Skip to main content

Witness

While UNIQUE marinates... (Some notes:)

My plan for the series AFTER MAN was to conclude the story way far in the future, thousands of years. That's one of the reasons I wanted to write vampire stories - they can live quite a long life if they're careful enough. So, what kind of world would these creatures inhabit 10,000 years after mankind relinquished power? Turns out, that's a work in progress.

But this is how I wanted to introduce the second novel. I wanted it to begin in the far future, because personally I don't want to wait 20 years for the opportunity to write what I want to write today. So, the limited pages of notes I have for the finale will be Incorporated to Book 2. I'm okay with this, I guess. Book 2's plot is only a few decades after the first story, but I wanted a way to time travel these characters without a time machine.

Now, Book 2's plot deals mostly with Evander's search for Tammie - directly where we leave off in UNIQUE, and his revenge for the two that took her away from him in the final pages. But I wanted to develop more of a mind trip for this second story, so the relationship between Evander and Gideon (who is now more or less Dracula; it's out of the box at this point) is seen at its height and near-climax. Dracula's inventions over the past twenty thousand years (he was around, it was estimated, for ten thousand years before the events of UNIQUE) have led him all over the universe. He is no longer confined to Earth or our reality. He has opened a domain where the other side (death) is a complete reality parrelled to our own; the spiral arms of our Milky Way are his borders now, and he is constantly using his EGG to get back and forth from all of these unimaginable places and times.

Evander has become enthralled with Dracula's powers, so much so that he looks at him like a god with the power to get Evander back to a different place. The years have begun to warp his mind, and he wants something simple again. Like mortality. So Book 2 (WITNESS) begins with Evander reminiscing about a dream he once had where he was watching a snowfall. These countless white flakes were everywhere, but then they began to form into vampires. It was an analogy for the reality-warp he had found in immortality. But now, these snowflakes were stars, and he is once again taken back by the powers that Dracula wields. And he confronts him that it was never meant to be for human-like beings to have this type of power. And it is insinuated that he and Dracula are somewhere near the center of the Milky Way as Dracula asks Evander a simple question. This question leads directly into the plot of Book 2. Which will lead directly into Book 3. Which will, I hope, lead into Book 4. But now I'm getting way too far ahead of myself.

Oh, and did I forget to mention that I received Tor's rejection letter the other day? Huh...

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

New Halloween Additions

There have been a few additions to the Halloween decorations and bric a brac here at the Haunted Mansion, Rumsey Island edition. While searching my parent's basement boxes for my old VHS collection I came across a few things I kept. My parents no longer decorate for Halloween, which breaks my heart. But now these things are with me now, so.... At Barnes and Noble the other day, T had disappeared for 10 minutes. When we got home I found out why. She had found, at the counter, this really cool Halloween advent calendar she surprised me with. It comes with this lil plush ghost for the days. Just look at 'im; he looks stoned on jack-o'-lantern stuffing or something. Or he's horrified he's stuck on this site because he didn't make it on Dinosaur Dracula... Next is Gerald from Target. I first saw this preppy pumpkin-head scarecrow a few days after Halloween a couple years ago, and when I returned next to pick him up, he was gone. Liquidated unt

Curse of Crom

Curse of Crom, The Legend of Halloween is a new favorite film. I watched this film last season, and I honestly fell in love with it right away. I ordered the bluray right after watching it on tubi or some other streamer, of which there were many showing Crom. Low-budget Indy flicks have never been my cuppa but this one had me at Halloween. The opening is Halloween 4-style perfection. It's incredibly earnest, for some reason I've used this word often when talking about this flick. What I mean is that low-budget or not the characters are in this film and they own it. I really like every single character. Steve, or Lil Rock, as I refer to him (Halem Medina) is the spitting image of a younger Dwayne Johnson. I do not accept that this guy is not the bastard son of the Rock. I shouldn't gossip, it doesn't become me. The scene where Steve finally sees the spirit is great. The next time we see him he is dressed in a costume of dead animals (or the likeness thereof, to protect

The Inherited Retro Game Collection

It's fair to say, if a bit macabre, that I am collecting "retro" (that hurts to admit that the games/systems I grew up with are classified as retro) games due to the death of a once quite close friend. Dan's widow offered me a game that he and I had spent months playing together, Castlevania Symphony of the Night for PS1. This game means the world to me, as Dan and I spent 1997 finding every single piece of food and items we could, and upright and upside down, we searched Castle Dracula. This game is quite expensive today, especially a black spine first printing. I lost my copy decades ago, while Dan kept his original game. I had to have it, and his widow happily extended the copy to me. I am quite grateful for her generosity. When he passed I was not collecting games. I had a few of my old, original games, and an Xbox 360, from back in the day but that was it. Nothing that could be considered a collection. She would change this, however. His widow generously gifted m