THE WARRIORS BAUMANN & The Writing Life, part 2

What a happy holiday season it is whenever I have a new book out into the world!

This year that new book is THE WARRIORS BAUMANN (<click to get your copy), a ribald tale of two brothers on a mission in future-medieval Missouri. What is future-medieval? It is a genre in which the story is set in a medieval-level society but located in the future from our present day. How does that work? I'm glad you asked, because I've literally written six books to explain how a modern society can devolve into a less civilized society. I refer to the FLU SEASON Saga, a series of stand-alone novels with a shared timeline and crossover characters. Start anywhere; you get whatever info you need to understand that particular story. Hint: It begins with a 10-year pandemic, then gets worse (with some ups and downs while attempting to restore civilization), until there isn't much left but desperate people killing over food. Then, eventually, people start to rebuild, and after some time we are up to a medieval-level society.

States have turned into kingdoms and the capital cities have walls around them for protection. Kings rule. Warriors keep the roads clear. Traveling troupes of actors and minstrels ply their trade. One seeks to rise in status and join the Court crowd with all their frivolous finery and dour decadence. It is an ordered society. THE WARRIORS BAUMANN unfolds in such a setting as the clever older, shorter brother named Rory persuades his brawny younger brother Stank (Stanley K. Baumann) to join him on his plan to wed Princess Majory and thus become a duke. They are not prepared, however, for the trials of the Royal Road to the capital nor the plethora of schemes and gambits of the Court crowd. Success is fairly uncertain until the final scene.

Before even the FLU SEASON Saga, a small library of various stories was written, as shown in the graphic below. Once in college, the stories compiled, many based on the science fiction I had been reading in my youth. My first long work was a rip-off of Orwell's 1984; the difference in my take being that the protagonist turns out to be a plant who works from the inside to undo the tyrannical state. Titled In Pursuit of Freedom, I eventually wrote it as a screenplay and had it optioned by a Hollywood studio for a year before they dropped the project and all rights returned to me. It remains unfinished as a novel - only as the novella I typed up during high school days.

My next longform work was YEAR OF THE TIGER, which began as a sci-fi short story I wrote in college. I took the professor's advice to reset the story on Earth rather than an alien planet. So I chose a tiger as the counterpoint to a man driven insane by dreams of himself as a tiger. That story, too, became a screenplay - the easiest way to get the full story on paper back in typewriter days. I swore to turn it into a novel and I tried several times but the complicated story stood firm. Finally, after years of revision, I thought I'd gotten it just right, and published it only in 2020, when the world was in pandemic fever and nobody was buying books. A fellow author from India read it and pronounced it a fine book (her review here).

Back to the early days. I finally sat down and wrote the great masterpiece I'd envisioned based on some wildly ridiculous tales of adventure from my youth reset on an alien world. I called it THE DREAM LAND and included a version of myself and girlfriend of the time as protagonists exploring another world through an interdimensional doorway. While almost comic-bookish at first, the story through revisions got more serious, more scientific, and darker as these two Earth people learn to function in the new society and gradually rise in status - though not without considerable problems. All right, done. I'd set it down for the record.

But what happens next? I had lingering questions so I started in immediately on Book 2 of what would become a trilogy. The first book set up all the tropes of interdimensional fiction so the second book used them straightaway, focusing on the how and why - then using a time travel/change history theme (things don't go well in the end). Then I wrote Book 3 to solve the problems encountered in Book 2 (undoing the history that was changed because it made everything worse + an approaching comet). The end of a good trilogy.

In the middle of Book 2 (Dreams of Future's Past), however, I got stopped by a plot conundrum. For the next ten years I didn't write fiction. I wrote scholarly articles, grad school papers, a non-fiction thesis, and finally a Ph.D. dissertation. While teaching English after all my education, I read a student's sci-fi story which reminded me of my unfinished book. I returned to it, suddenly knowing how to get through the plot conundrum. It wasn't from anything in the student's story; rather the act of taking some fiction into my brain unlocked it and fresh ideas flowed. So I finished that book and went straight into Book 3 (Diaspora). 

