Back to the Future in A TIME OF KINGS

Dear Gentlereaders,

If you scroll down to the bottom of this page you will see that this blog was started in 2010, a year which will live in infamy. Moreover, we have been blogging consistently for 16 years, with the rare break here and there. It is amazing how the passage of time stands firm against our proclivities and all manner of counterproduction. Perhaps that is why time, and history, fascinate me so. In my writing life, I have seldom written stories set in the past - although the book may be published later such that the story appears to be in the past. 

My FLU SEASON Saga is different in that I very much focus on history. That is to say, the unfolding of a future history. We began with THE BOOK OF MOM, written in 2020-21, which was only intended to be a one-off stand-alone novel. Being in the first lockdowns of 2020, I could imagine our everyday life falling lower month by month until life became unbearable. So I set that book six years into a longer pandemic. That was the beginning of our history which now culminates in my epic tome A TIME OF KINGS.

Let us say that THE BOOK OF MOM is set in 2026 (i.e., six years into a longer pandemic), and continues a couple years further in the next book, THE WAY OF THE SON. Then we have Book 3, DAWN OF THE DAUGHTERS, which follows Isla's life from age 2 to her death at age 79. That would take us to the year 2105. 

Maggie, granddaughter of Isla, is born in 2100. She appears in Book 4 THE BOOK OF DAD as a child and tells her own story as an adult in Book 5 THE GRANDDAUGHTER. She appears again in Book 6 THE GRANDSONS where she dies at age 85. That would be the year 2185. Maggie's grandsons live out their lives and, as families tend to do, they produce descendants. 

By 2353 the world has changed dramatically from what Maggie knew. We find that the future isn't what anyone thought it would be. The world has not grown full of technological wonders - as many tech bros dream - but fallen into regressive circumstances, especially in the western territory Maggie knew. With yet another rebuilding we achieve something at the level of a medieval society. States are now kingdoms. Cities of note have walls to protect them against the attacks of barbarians and rival cities. Outside of the cities the land is full of savagery as desperate people struggle to survive. Into this condition we find THE WARRIORS BAUMANN on a mission that takes them up the Royal Road (a.k.a. remnants of I-44) to the city of Louis, capital of the Kingdom of Missoura. Their odd episode there becomes the stuff of legend and the tale of the Red Duke is synonymous with the Wormwood catastrophe that scourges the earth, forcing survivors underground for decades.

And we build again. We follow the previous plan, often borrowing from old books: walled cities, horseback raiders, kingdoms with their kings and queens. 

The world of 2988 finds armies from Missoura, Kanza, Arkan, and Okala fighting the hordes of 'Slammers' from Tejas - which opens A TIME OF KINGS. A boy lost on the battlefield is saved by the victorious king, adopted and taken back to Louis, given the name Jack. We learn he is from the Baumann family in the Kanza territory and his true name is Frank, which he regains later.

In Chapter 2 of A TIME OF KINGS, we get an overview of this history as seen from Jack's perspective in the 2990s:

Little did I know all that had transpired before my birth. They knew, and acted on this history: all the conflicts year after year, the changing border lines, the people caught between them, the threats and challenges and treaties and travels to and from towns across a vast land that once had been a nation of states united as one. Later I saw the old maps in the Court, could see how the maps of today, what the King called the Americus, matched those of old, what were titled United American States in the early days. One Court scholar told me there were even earlier, older forms of the nation under the name America in various versions going back a thousand years.

It was a great plague that stopped a future that seemed already dissolving before their eyes. Lasted ten years, longer in some places. I heard how half of everyone died, and the other half were forced to scavenge for whatever food remained as none was grown nor taken to storage. Others became thieves and scoundrels, preying on those who were trying to survive. It was desperate times, the old scholar told me as though he had lived through it. He said his grandmother had a book – a scroll opened and pressed flat: sleeves of parchment stitched together, covered with ink-stroked words that held meaning for those who knew how to uncode the marks.

Gradually, as I was told, those good people who remained formed communities, bonding through marriages and their shared effort in gathering and growing food. They would stand together against the bad people who seemed determined to oppose everything, who might form a militia or band of marauders to raid and steal from the good people. Desperate times, the scholar told me again and again. We were supposed to be fortunate now: we had a mighty kingdom and a strong castle and an army to protect us, and plenty of food produced in the fields outside the walls.

There was a brief period, I learned, when the world grew back to the way it had been before the great plague: cities rebuilt, industry renewed. They relearned from books how to gain energy in the form of a shock that linked house to house. That left people able to see in the night, the shock causing glass bulbs to glow. In time, they made things which could capture the image of a person and save it, called camera box. These came to be used to watch everyone, to be certain they acted properly and in good faith with the government in the old capital on the east coast. Yet that old capital, and other cities on the coast were long ago destroyed by God’s holy hand, wiped away by a cleansing fire.

