I close things out at the Hartmann Family Dinner. Henge has a random act of kindness for her new family; Faustina talks war with her father; Gary and Henge make another go or two at a sibling for Aurelia. Wrapping up lose ends, really. After this, Faustina and her legions are on the march!
Family Dinner
If there’s one thing I love to write, it’s people talking. And there’s no better place to talk than around the dinner table. This is, obviously, a calm before the storm of war. Before Faustina leads her legions over the mountains and against a professional military of the world’s last superpower.
Amerika
Brett Stevens of Amerika.org was kind enough to invite me to answer some questions about my writing and my thoughts behind it. Please enjoy.
Declarations
I realized the timing is little off for these. Instead of “two months prior” and “one month prior” it should be 2-4 weeks later in both cases as these events take place not only after Faustina’s march on Savannah, but also after Gary and Henge come to save her life. That’s fine: these very rough manuscript drafts are for that purpose: for me to see that needs to be changed, revised, expanded, cut for a commercial novel release.
Below the fold Faustina makes her first public speech. There is A LOT going on in my head about the politics of this that I simply did not want to be bothered with right now. The important thing was answering the question of “chi l’oro?” Which I think I did, in a surprising and funny way.
A Question of fire
Part Two is all about Faustina’s crusade to take Savannah, the deep-water port of former Georgia, off the occupying Chinese and hand it on a platter to the resurgent city-states of the Tennessee River Valley.
Me being me, not doing “action” well, most of it will be about the people and their relationships. In this case, we start off with the government of Knoxville defining their problem and facing up to the only solution: the use of force. The fact that a demi-human girl has a near monopoly on said force is another thing entirely.
As you can tell from my posting, I was lost for days about one simple question: how is Faustina paying for all this? No matter what they feel for her, troops expect to be paid and weapons cost money… a lot of money. Until I had that answer given to me – and when it happened at DayJob on Monday and I burst out laughing (confirming their suspicions that I’m mental) – I could not write a word. Here’s half of what I laid down. More tonight or tomorrow!
Crusade, Part 1, Sunset
I kinda/sorta knew where and how to wrap up part 1 but the details eluded me for a couple of days. I was able to make some notes yesterday and had a final image early this morning to bring my “prologue” to an end. My 13.8k prologue…
From first meeting her in “Worlds Without End” I knew Faustina was going to be a very interesting person and all this has confirmed my suspicions. Part 2 will be about her Savannah campaign – what prompted it, how she got involved, the way south, and the battle and aftermath.
Little Aurelia in this installment just handed me the arc of part 3: a campaign to the lower Mississippi: not bringing nuclear power and civilization like the early Knoxville Society did in “Echoes of Family Lost,” but a straight-up neo-imperial effort to establish colonies and client-kingdoms between former eastern Tennessee and the Republic of Texas.
Depending on the length of all that, part 4 will either be an epilogue pointing to a sequel or it will make this one of my longest works as Faustina leads an army to St. Louis… and the massive political-military ramifications of such an act. Yeah… that might best be its own book… The Black Muslim Brotherhood that controls that area; the remnants of central Canadians coming south, fleeing the advancing ice… Complicated.
Harpy
Battles are still very difficult for me. I do jaw-jaw better than war-war. This 12k word prologue should wrap up in the next installment as they fly home. Then we will learn how Fussy scaled one cohort up to two legions and led her first crusade, to Savannah.
I am as curious as you are!