Also while working on Book 1 of THE DREAM LAND Trilogy, I went to Japan to teach English. I used my experiences living there for five years and from earlier experiences living in Hawaii (thanks, Army!) to write a romance novel, AIKO. Then my subsequent Master of Fine Arts thesis was a novel titled A BEAUTIFUL CHILL, another kind of romance (what I dubbed an 'anti-romance') set on the same college campus (Ah ha! Take that, professors and colleagues!). Still another book came while I lived in South Texas and attended the university there for a Masters of Arts in English (thinking to return to Japan and teach again). Several courses in rhetoric inspired me to write a version of The Iliad and The Odyssey - putting a modern young man touring the ruins of Troy (Ilium) with an older woman named Helen. Awkward. That book, AFTER ILIUM, although not the first written, became my first book to be published as a longish novella. Next came The Dream Land trilogy, followed by A Beautiful Chill, and Aiko. I thought I was done.

How did this wave of publishing get started? I'm glad you asked because there is an answer. You see, being busy with grad school and then teaching (back in the US), I had little time to write new books. Meanwhile, the publishing world had moved on; the process changed. Instead of mailing a box of paper to an agent or publisher with a self-address stamped envelope for a reply (they didn't return to box of paper unless you included return postage), we now used this thing they were calling e-mail: you sent a message (cover letter) via this system and attached a sample manuscript file (1 to 3 chapters). Instead of waiting 6 months to a year for a reply, you could expect a reply in 3 to 8 weeks. I sent manuscripts around using both methods. Got some nibbles, no hooks. Did have a couple agents briefly. In the end it was neither method which got me published. It was the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award competition that first got my books noticed. I entered it three years in a row but did not win. However, through the ranking process I was noticed.

I am, if nothing else, a special case. While in a hospital one day, I acknowledged to myself that if I could do anything before saying goodbye, it would be to see one of my novels published - and praised, reviewed, with movie deals, etc. in some of the dreams. So I entered the ABNA competition on that whim, got some attention, and hooked up with some small press folks. I thought at the time "this is good, this is enough" and didn't pursue more lucrative avenues. I should have tossed my hat into a wider ring. But I also thought I had no more ideas and so there was little point in trying to go big or go home. I was already home, and that was fine. Thus, I've been in the same Myrddin Publishing Group sphere of influence ever since. 

As the next book is written and the next, and the next, I keep looking back and wondering what life might have been like if I had struck out for something more traditional. Going for a Big Five publisher. As it was, I believed I wouldn't write another book so the end of my writing career, such as it was, was fine. I had done enough to satisfy my desire to see my books in print (and on Kindle). I kept on teaching.

Then I got a new idea for a book: a vampire novel.  [TO BE CONTINUED]


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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 WARRIORS BAUMANN & The Writing Life

It is my pleasure to announce the launch of yet another new book from the twisted mind of me. It is a calling, a compulsion, an avocation, a truly devious deception I offer to the reading public. For is not fiction a great deception? The verisimilitude of plausible irony? Indeed, only words for one's pleasure, sentences for a semblance of scenery, and a plethora of comedy faux pas not withstanding. That said, I refer to THE WARRIORS BAUMANN, available in either paper form with a back or in plastic form under electronic duress. The choice is yours, dear gentlereader!

Here we have a ribald comedy set in a future Missouri where medieval society reigns - 200 years after the end of the previous volume in the FLU SEASON Saga (THE GRANDSONS, Book 6).  Two brothers, Baumann descendants, find themselves journeying to the capital city of Louis on a mission: Elder brother Rory intends to wed the princess and thereby make the Baumann clan into high-class folks. Rory's larger but younger brother Stank (a.k.a. Stanley K. Baumann) doubts the scheme. For one thing, there is a duke who must be removed to clear the way for Rory's courtship to proceed. With an out-of-work actor, a feisty warrior girl, and other players joining them, this tale has more twists than one of those twisted braid pastries with the pecans and frosting on it. A delight which  Princess Majory would snarf down in an instant.

However, this is not the end of the Baumann family saga. Even now work continues on the next volume: an epic of medieval monstrosity, a most serious account - serious in ways THE WARRIORS BAUMANN is amusing - of the fantastic war between twin princes in 3030 - as mentioned by travelers in my 2017 novel EPIC FANTASY *WITH DRAGONS. We can see how the timeline is coming together. The next novel shall be titled A TIME OF KINGS, and while the focus of the story is not any Baumann descendant, the narrator of the story is yet another member of the Baumann line who participates in the war between these twin brothers.