“It is the reason many of us ventured west,” said the old scholar.

They went as far as the mountains west of Kanza territory, then turned back. Some settled in the plains. Nothing worth searching for beyond those mountains. Here in the wooded hills and fertile river valleys they found an ideal home.

That became my home: the capital city of Louis, where I grew into my youth under the watchful eye of King Alex – until his death. I was made a member of the Court with a document given with the name of the King drawn upon the parchment. With that elegantly drawn name at the bottom of the document, I became a ward of the Court, adopted son of the King.

(Read more of what this epic novel is about in the previous blog post.)

History is downhill, it seems, from cause and action, the mainstream of our epic tale. Our narrator, Jack, is born in 2980 and dies in the year 3079. At first he is a mere flaneur observing the world he occupies. Then he is invited into the central story as a side character only to bloom into the main protagonist as his own life takes over the focus of the novel. In the epilogue, an elderly Jack tells his grandchildren and great-grandchildren the story of his life. One participant is Baby Haron, who is Jack's grandson asleep in a basket.

History will continue in the next novel, where this Haron has grown into a fine young man, bearing the title of Baron by birth. Yet he is unsettled in his life, and seeks a worthy wife to give him status. His tale is our next novel: BARON HARON TELLS HIS TALES. It is completed as I type this blog post. Look for this "cozy romantasy" by the end of this year - set mostly in the year 3095. These three novels: The Warriors Baumann, A Time of Kings, and Baron Haron Tells His Tales will constitute my "future medieval trilogy".

As always, thank you for your support. I write because I enjoy inventing interesting stories. I am pleased to share them with you. I hope you will enjoy them.

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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 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 FLU SEASON SAGA ends!

Dear Friends and Followers,

Back in the ancient year of 2019 the beginning of the end began. That's a mouthful but not an incorrect tautology. Things happened, which prompted me to want to write something. I had trouble getting started. I spent the end of 2019 and the beginning of 2020 planning a story which I finally got started later that year. I imagined what was then our present situation - lockdowns, restrictions, shortages, desperation, fear - and took it six years into the future - a possible future, granted.

And so the FLU SEASON saga was born. At first intended to be a single novel, it expanded into a trilogy before the first book was completed. I had only a rough idea of what would happen in those next two books, yet I wasn't worried. The characters would tell me everything and I would just write about it. They had compelling stories full of heartache and heartbreak to share but also triumphs and joys. I cried and cheered along with them, I confess, unwilling to acknowledge my fingers were the cause of all their ups and downs. THE GRANDDAUGHTER, the fifth book in the saga (out in September 2024), was a particular pleasure to write, being lighter even amusing more than the other books.

After three books, I thought the series was finished at a trilogy. Yet a new idea kept pestering me so I started a fourth book, calling it a sequel. But the sequel led to an even newer idea, something lighter as I imagined it. As I concluded that fifth book, I had ideas for a sixth book, which I am working on now. I feel that I can end the series with this final book - but it will be a long one, covering a lot of territory as we venture further into the uncertain future. I may introduce zombie-like denizens of the desert at some point (medically accurate, of course).

THE GRANDSONS is the final volume of this saga, following the lives of two grandsons and introducing a third grandson. Life has gotten worse for the citizens of Skinner Canyon with a new menace from the destruction of the cities on the east coast coming for them and more criminality in their own locale. They don't know what has happened in the east, only that it can't be anything good. They are much too concerned with the big trial in town. The body of an infamous outlaw has turned up and everyone wants to know how he met his end - being related to a prominent citizen of the town. 

This final book is a frame story. We begin in their present day, set up the situation and get the trial started. Then we jump back fifteen years to see how we got to this present day situation. Classic framework. However, as I am literally (literally!) making it up as I go along, it is moving slowly. I have a roadmap but the curves are sharp, the hills steep, and there are plenty of chuck holes slowing me, but I know the way forward and will get to the destination eventually - likely late in 2025, possibly early 2026.

I frequently vowed to write a Western, a genre I never believed I was capable of, having little knowledge of that era in American history or the nomenclature of horses, etc. But like how it took some time to "find the way in" to the first book, THE BOOK OF MOM, the way in was a scene in a dream I didn't ask for. I wrote out that scene and the start could begin. Now there is a lot of webs to weave building the story, and then unweave them as the story unwinds to its shocking yet heartfelt conclusion. I have already written that final scene.

