All About THE GRANDSONS

You may notice that this blog has been going for 15 years. That in itself may seem amazing, but it hasn't been without its ups and downs. My goal now is to maintain it with one post per month minimum so I have a neat calendar listing on the right side.

As I posted on various social media platforms in the past week, THE GRANDSONS, my latest novel and the next volume in the FLU SEASON Saga, has launched. In fact, launched early - not that it wasn't ready; it was.

Funny story: It was late and I thought to do a last-minute check of the details in all the spaces and pages of the publication process only to come up to the final button. I mistook that button for the "save" button and, having pressed it, the book was launched. But, not to worry, for it was finished, polished, and ready to go. I simply wished to make July 1 the publication date. Seeing the next day that it had actually been launched, I scrambled to check the details of the print edition, then went ahead and launched the paperback, too. Now both are "live" and available to you.

Get them both here: Da Link!

Get the entire series here: Flu Season Saga!

THE GRANDSONS concludes the Flu Season Saga in epic fashion: a feisty Western set in the future, with unexpected science-fiction oddities, outlandish courtroom theatrics, and tear-jerking family drama. 

The Principal Players:

Jake Baumann - flaneur/narrator of the 'present' storyline, dentist and coroner

Assorted townsfolk: Deputy Cal; Doc Baker; Judge Robinson; Mr. Duda & Mr. Hitchens, attorneys-at-law; colorful trial witnesses; random phantoms and freaks 

Maggie Baumann - Jake's grandmother (his mother was adopted by Maggie) & Bart's mother

Bart Baumann - son of Maggie, a teenage boy at the start, full grown man later*

The Culpepper Sisters: Trinity, eldest, "the mean one"; **Trina, "the quiet one"; Triss, "the silly one", outlaws

Nick Ramos - gamekeeper at The Facility

Marina Kvashenaya - scientist at The Facility

Jesus Alvarez - a traveler, follower of the Brethren

*The "15 years earlier" section is written in 3rd-person, as though it's been pieced together by a writer telling what he's heard.

**Who is the "main character" in THE GRANDSONS? I'll just say that Trina is in the first scene and the final scene, connecting with both Bart and Jake. Anything more would be spoiler.

click to enlarge

The Story:

Part 1 - A stranger comes to town bearing two bodies on a cart. The woman is well-known and the deputy takes her into custody to get answers to questions left unanswered for fifteen years. A trial begins, trying to tie her to the crimes of her sisters and an outlaw known as Bad Bart. Jake, town dentist and coroner, gets involved: he sees the woman as someone to save. Jake's grandmother, Maggie (from Book 5), just wants to know what happened to her son the past fifteen years when everyone thought he was dead.

Part 2 - More than 100 years after a pandemic and civil war broke apart the nation (Books 1-3), a new reconstituted America struggles between tyranny in the east and survival in the west (Books 4 & 5). In this western territory, fatherless teen Bart Baumann is stuck between his nagging mother and a domineering uncle, the sheriff, Bart is in a hurry to grow up. Going on a posse after an outlaw gang gives Bart the chance to show everyone he's a man. But that plan doesn't go as expected and his life is forever changed.

Young Bart becomes lost in the wilderness. He stumbles upon the camp of a trio of gunslinger sisters who take him in, teach him the business. As Bart grows up he comes into conflict with the older sister while entering a romance with the middle sister. When his bad deeds earn him a high bounty, he realizes it's better to go straight and live a normal life, but where can he and his young family go? He checks the surrounding towns for a good home.

The answer is forced on him as they are chased by a posse of lawmen into the "forbidden zone", the land west of the western territory. There they discover what has happened to the nation: destruction that has left the land devoid of people. They try to survive in the new environment, a daily struggle finding food and defending against dangers - until they find a hidden facility of scientists who believe the air and land outdoors is poisonous, even as they work to create children immune to the poisons. However, Bart can't help himself: acting badly once more, they must flee again.

Finally settling with one of the scientists from the facility in an abandoned house outside a long-destroyed city, they think they are alone and can just live their lives - only to be caught in battles between religious fanatics and foreign soldiers. A wandering wiseman convinces Bart there's no need to go further west: nothing there. Then a devastating tragedy compels them to return east, where they hope to meet up with the other sisters and live a normal life. 

Part 3 - But the sisters have gotten into more serious trouble while they've been away. Bart becomes an unwitting participant in a final tragedy that threatens to separate him from his found family. The trial in Part 1 concludes with agonizing testimony and an explanation for the nuclear holocaust threatening them. Questions are answered. Yet it is left to Bart's cousin Jake to reconcile everything, especially setting the record straight for future generations.

