of my project, dealing with a medieval society not in a fantasy world like Westeros but in a future America after the destruction of our modern society. It could still work, I suppose. But now readers would make comparisons to Martin's story - and arguably he does it much better than I could. My story, titled A Time of Kings (from a piece we played in high school band), is a different story: identical twin princes fight to win the whole kingdom after their father dies. But there's a lot more to it, of course. The story appeared as the historical backstory in my novel EPIC FANTASY *WITH DRAGONS (2017).

But I have a Plan B. I've just finished my third trilogy - the trifecta! - yet there are story elements remaining for me to make some hay with. I'm calling it a sequel to the trilogy rather than re-titling the trilogy as a tetralogy. Too much trouble to redo book covers and republish, you know. It may only be a short novel, involving a character from the trilogy, and thus not take up much time in my retirement, yet it does lend itself to allowing me to continue using the world I created for the trilogy by inventing other stories set there.

Now that my pandemic trilogy FLU SEASON is complete (all three novels are available), I have a page for the series. You can get paperback and Kindle editions for all three books on one page: right here, go on now, click it, there ya go!

If you're new to this trilogy, here's a summary:

BOOK 1: THE BOOK OF MOM

Remember that pandemic we had in 2020-22? Well, what if it didn't end but got worse in every way? Besides all the vaccine mandates and mask wearing rules, there are shortages of gas and food, there is rampant crime by both ordinary citizens and government authorities. Life becomes unbearable.

Now let's follow autistic teen Sandy (as narrator) and his single mom as they escape a city in chaos for what they think will be safety in the countryside. Of course, things do not go the way Mom expects and they must shift to a plan B. And plan C. It is a dangerous world, but if they can just find a sanctuary and wait a while everything will go back to normal...Mom dares to believe.

BOOK 2: THE WAY OF THE SON

Fleeing a city in chaos in Book 1, Sandy must now face the savage outerlands without Mom to guide him. He struggles to provide for his young family among the ruins of a collapsed society, and a journey to reconnect with his aunt goes very wrong. In typical heroic fashion, Sandy learns how to be a man, how to be strong, and how to forgive. He finds the way to the future.

BOOK 3: DAWN OF THE DAUGHTERS

Hiding away in the forest of a national park in the 9th year of the pandemic, Sandy's family 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, Sandy's family faces new challenges and opportunities. They suffer through the vagaries of marauders and war between territories and Sandy is caught up in the fighting. The conflict splits the family into divergent destinies, leaving Sandy's daughter, Isla, to carry the family into the future where they witness the reconstruction of a new society.

BOOK 4: (tentatively titled THE WAY OF THE DAD) work-in-progress!

Isla's youngest is all grown up and getting into trouble in a rebuilt society where government authority reigns supreme, much like in Orwell's 1984, pushing our hero to rebel....

So there is enough to keep me entertained in these final years, as I look harder at each sunset, waiting for the final one to slip away. If I finish, I finish. If I don't, you still have the books I've already written and this blog and perhaps a few memories of my twisted writing advice here and there - like in this post from the past week for fellow Myrddin author Connie J. Jasperson. Number 1 advice? Write now, fix later.

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(C) Copyright 2010-2023 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 FLU SEASON Trilogy: Doing What I Do

It has been a week since my new novel FLU SEASON 2: THE WAY OF THE SON launched and the excitement of that minimalistic day still lingers. The thrill of seeing my finger push that button to send a tweet into the void sizzles even now. It's all about the thrill, you see. I really can't stop. It's like a role-playing game and I get to play all the characters and make them do what I want them to do. By the end, I feel like I have put together a million-piece jigsaw puzzle and can finally see the big picture.

Whenever anyone might ask me why I write - a typical question in writing communities online - I pause thoughtfully, then launch into a diatribe about how it is all fun and games until I come to the end. Then I feel a great emptiness as the published book leaves the nest and tries to fly on its own. But the game analogy is valid. When I really think about it, that is what it is: a game. It gets me up in the mornings to play it. I want to see what happens next to these invented characters - blithely acknowledging that I have the power to make things happen in a certain way.

Puppet master? I think not. For as the characters come on stage more and more, they become real and often argue with me, demand a different turn of events, threaten to sit and pout. I offer a quick way out in the form of a murder or unlucky fall, but usually I cannot part with them. Even the villains compel me to assist in their crimes. Sure, there is some clear-headed planning and crafting a narrative that goes this way and that, making arcs, dropping seeds, foreshadowing, flashing back, information dumping but only in spoonfuls here and there. I know what to do.