As I create this final volume of the saga, doing what I love to do, please enjoy reading the previously completed books in the saga. You can find them all in paperback or for Kindle at this universal link: https://mybook.to/PaxnhJD

Your support has been and always will be greatly appreciated! 

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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 GRANDDAUGHTER Launches!

The fifth book in the FLU SEASON series, THE GRANDDAUGHTER, launches today or tomorrow depending on the internet gods, while the ebook version for Kindle has already been available since September 10. Click here to get the ebook - the paperback link will be here as soon as I get it (should be September 15). 

UPDATE (9/15): Due to the vagaries of the internet the paperback version's availability will be delayed by 2-3 days.

UPDATE (9/16)! The book gods have ruled! The paperback link is here. Thanks for your patience.

You can get the entire series (five books) here.

Does that end the series? Hmmm. I thought I was writing a stand-alone novel when I wrote the first book, THE BOOK OF MOM, but I realized half way into it that the story would have to continue. Because I couldn't see a two-book series, I immediately went for a trilogy while writing Book 2 THE WAY OF THE SON. However, as I was concluding Book 3, DAWN OF THE DAUGHTERS, I had ideas for another book. Then, while writing Book 4, THE BOOK OF DAD (out this past June), I had ideas for Book 5 THE GRANDDAUGHTER. I began to wonder when the madness would end while hoping it never would. (I am currently well into the writing of Book 6, THE GRANDSON, which should be the final book in the series.)

FLU SEASON is a series. Each book follows after the previous book. Each book, however, is a stand-alone novel, complete in itself. A lot of series are set up this way: yes, you are meant to read them in order for the best experience but each volume can stand as its own story regardless of having read other volumes. A character may appear in more than one book and the timeline traverses the series, and in that way they are linked. But standing as individual novels, the characters do catch you up and give you what you need to know from earlier books so you're not left confused. (Note: I never make use of the infamous "As you know, Bob..." constructions.

Here is a look at what you can expect in each novel of the series, as tweeted previously.

FLU SEASON (Book 1): THE BOOK OF MOM

Everything was fine, just me and Mom. And her precious tuba. Then the pandemic came and everyone had to adapt to a new normal. Until the new normal became unbearable.

We awoke one morning and the news was worse than before. Food rationing, no power, gas lines. Mom decided we should leave, wait it out at my grandparents' farm, but danger followed us, all the way to the coast, trying to find safety with family members who instead needed our help more than we needed theirs.

I had to trust Mom to find a sanctuary - hopefully not an island where other survivors are trying to set up their own society with rules as strict as back in the city. And definitely not a place where our family secrets will be exposed. 

That's the last thing we need as we wait for this pandemic to end.

FLU SEASON 2: THE WAY OF THE SON

Everything changes when you lose your mother, even more if you lose her during a pandemic when everyone is fighting for survival and it is your responsibility to protect her and you fail. 

Now you have a wife and baby to protect in the savage outerlands - where danger lurks in every shadow, and it's every man for himself.

I call it the Way of the Son - definitely not the way Mom would've gone. 

The road is finite, and well-marked, so you only need to go along it, following the path that’s already set before you. Yet sometimes it will lead you in the wrong direction. Sometimes you will end up in the wrong place. You have to find your way back home again, wherever that may be - even through a deadly pandemic.

FLU SEASON 3: DAWN OF THE DAUGHTERS

It was hard enough trying to start from scratch after the pandemic destroyed half of everything. Best to settle far from anyone, hiding in the forest of a national park.

But with militia from the new government coming by, rebels still on the loose, and new neighbors settling nearby, the new normal was a mix of intense danger and surprising joy.

But which kind of life would win in the end?

How can you raise a bunch of daughters in this kind of world?

Hiding away in the forest of a national park, Sandy's family (from Books 1 & 2) 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, his family faces challenges and opportunities. They suffer through the vagaries of an on-going civil war between North and South territories. 

The conflict splits the family into convergent destinies, leaving Sandy's daughter, Isla, to carry the family into the future, living to witness the reconstruction of a new society.

Book 4: THE BOOK OF DAD

Fritz is sent for rehabilitation, then assigned a street cleaner job in the city, just for making a video exposing the true history of the ten-year pandemic and civil war that followed - based on everything his mother, Isla, has told him all his life - whether he wanted to hear it or not.

 

Now he finds himself in trouble again in the capital city as he tries to make sense of this Ideal Society. With weekly counseling and constant surveillance, Fritz is going crazy. Only getting back his family's tuba might save him.

That crime sets him up for a crucial act which lands him in the Department of Social Order. Only a reprieve by the Governor herself - the self-styled Big Sister - can save him this time. But it comes with a cost, one he may not be able to pay.  