Stats for Nerds:

File created: May 21, 2024

Draft finished: February 17, 2025
(Approximately 1 year between launch of Book 4: THE BOOK OF DAD and THE GRANDSONS, with Book 5: THE GRANDDAUGHTER between them.)

Final revision completed (not counting extra tweaks/edits): April 27, 2025

Pages (including blank pages between chapters; not including frontmatter and endmatter pages): 542

Final word count (not including chapter division marks, etc.): 148,000 

Sessions (opening file to work on it): 1561 

Is this actually the conclusion of the FLU SEASON Saga?

Well, folks.... Before THE GRANDSONS was even half-way done with revisions, I started another book, set 200+ years after the end of THE GRANDSONS, to be titled THE WARRIORS BAUMANN, which follows two ancestors of the family in Book 6 as the world further descends into chaos and a plain medieval society becomes the norm in Missouri. It is written as a comedy, a farce, if you will, yet with a warm-hearted finish that connects with my earlier novel EPIC FANTASY *WITH DRAGONS, which is set 8000 years in the future. 

Happy reading!

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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 End of #NaNoWriMo as I know It

Another NaNoWriMo has passed and many of us are somewhere along the spectrum from elation to dejection. For those bloggers who don't know what that means, I'm referring to the National Novel Writing Month competition (hereafter called "NaNo"). However, competition may not exactly be the right word for it. The "experience" is really a competition against yourself and all the excuses writers may have to keep from writing that novel that's been stuck in their heads for a while. It is a just-get-her-done kind of motivating vehicle. I know many writers who finally got a novel written because of NaNo. Not me, of course; I'd write it anyway, NaNo or no NaNo, no?

I had been aware of NaNo for several years but it always was in November, a busy time of the year for me in my day job, so I declined to participate. Then I did, just for the heck of it. I sucked it up and dove in. I had the start of an idea for a sci-fi novel (The Masters' Riddle) and thought NaNo would be a "low-risk" way to push myself to write it. So I did. 

I "won" NaNo by achieving the 50,000-word threshold for calling it a "novel". I reached that milestone before the Thanksgiving week holidays that year, the time when I had expected to make my big final push. By the time the month ended, I had reached 55,000 words but not the end of the story. Then December arrived, end of the semester tasks piled up, and then the end-of-year holidays distracted me from finishing that sci-fi novel.

Last year (2015) I did not participate because I was busy with the novel I had just finished, A Girl Called Wolf. This year (2016), I decided to dive in again. Initially, I expected to start the sci-fi novel where I'd left off and go forward. But I had completed my newest novel, Epic Fantasy *With Dragons, during the summer and still glowing from the thrill I thought to continue in a sequel. That became my NaNo novel: Epic Fantasy 2 *Without Dragons.

I posted my word count every day for the first week or so. Seeing it steadily rising was motivation. Then came the inevitable distractions from the day job. There were days I could not write at all for lack of time or energy, much less post a word count update. I grabbed a few minutes between teaching my classes, some more time in the evenings. I talked up my participation in NaNo in my classes to motivate my students to write more--just for fun! Yes, writing is (can be) fun! But a half-hour here, an hour there was enough to keep me going. Never go 24 hours without writing something, even if only one sentence! As I told a colleague, I am always writing in my head; I just need enough time to download it through my fingers and keyboard. 

Then I had some good weekends with a bunch of keyboard slapping. We're talking 4 hours at a stretch, thinking and writing, not stopping to revise or edit. I was tossing out such crap as I never would have believed--as I never had let myself write and still move on. It was heartbreaking at times. But every word counted! I did not even write and validate after I won. I got lazy.

That's the idea: get a draft done, no matter how bad. Anything can be fixed in revision--after the competition ends. The goal is to complete a manuscript, but like in 2014, I reached the 50,000-word threshold without finishing the story. When I validated at 52,077 words, I got all of my cool winner graphics to paste all over social media to announce my achievement. But I knew when I began that I would win it. I would make myself win. I am known as a verbose writer, after all. When I mention "50,000 words" to my students who balk at writing 1000-word paper, or I tell them my new fantasy novel is 235,000 words (not atypical for the genre), and they seem in such shock, almost as though I had just eaten a live snake in front of them, I have to grin. It is difficult to put the grin away.

Despite the distractions of election vitriol and the day job's hecticness ("hecticity"?) and the holiday obligations, I still managed to win NaNo once more. Now let the revision begin! (See you again next November--if I get another story idea.)

