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This is number sixteen in the blog series, “My Life In Erotica.” I encourage you to join my Patreon community so I can afford to keep writing.
CRITICISM: Ya gotta love it, right? Without good constructive criticism we are unlikely to grow and improve as authors. Probably even as human beings. In both life and writing, however, it seems few people have remembered the ‘constructive’ part of that phrase.
I consider myself to be pretty open minded. If it lights your fire, go with it. I look at the codes in stories, however, and there are certain keywords that I know indicate things I personally don’t care for. Here are a few examples: Ma/ft, Ma/Ma, mt/mt, Blackmail, Coercion, NonConsensual and Rape (the same thing in my book), Bestiality, Zoophilia, Father/Daughter (or any intergenerational incest), Gang Bang. They are simply things I know I wouldn’t be interested in, because I’ve tried reading some and it just does nothing for me. So, I avoid them. But I don’t read the tags on a story to see if it has a tag I don’t like and immediately go to the end of that story to vote it a 1 of 10.
Much like other people’s sexuality, right to marry, ability to determine their own body choices, or gender, they don’t affect me.
On SOL, there are many tales among authors about the ‘one bomber.’ I have no doubt that this person or people exist. There have been days when I’ve looked at my story scores and have seen a third of the scores (out of 58 stories) drop -0.01. Someone decided they didn’t like what I wrote so intensely that they voted everything I’d written down. It doesn’t really make much difference in the long run. That -0.01 will usually be made up by actual readers within a few days. And the scoring system has some safeguards built into it that mitigate an outlying vote to some extent.
On the other hand, I don’t give a damn what race is involved unless I’m trying to make a point of combating racism. I could rank story types I prefer, but something low on that list wouldn’t cause me to automatically reject it. And I like coming of age stories—if you are familiar with my work, you know I write a lot of that.
So, when I’m talking about constructive criticism, I’m not suggesting ranting about everything you don’t like about a story or an author. I’m suggesting that if a story is in the ballpark of things you usually like, it is just fine to disagree on a subject and express that, and even suggest the author look at a different viewpoint. Especially, if you can tell the author how—in your opinion—he could improve the writing.
It is equally important, as an author, to understand that people will criticize them unfairly. They will judge an author by a standard that is their peculiar squick. They cannot tolerate even fiction that disagrees with or challenges their world view. I have begun putting a disclaimer at the beginning of each of my stories.
ALERT: This book contains content of an adult nature.
This includes explicit sexual content and characters whose beliefs and actions may be contrary to your religious, political, or world view.
Adults, in my opinion, should be just as able to handle characters whose beliefs and actions are contrary to the reader’s religious, political, or world view as they are explicit sexual content. If they can’t, I guarantee that something I write will offend them.
When I began publishing “The Transmogrification of Jacob Hopkins” in January of 2019, I saw an immediate uptick in readership and patronage. There were nearly 9,000 active readers of the serial. But near the end of Double Take (chapter 44 of 47), I revealed that one of the characters was transgender. A character people loved was undergoing a sex change! I have never seen such an instant outpouring of vitriol in comments and email in my life. One quarter of my readership left that day. Gone, except for the vile comments they left behind.
Now, there were some constructive criticisms that came out of the event. I did not debate nor encourage the debate as to whether a transgender girl is a girl. I still won’t. The way I revealed it might have had some improvement, though. The slap in the face was definitely something that could have been eliminated and still expressed the absolute devastation of the girl. And Jacob could have been more explicit in expressing this from his eighty-year-old calcified personality—as were so many of the commenters—rather than the fifteen-year-old he was supposed to be in this life.
But throughout the next four volumes—Double Time, Double Tears, Double Twist, and Double Team—I continued to develop the characters and their relationships. Believe me, in a work this length, there were other things that people found to be offended by.
Number One on Lazlo Zalezac’s list of “Facts of Life” (The Millionaire Next Door) is “Life is not fair.”
Nor is all criticism fair. You remember the golden rule? Something about doing to others. I strive not to criticize others in a way I would not want to be criticized. As it happens, most criticism in comments or email on SOL comes way too late to be helpful for the story being criticized. However, I try to make sure I take it into consideration when I’m writing the next story, or the next one.