The next chapter in the FLU SEASON saga follows Isla's youngest child, now grown and a husband and father, as he fights for truth, justice, and a way out.

FLU SEASON 5: THE GRANDDAUGHTER

Isla Baumann is born in the seventh year of the great pandemic (Books 1-3). Her last child, Fritz, goes to the capital (Books 3-4) and suffers under the restored government's oppression. His children escape to a small town in the western corner of the nation.

THE GRANDDAUGHTER (Book 5) follows Maggie's life as a young woman with ambition stuck in a dusty cowtown. She decides what this post-pandemic town needs is a children's band. But first she must return to the dirty capital to claim the family's tuba. 

Following in her great-great-grandmother's footsteps, she vows to play the tuba and gets a musical instrument salesman to help her start the band. But there are plenty of obstacles to achieving her goals, a struggle which brings her to the ultimate decision that will save the capital and the nation.

I hope you enjoy this pandemic/post-pandemic/dystopian family saga which, back in March 2020, I didn't intend to write. But I had some time on my hands while staying home the rest of the year. This is the result and I'm quite pleased with it. Even as I get older and other things work less well, my twisted mind can still dream up twisted stories to entertain myself - and you, if you so choose. Thanks as always for your support all of these years.

I expect FLU SEASON 6: THE GRANDSON to be finished sometime in 2025, likely toward autumn as I'm not in any hurry. 

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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.

Pre-Fall Update & BBQ Picnic

What a glorious time of the year! Usually this is my least favorite time: hottest part of the year, having to return to school, cicadas by day, crickets by night, all the things I planned to do during the summer but didn't.... Anyway, those days are gone and I can sit back and watch others go back to school (hah hah!) as I go off to various doctor appointments hoping for the best.

As we head toward yet another autumn, I am preparing to launch my newest novel, the fifth in the FLU SEASON series, which began as a stand-alone, then became a trilogy and birthed a sequel and - now - another sequel. A sixth book is in the works and should be out in 2025 if we make it that far.

Book 5: THE GRANDDAUGHTER is really one of my favorite books of all 19 novels I've written to date. It has a compelling narrator/protagonist with an intriguing storyline and a host of obstacles to her goals which resolve in logical ways yet in dramatic fashion. Good messages, beautiful descriptions, snappy dialogue, clever homages to works of music and literature, and a lot of moral gray area.

Set ten years after the end of Book 4: THE BOOK OF DAD (June 2024) in the western town of a restored post-pandemic, post-reconstruction era, child Maggie of Book 4 is now a grown woman with her own life who thinks starting a kid's band is what the town needs. It also gives her a handy excuse to play the family tuba - previously owned by her dad, his mother, her grandmother, and on back to World War II. 

Book 6: THE GRANDSON (coming in 2025) is set fifteen years after the end of Book 5. That puts readers approximately in the 2150s. The world is harsh and a dangerous new threat from the east coast is spreading across to the same western town where Maggie is an old woman. But no spoilers.

To summarize this series of post-pandemic novels, I thought it might be amusing to match first and last paragraphs - the exact first paragraph(s) and the final paragraph(s) - as well as give you other basic information.

1 THE BOOK OF MOM (Nov. 2022)

Narrator/Protagonist: Sandy, the autistic teen son of a single mother (a music professor and tuba player). Focus: Mom's behavior, decisions.

opening:

Mom told me she named me Sandy because she was lounging on a beach when I was conceived. I got only bits and pieces of the story until I was a teenager. Then one night, half-drunk with sorrow at yet another pandemic spreading over us, she held me close, like I was still her baby, and gave up the whole tale.

ending:

In the end some of us would survive.

It wasn’t so much the conveyor belt of viruses and variants that killed us but ourselves. Trained month after month to be suspicious of each other, we eventually unleashed our pent-up fury, driving hate into everything around us, without mercy, and that was our end.

That was also our beginning. 

2 THE WAY OF THE SON (May 2023)

Narrator/Protagonist: Sandy. Focus: He and his cousin Hannah and baby Isla.

opening:

What was that?

Another snap of a twig somewhere in this forest, just as dusk is creeping upon me. Somebody coming to kill us, or just a woodland critter? I’m not supposed to be afraid. Even so, I put my pen down and reach for Mom’s pistol on the grass beside me, give it a pat.

ending:

She wrenches her hand free, points across the slope.

“Dee-dee,” she says, and we turn to see the whitetail doe and her fawn quietly feeding between the trees, unafraid of us, like it is the most natural thing in the world.