P.S.- Just for fun, here are the opening sentences from Epic Fantasy *With Dragons and Epic Fantasy 2 *Without Dragons. Yes, I intend them to be nearly identical.

EPIC FANTASY *WITH DRAGONS
Corlan scratched his whiskers and grinned. A dragon clan was approaching. Brushing his wind-swept hair out of his face, he kept his eyes on the clan as he reached for the dragonslinger and prepared the weapon. Eleven of them in a tight formation. It would be a good day for hunting.

EPIC FANTASY 2 *WITHOUT DRAGONS
Corlan scratched his whiskers and tried to grin. He brushed his long auburn hair out of his face and focused on the quartet of minstrels approaching the dais. With his rusty dragonslinger resting heavily against the wooden throne, he fought a yawn and prepared to hear yet another petty complaint.


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(C) Copyright 2010-2016 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.

Are You a Winner, too?

As many of you know, November has been a particularly arduous month, mostly because I chose was compelled to join in all the fun of the National Novel Writing Month. I've had to decline in previous years because November is a busy month in the academic calendar.

However, this year I needed something to jump-start the writing juices after giving birth to my Vampire novel A DRY PATCH OF SKIN--which is still viable even a month after Halloween. (Get it for your loved ones for the holidays; they'll scratch you for it. Makes a great gift for relatives who have skin issues.)

So into #NaNoWriMo I dove with an opening scene and some notes of how it proceeds leftover from junior high school. I started off at a good pace, then that day job and its attendant duties reared its ugly head as I knew it would. I struggled to add a few paragraphs between classes. I worked in the evenings to cobble a few pages more. Weekends were all writing time. Suddenly I was hooked on the story and the writing became an obsession. 

My simple sci-fi tale of the little alien guy captured and taken away from his home world for no apparent reason, forced to work hard labor, who learns and grows, and is determined to escape and return home, filled my mind for most of every day. Part of the fun (of making him suffer, ironically) was inventing his home world's landscape, flora and fauna, social life, and religious beliefs. I tried to rethink how this society would see the universe and how they would communicate. I did not want to invent a whole new language as I had done for THE DREAM LAND Trilogy (e.g., Ghoupallean, Zetin, Roue, and Danid). (Makes a great #CyberMonday gift or a nice box to stuff under the tree!)

Inventing a new world slowed down my writing so I gave myself permission to write crap. Just get the story out...err, umm, down. Tell what happens, toss in a scene here and there, charge ahead to that 50,000 word goal line. And so I did. In fact, I hit the 49,999 word mark just three weeks into November and rested with my toes barely touching the line for a couple days. Then I leaped ahead. I always knew I'd have the final week free to write thanks to a full week holiday break from school. I knew no matter what I achieved in the month, I could catch up then. I even dared to edit out a few hundred words, lowering my word count. Cocky, I know.

By the time I entered this extended Thanksgiving break, I was past 50,000 words. I dared take a couple days off. I knew this story would not be finished at 50,000, not even at 55,000 words. I settled at a comfortable total of 55,555 words but upon validation on the NaNoWriMo website, I was credited with only 55,396 words. However, based on where I am in the story, I predict about 75,000 to 80,000 to finish it. And the final two twists will Blow Your Mind! (This is the fun part of writing: blowing readers' minds.) 

Originally, I was setting the story on the same world that I used for THE DREAM LAND Trilogy but in its NaNoWriMo incarnation, I made it an entirely new world, a warm, lush, vibrant planet where the indigenous intelligent life runs around half naked. Too bad for our mild-mannered hero Toog that he is taken to a cold, frozen wasteland to labor with a menagerie of beings taken from many different worlds or kept in a frosty stone-walled prison cell until he is needed--or that he must hide in a chilly cave after he escapes the prison and the work camp. Now how will he get off the planet to return home to his family? 

That is THE MASTERS' RIDDLE, of course. (Spoiler: It involves an interdimensional doorway, similar to that central trope used in THE DREAM LAND Trilogy.) And if Toog does make it home, what will he find there? Will his society have left him behind? Or will he suffer the same kind of time-differential the astronauts in the film INTERSTELLAR experienced?

Coming to an ebook reading device near you probably sometime in 2015.

And so I won...like everyone does who plays...similar to a youth soccer league, I suppose. And here is my certificate to prove it! 

Also available for your #CyberMonday consideration are two non-sci-fi novels that will leave you tearful and distraught by the final page: AFTER ILIUM and A BEAUTIFUL CHILL.

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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.