However, at the bottom of all of that writerly stuff is the game. An old adage for writers goes a little bit like this: Write the story you want to read. And I do. I don't often know what kind of story I want to read when I start, but it comes to me soon enough. It usually comes to me when I've written about 10,000 words. By then, the story stays with me when I'm not actively writing. I start to think of what happens next - and what just happened and what I may have missed and need to add or change - through the day and into the evening. As the story progresses, I may be so driven as to sit down in the middle of the afternoon and type out another scene. Or, surprisingly, delve back in late in the evening just as I was certain it was time to sleep. It's a crazy process, but there it is.

For my FLU SEASON trilogy, which began as a stand-alone book, THE BOOK OF MOM, until 2/3 of the way into writing it, I developed a regular routine (me being a retired fool with little to occupy my hours). I would rise and get coffee while booting up the beast (an old desktop computer running Windows whatever-number, using Word of some kind). I'd sit and open the file, a running manuscript in which I add the next bit straight into the file, which is already set in book format - all the better to see how it will look in the final version. While starting the session, I begin listening to the "soundtrack" I've put together: music which fits the scene, always instrumental (don't need sung words getting in the way of the words in my head).

I usually begin by addressing spots I thought about since the previous session and fix those. Then I might read through the last scene I wrote and revise/edit it, which leaves me ready to dive into the next scene or chapter. In the alternative, if an idea is hot when I'm starting, I may go straight to typing out that scene while it rages, then return to my normal routine. Depending on the scene - writing coaches talk about the goal of a scene - I may begin with a little setting information, or jump into dialog to get it started. I'm always thinking of the mood of the scene - mood of the characters as well as what comes from the setting, like the difference between the same dialog and action in a sunny setting versus a dark and rainy setting. I know from a lot of previous writing how to mix exposition ("telling") with live action and dialog ("showing"), with the thoughts and feelings of the characters.

However, I tend to "write lean" just to get the story down in a basic form, knowing I will go back over it and make it richer. Sometimes an exchange of dialog runs the scene. Other times, getting the look and feel of the place and situation is most important. I find I have the uncanny ability to "become" a character and think, speak, and act as that character would. And yet I was never a great actor! Yet, in becoming my characters, I feel what they feel and that makes the writing effort exhausting - or occasionally energizing. It is almost like going to the gym for a hard workout, depending on the conflict in the scene I'm writing. A lot of that is driven by whatever is happening in my head when my fingers hit the keyboard. I might say it is magic but I don't truly know. Probably a form of mental illness of which I can make full use of its quirky features. Living in one's head is not just a metaphor.

I will write as long as I can. When the scene is finished I will go back immediately and read it through, revising as I go. I add more description (a sentence here or there), fill out dialogue (can't just have the necessary words but also need the extra phrases that make dialog sound real), and add thoughts and feelings (of the protagonist; can't know what other characters are thinking and feeling but I can suggest those through what the protagonist notices). When I get tired or I run up against having to do some other task, I'll pack it up, save everything in 6 places (3 places off the desktop computer), and call it a day.

Then I think about the story as I go through my day. I'll drive to the grocery store but there is the next scene in my mind's eye as I'm sitting at the traffic light. I push the cart through the store and I'm thinking through that last exchange of dialog, perhaps deciding a better phrase to have my character speak. Or I might realize I forgot to include something or I discover in reviewing what I just wrote that I need to add some important detail - something a reader would point out. Later, often lying in bed ready to sleep, I will also find "plot holes" (seldom these days, despite being a make-it-up-as-I-go-along kind of writer) or other spots I need to address. Then, if I'm lucky, I will go on to sleep. And sometimes I will have a dream which relates to the story I'm writing and I'll pop up in the darkness to scribble something on a note pad next to my bed and deal with it in the morning.

So for the two years in which I've worked on three novels, this has been my usual daily work routine. It is good to have a regular schedule when nothing else such as getting to work is there to keep me on track. I often confuse the day of the week now, unless the TV schedule reminds me. After a while they all run together as one big writing session, anyway, and I don't mind that.

I'm not sure what comes next. The FLU SEASON Trilogy is finished with Book 3: DAWN OF THE DAUGHTERS - coming in fall 2023. I have teased that I will have an artificial intelligence app read my trilogy and then create a fourth book. Then a fifth book. And I shall be reduced to mere editor. We shall see. At least read Book 3, the final fully human-written novel of my career!

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(C) Copyright 2010-2023 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.