3 DAWN OF THE DAUGHTERS (Sept. 2023)

Narrator/Protagonist: Isla, daughter of Sandy and Hannah. Focus: Isla's life from age 4 to 79.

opening:

My daddy liked to say there are two kinds of fear: the dark kind and the light kind. You’ll have to face both of them sooner or later, he would remind me. The dark kind is shapeless, without limits, yet lacking detail, a huge menacing presence that you know will get you. It is immense, bigger than you, bigger than your family. The only thing to do is hide and hope it ignores you, gets bored and moves on. Or else you can shine a light on it. Sometimes, the light will scare it away. But sometimes the light will enrage it more.

ending: 

It’s time for them to carry on.

For you to carry on! Choose from among you who will play that ancient tuba to call forth everyone to build this world back. Who will take up Tubal-Cain’s great horn and blow the world into existence? Which one of you?

4 THE BOOK OF DAD (June 2024)

Narrator/Protagonist: Fritz (who prefers to go by Frank), Isla's last child. Focus: Fritz's life in the capital after returning from forced rehabilitation.

opening:

I have to get out. I’m beginning to realize how much I hate this place: this cold, gray city straining at the cusp of winter, ready to bite back anyone who dares smile or lets show the happy thought born of some unexpected joy (an unapproved word no longer allowed); nor the anticipation of a holiday break and welcome time spent with family. Forbidden. 

ending:

P.S. I really don’t mind a tuba. We ain’t got no music here but some banjos.

5 THE GRANDDAUGHTER (coming in Sept. 2024)

Narrator/Protagonist: Maggie, grown daughter of Fritz. Focus: Maggie's life out west and her musical ambitions.

opening:

“Ain’t it just short fer Margaret?” asks this thin woman in the plain beige dress, not looking at all appropriate for a funeral. She wears a sincere smile, though, like a child, but her long hair is uncombed and she smells like she hasn’t bathed in a while.

“I don’t really know,” I respond, a bit put off by her abruptness. “I’ve always been called Maggie. Never really thought about it.”

ending:

[sorry, that's a spoiler]

6 THE GRANDSON (sometime in 2025)

Narrator/Protagonist: Jacob "Jake" Little Bear (Maggie's adopted grandson). Focus: Jake's life as the town doctor's assistant and the one who uncovers what's happened to a character in Book 5.

opening:

A lone rider approaches out of the orange palette painting the sky across the horizon, as it has for many days, many weeks, the sun refusing to set at night, the glow continuing. Townsfolk feel the itchy heat, smell the fire, yet its source is too far off to be known, something from the distant east and its dirty industry perhaps that cries out in the night for production or a groan of dissatisfaction at what humanity has done to this world in only a few short centuries of miscalculation. We’ve wrought what we’ve sown, some like to say.

ending: 

[not yet written]

In these final days of my career, my eyes go bleary, my fingers hit the keys less precisely, and my energy is reduced. I write about two hours a day, occasionally at other times when the ideas strike and more so when I'm deep in the throes of creation. But I am in no real hurry; only the calendar races me. It may be a form of insanity, but making up stuff keeps my mind going and my body follows. I try to keep it going - will keep it going as long as I can. One reason I like to make each book, even in a series, able to stand as a satisfying conclusion to what has come before so the story can stand as finished even if I don't get to finish the next book. That itself is a kind of game I play, so far a stalemate. I've made my move and I wait.

Thanks as always for your support. I write for my own pleasure and I like to share what I create. If you read it and like it, that's great. If you don't like what I write, that too is quite all right. For me the writing is the main thing. If anyone buys a book, if anyone reads and reviews a book, that is a bonus. That part is already long past the part that gives me satisfaction. 

Happy reading!

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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.

Summer Update & Wine Tasting!

Here in these dog days of summer, we pause to reflect on what could've been but wasn't. A taste, yes, but not a full drunken orgy of disease and destruction. The 10-year FLU SEASON that was, in our reality, nipped in the bud. A six-book series (five thus far) that came from that momentary hiccup to our daily lives in the ripe old year of 2020. Drink up!

Last month Book 4 of the series launched. THE BOOK OF DAD was billed as a sequel to the trilogy and continues the saga of the Baumann family. The drama begins with the tuba saved after World War II (we learn that fact in Book 3) and it is subsequently passed down from generation to generation. Along the way, as family members struggle through the pandemic and the lawlessness that follows, we follow the emergence of a very different society. In the capital city of the restored nation, Fritz, the poor hero of Book 4, tries to sort out his miserable life after returning from mandatory rehabilitation, now estranged from his family, given a menial job and a tiny unit to sleep in, surveilled constantly with weekly counseling sessions to prevent backsliding. The city is run by Big Sister who models her efforts on the farm where she grew up - or is it just as much of a lie as what they claim he professes in that video he made of his elderly mother (Isla) telling the truth about everything that happened?