   
How did this madness begin, you might be wondering. There is a tale as old as time, when thoughts and actions were set as words on surfaces: clay, stone, parchment, paper, electronic screens. I, too, partook of the art of invention, drawing from the stormy clouds images and sounds which I mistook for reality. Called fiction by the scribes of my locale, I found them a secret delight. Indeed, I fancied my own creations and thereby took up the paper pad and pencil and drew forth the lines that represented persons of my imagination. I circled their spoken words like bubbles over their heads so they might tell us their thoughts.

Given this ability, I sought further expansion and learned the form called paragraphs. The gathering of ideas within a single block of words proved miraculous. Being only a child at the time, I was praised for presuming too much and offering more than my size should produce. In time my scribblings made sense, drew more praise and encouragement flowed, foisting me into a light of key limes - or perhaps that, too, was mere dream. Thus I fashioned many such tales of quite unalive persons acting as I wished them to act for purposes of delighting myself and others with the many ways such persons could act. And, to our great amazement, we were entertained by such invention. 

Indeed, I grew bolder and imaged more - even as this talent grew weary for those close to me. So I tempered my enthusiasm bit by bit until nothing remained of my fictionalization urges. I slipped into the ordinary life, a world of vast emptiness, a plane of plain musings not of what invention might bring but only the facts, ma'am, only the truth - as set on the pages we read in our school lessons. But there is more truth in the pages of imagination than those scraped across our great institutions - truth of a kind. A split was due. 

As I gained entrance to a higher school, my fictionalizing also grew, became unwieldy and couldn't be contained. I wrote out stories for each and every assignment regardless of the class or its subject. All was narrative. All a protagonist's journey and an antagonist's blockade. The pattern repeated endlessly. On one fine day I ventured into a new room and found there a scholar who believed my fictioneering had merit. I accepted the praise in my usual humble manner. That said, I devoted myself to the creation of imaginary tales of made-up persons doing ordinary and interesting things, occasionally extraordinary and highly interesting things, such that greater stories were put to the page.

In that ancient era, we employed the device called the Smith-Corona manual typewriter. The device allowed a single person to push keys which imprinted characters upon an inserted sheet of paper. An amazing invention for the time. In that terse apprenticeship, I composed a story of 66 pages, in single lines, following the model of a book titled "1984" - which we had read in a class. I thought my take on the tale was totally tremendous. Passing it around to friends, who passed it to their friends, brought it to the attention of half the school by the time the stapled pages found their way back to me. I was to become a legend - if not for my musical career bursting on the horizon, sending me and my tuba to a proper university; indeed, a conservatory, to hone my skills and make something of myself, as the professors liked to say.

I continued to compose stories alongside composing music. Both became outlets for my imagination: a tale told in words or a tale told in notes. The same to me; I knew the details. Then came the time in which decisions were made. Alas, I did not become a great composer of Classical music or even film music. I allowed myself to be swept away into foreign intrigue. Only then did I realize the story side of my efforts was the true one. Oh, I could still dabble in music, enough to entertain myself. But I had to admit it was a lot easier to write a book and hand the pages to a reader than it was to gather a bunch of musicians, copy out individual parts, and perform a symphony. I did actually compose a symphony but the 3 movements were never performed all at one concert. 

So I took up the cause of the English teacher. I made myself into one of those who taught how to write. How to write all manner of texts, in all situations, employing a variety of styles and tone, incorporating information and opinion, images and links to the at-large world. It grew tedious in time. I started to scribble again on the side. Even as I worked to earn my money, I created stories which saved my soul. That is the story I'm telling. There is more to tell, however; I would call it the good parts. You be the judge. 

I shall continue this history lesson in a less haughty fashion in my next post. In the interval, I highly recommend you get started with THE WARRIORS BAUMANN, and prepare yourself to burst out laughing perhaps forty times between its covers. And please note: there will not be a test at the end of your reading, so simply enjoy the tale of our two brothers doing their best to win at life! So let it be written, so let it read! 

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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.