In that novel, we meet his 10-year old daughter Maggie in a few scenes. In the sequel to the sequel, Book 5: THE GRANDDAUGHTER (coming in fall 2024), we meet Maggie again but as a young woman living out west. We follow her through her efforts to start a kids' band in her small town with the help of a musical instrument salesman. There are many obstacles to overcome. But those efforts lead to bigger events in her life, including a major turn in society. Book 6: THE GRANDSON opens fifteen years after the end of Book 5, and is in the drafting stage (I know how it ends) and should be out in 2025.

I've been winging it from the start - a true "pantser" who writes by the seat of his pants - yet the story has been clear in my mind. I've played fast and loose with hard facts. I never name actual cities until Book 5. I never give precise dates so the series will not become "dated" years from now. I give a generic start as "the sixth year of the pandemic" when autistic teen Sandy and his single mother Polly, the tuba player, escape from a city in chaos for the hope of sanctuary on his grandparents' farm. Sandy's daughter, Isla, is born in the seventh year of the pandemic. In Book 3: DAWN OF THE DAUGHTERS, Isla narrates her life from 4 years to her final day at age 79.

Now I have to count back and forward to make a proper timeline as I work on Book 6. But I know the overall story. If the series begins in our actual year of 2020, and Isla is born in the seventh year of the pandemic, that would, mathematically speaking, be in 2027. A life lived up to 79 would bring us, as readers, to the year 2106. Now go back 10 years to when the heroine of Book 5 was born. Then add 50 years to the story covered in Book 5. And so on. It can be quite maddening - maddening, I tell you!

But that is half (or maybe closer to three-quarters) of the fun of crafting a multi-generation family saga. 

I awaken with the thought "Wonder what he/she/they are doing today? What trouble will they get into that I alone may save them from? or should I let them be, just watch and see what happens and then write about it?" That is often the writer's craft. It is also the chief hobby of the retired class: to sit back and observe the world going by. In Book 6: The Grandson, I'm still deciding who will tell the story. So far, a few different characters have shared what they know. I am merely collecting their stories for easy reading. The most important character in the book is the one who is dead.

Ensconced in my air-cooled abode, I type. And, having typed, I move on.

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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.

FLU SEASON, a pandemic/post-pandemic series! Where are we now?

It has been a long time coming. I wasn't sure I could do it. But then there was the first book, coming when I was good and ready by 2022. And I knew by the middle of writing it that there would be a second book - and with a second book it had to be a trilogy. Then came the hard part: a fourth book. 

My first two trilogies (THE DREAM LAND TRILOGY and the STEFAN SZEKELY VAMPIRE TRILOGY) both lent themselves to a fourth book. However, while I started a fourth book for each trilogy, they went nowhere due to other things taking my time. This time, I have time and plenty of it, plus a multigenerational cast that loves to throw plots at me.

Now I'm thrilled to say that not only is Book 4: THE BOOK OF DAD launching this coming week, timed to Father's Day, but I have completed Book 5: The Granddaughter's Tale, coming later this year. And, if I dare suggest it, another book has been started. These three books would make a whole 'nother trilogy!

I know it can be confusing with news and updates on Books 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 scattered around the platforms. Let me do a quick summary of each book and make clear the status of each without giving away too much of the story.

The initial idea came, obviously, from the very real pandemic we experienced early in 2020. I wanted to write such a story but it was too immediate for me to create fiction. A couple years later, with further thought and planning and the return to normal, I had a way to start it and knew how the story would proceed - without any consideration at the time of it being more than a one-off stand-alone novel. I would begin the story in a pandemic much like what we experienced, using references we can all identify, but start my novel after six years of it, now a lot worse and with a lot more collapsing of society.

Books 1, 2, and 3 are available now in paperback and for Kindle.

1 The Book of Mom

Autistic teen son Sandy narrates what he and his sassy single mother go through in deciding to flee the city and what they endure once they leave. Mom is a professional tuba player and music professor; Sandy just started virtual college. Heading for his grandparents' small farm, they discover that the ravages of the city have spread into the countryside. What was to be a safe place to wait out the rest of the pandemic becomes a dead end. Plan B goes into effect. They travel on to find other relatives and discover how they have been managing, with plenty of tales of horror and grief. Plan B becomes Plan C. A lot goes wrong as they continue seeking a sanctuary. Eventually, they return to the coastal island where they've vacationed during past summers, a place now with its own unsettling rules. (More here.)

[Note: Unlike a lot of pandemic/plague and apocalyptic stories, FLU SEASON doesn't rely on zombies or other tropes of science fiction but strives to present a realistic world not far from what we might actually experience in the immediate future.]

2 The Way of the Son

Sandy narrates the journey he and his teen cousin Hannah are forced to undergo through the savage 'outerlands', bearing Mom's tuba and Baby Isla. They seek sanctuary but find the land even more dangerous, lawlessness everywhere, and face dangers that make them tougher. They also encounter the start of fighting between factions of the remnant government and rebels while finding other friends and relatives. Sandy must quickly become a man, to make his mother proud and his wife confident of his ability to protect them. (More here.)

[Note: Although our pandemic began in late 2019, in order to keep the story from becoming dated, I do not give a specific year in the series. You can think of Book 1 as beginning in 2026, if you like; count up for the next 80 years to cover subsequent generations.]

3 Dawn of the Daughters

Narrated by Isla - at the beginning she is a child of four, old age by the final pages. She hides out with her parents in the forest of a national park. They soon meet other survivalists and agree to work together and protect each other. Believing they may be the last of humanity, they try to have more births. Adapting to the lawless post-pandemic world is difficult enough, but then Sandy is taken away to serve in a militia - escapes, captured by the other side to fight for them, then put in a POW camp. Later marauders come, taking the women away. Isla grows up in the idyllic forest as a child but she must become strong as a teen and as a young woman in order to survive the traumas of the newly reconstructed society. She only finds comfort and safety in her later years - as documented by her last child, Fritz, who becomes a video technician in the rebuilt society. (More here.)

4 The Book of Dad (available June 14)

Fritz returns to the capital from rehabilitation, bitter and disillusioned, unsure why he was sent there or who sent him. He knows it is because of the video he made of his elderly mother telling her stories of the pandemic years and the lawlessness that followed. Now the government says none of it happened and Fritz must learn the 'true' history. As he struggles to settle into his new life, miserable and paranoid, his neurotic behavior gets him into trouble again - until Big Sister herself confronts him and offers a hard bargain. (More here.)

5 The Granddaughter's Tale (complete; coming later in 2024)

Fritz's daughter Maggie moves out west to Skinner Canyon with her mother and brothers, a place where their cousin Faith fled from the national park years before. Now grown up, Maggie gains a sister in her cousin Eve, as she plans to start a town band, trying to follow the legacy of her great-great-grandmother Polly (Sandy's mother). First, she must return to the capital to reclaim the tuba. It seems an impossible task, especially when she makes a few missteps. But her staunch determination takes her into the post-pandemic music world.

6 A Grandson's Revenge (tentative title; drafting)

Leaving Skinner Canyon, Fritz's grandson goes with his uncle's posse in pursuit of a notorious outlaw, then gets separated, finds himself in trouble and suffers through dangerous situations which change him into an outlaw himself.

I'm certain that by the time I have finished Book 6 and launched it, I may be out of ideas. This plan also thwarts any attempt I have considered of finishing a few unfinished works sitting on my computer. For example, when I was 13, I mapped out a vast medieval epic - too large for me to start in those days of manual typewriters so I put it aside for my retirement years. Then I write this Flu Season series instead!

However, in Book 5, I manage to tie the story to the way things will be in the future that is that unfinished medieval epic (starts in the year 3000). I also let characters mention the way things are over in Europe during the Book 5 time period, thus linking Flu Season with the Stefan Szekely Vampire Trilogy (Book 2 starts in 2028, Book 3 starts in 2099). (More here.) 

Aren't words amazing?

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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.

On the Nature of Villainy

In my writing career I have seldom been able to make use of well-defined villains. Perhaps that was due to my definition of the role. I never saw a character acting against our hero/heroine out of sheer cussedness; they had to have motivation, and motivation which came from some logical or plausible origin or cause. That's me being a realist, I suppose. Villains acting out of pure evil is the stuff of comic books, to my mind.

In most of my novels, the hero/heroine (protagonist) generally struggles not against another character but against himself/herself (e.g., self-doubt, frustrations, lack of confidence, physical or mental flaws, etc.). They could struggle against another protagonist, each one being the other's antagonist while neither is truly a villain. They might also struggle against forces of nature (including dragons or even alien beings). I haven't used a distinct person to oppose the protagonist directly.

Having another character oppose the main character (protagonist) simply as a vehicle for drama never seemed quite fair to me. Add conflict, they say. No conflict and you have a Mary Sue story. It might be easy to create a kind of character who could be described as a monster, a character who acts against the protagonist for no more reason than to oppose almost as a matter of principle. Like: I'm the 'baddy' so I must act bad, no getting around it.

Usually characters act in their own interests and those interests tend to simply interfere with other characters' interests. That isn't a true villain, that's just normal human nature. Each one is usually an agreeable person most of the time but given a random incident and villainy can erupt - like road rage. They can be bad (disagreeable), clumsy (abusive), insensitive (rude), but are seldom actually evil. To manifest a completely evil character, such as may be found in some fantasy or science fiction stories, always seems a bit deus ex machina to me - an artificial device inserted to solve a dramatic problem.

In the first two books of the FLU SEASON trilogy, a lot of bad acts happen (it's pandemic time and our hero/heroine are escaping a city in chaos for what they hope will be sanctuary in the countryside). Yet the characters performing those bad acts are not what one could say are villains. They are merely "normal" people acting for themselves - to survive. A hungry person stealing bread from me is not so much a villain as a desperate normal person acting for self-preservation. In the same circumstance, I might do the same, but I wouldn't call myself a villain.

Finally, in writing Book 3 of my FLU SEASON trilogy, DAWN OF THE DAUGHTERS, I created a good set of great [sic!] villains. I did not relish bringing them to life, for they acted against my wishes. Yet I could not fault them for acting according to their own best interests. Their actions may result from having some animosity to our hero/heroine, of course. They are humans, after all. They are not, however, pure evil incarnate - although their victims may believe they are.

The first in chronological order is a figure named Parson Brown who meets our central family as the leader of a band of slavers. His backstory is one of abuse and opportunism. Even so, he is performing a useful function, he believes, and profits from it. It is his playful interactions in the course of evil acts which gives him depth, making his actions truly despicable. He could be said to possess no conscience, acting only for his own amusement.

My second favorite villain in that novel is the woman who runs the local brothel, Madame Delight. She stands almost as a female version of Brown. She delights in the abuse of her girls, openly stating she doesn't care about them; they only serve her. She has a backstory which includes her being bullied by the pretty girls when she was young. Now she rules over them, forcing them into sex work. And she enjoys every minute of her efforts to abuse them.

There are other villains but they are a little more morally gray. Such as Mr. Chesterfield who acts badly but feels bad about what he does. His brother, however, acts badly but doesn't feel bad about it. There are marauders and militia acting badly, and other devious characters who lie, cheat, and steal. Even our central family's supposed friends will lie and cheat to save themselves at the expense of our hero/heroine. Some will commit murder to save themselves - but is that the act of a villain?

I don't like villains - actors like to portray them because the roles are often richer than those of the hero/heroine. I feel like I am creating monsters and unleashing them upon innocent protagonists. That makes me feel bad. I would wish my good guys/gals to fight forces of nature or against other protagonists - so there isn't any actual villain but momentarily disagreeable characters who happen to get in the way. Then I feel less responsible.

So why do villains act bad? Self-preservation? Self-motivation? Some kind of reward, achievement or material gain? Satisfaction in causing harm? A feeling of superiority? Playing God? Controlling someone's actions or some physical space? Seldom is it going to be the simple desire for amusement alone.

I recall one time in high school when a guy my age kept hassling me. We were both about the same size so I couldn't say he was 'bullying' me but he was definitely annoying. I asked him why he kept bothering me. There didn't seem any logic to his actions. I'd done nothing to him. His reply, rather than a confession of being in league with the devil, was simply "Because it's fun." All right, that made sense. I strove to make bothering me less fun after that, mostly by avoiding him.

A villain wants something, just as the hero/heroine does. It could be the basic pleasure from an act that brings a sense of agency - the power to act in the world, to be present, to declare "I'm here and I matter!" A lot of criminals act out for such a reason: to prove they exist (violence), to leave their mark (graffiti, vandalism), and that's all. Others believe and follow the self-fulfilling mantra to 'tear down the system' as iconoclasts - a system they generally do not understand. Anyone who gets in the way of that effort could be hurt.

In real life a villain will seldom want to hurt the hero/heroine just for the heck of it - although the act may bring pleasure to the villain. The main motivating factor is going to be the desire to achieve something - just as the hero/heroine wants to achieve a certain something.

In my forthcoming novel, Book 4: THE WAY OF THE DAD, set in an authoritarian society rebuilt following the 10-year pandemic and decades of anarchy, our hero* is beset by the ultimate villain - I'm happy to announce. Allow me to introduce Big Sister. She will care for you, her citizen family, give you all you need - but only what is absolutely necessary, for your own good. But there are rules to follow and punishments if you don't. And that is where our hero finds himself. What can he do to escape the city? How can he save his family?

*The narrator and protagonist is grown-up Fritz, born in Book 3, the youngest son of Isla.

FLU SEASON 4: THE BOOK OF DAD (a sequel to the trilogy) is coming June 2024.

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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.