I write for readers, but obviously not for all readers. You will never please everyone. And, in fact, I often challenge my readers with things I want them to think about. Maybe I’ll write a story that includes a character who is a vegan, just so I’ll be able to expose people to some of the benefits in that diet! Who knows?
I came across a graphic pyramid of the hierarchy of disagreement. It has eight levels at the top of which is
1. Refute the central point: explicitly refutes the central point with reliable evidence
2. Refutation: Finds a mistake and explains why it’s mistaken, using resource quotes
3. Counter argument: Contradicts and then backs it up with reasoning and supporting evidence
4. Contradiction: States the opposing case with little or no supporting evidence
5. Responding to tone: Criticizes the tone of the writing without addressing the substance of the argument
6. Ad Hominem: Attacks the characteristics or authority of the writer without addressing the substance of the argument
7. Change the subject: “You can’t talk to liberals about anything without offending them.”
8. Name-calling: Sounds something like “You’re an asshat.”
In criticism, let’s all strive to reach number one on that pyramid.
As I was re-reading some of the comments from the end of Double Take, I saw a comment about character development and cardboard cutouts. The subject could be an entire blog by itself, but I think I’ll jump into it with a post next week: Character Arc.
Enjoy!
author Devon Layne
This is number fifteen in the blog series, “My Life In Erotica.” I encourage you to join my Patreon community so I can afford to keep writing.
OVER THE PAST THREE MONTHS, I’ve mentioned the editing process several times. This week, I’ll talk about the path I use in getting a book from first draft to published.
I am convinced there are authors—not just on SOL—who spew out a first draft of a story and post it immediately without ever having even re-read it. There are readers who will gladly tell those authors about every perceived error they make. When a reader sends me a comment, I take it seriously. I might not do anything about it, but I listen and try to avoid the same mistake again.
Unfortunately, when readers on SOL send me comments about grammar, spelling, and punctuation, the story they are reading is already published—sometimes years earlier. I might not even have the original files for a book on my computer anymore. I archive things. And once a book has been published, correcting an error involves correcting two websites, as many as three different versions of eBook, and sometimes a paperback across as many as six platforms. Unless I’m being sued for something, the chance that I’ll be going back to make corrections in the Model Student series, for example, are remote. I barely remember the story because I’ve written literally millions of words since that book was published. Of course, that doesn’t stop anyone from pointing out my errors, nor should it.
Let’s take a look at the process I used for writing Team Manager SWISH! I started writing this book on March 15, 2021. Anybody remember what was happening about then? Yeah. Fun times. I was locked in my trailer in Phar, Texas and not going anywhere. I finished the first draft with 155,335 words on April 14. Yes, I really write that fast. My alpha reader, GMbusman, read each chapter as I finished it and provided feedback, even engaging with me on where the story was going to go and brainstorming ideas. My Sausage Grinder Patrons began reading the unedited raw content on March 28 and offered feedback.
But on the first of April, I began rewriting the story, while I was still finishing it. Rewriting means actually reading the story and getting it ready for editors to look at without choking on it. I sent the first ten chapters to my three editors, cie_mel, Old Rotorhead, and Pixel the Cat. These guys have been with me for a long time and I value their input. I had all their comments back by April 11. Then I had to incorporate and consolidate their three different views into a single final doc. I had to re-read and understand what each of the editors was saying. But that wasn’t the end.
I hand code the html for all my stories because I put them on my own site before they go to SOL. This is for my Sneak Peek patrons ($5/mo), and I started posting the story there on May 15. I don’t start posting a story for pre-release until I have all the editors’ comments folded in, have read and coded the story, and then reread it as a web page. But it is a pre-release edition and I have some leeway to make changes from their suggestions. And I read it again.
Finally, on May 25, I posted the first chapter on SOL and the entire book for sale on Bookapy. By that time, by the way, I’d already written 100,000 words of SPRINT! and had started re-reading and sending rewritten chapters to my editors.
So, let’s count it. Before the official release day of May 25, 2021, I had personally written and read the book five times. Patrons who pay for the privilege, had read and commented on the first draft before it had seen a red [blue] pencil at all. [Pixel the Cat reminded me that elementary school teachers use a red pencil. Editors use a blue pencil.] Three other independent editors had read, searching for factual errors, continuity errors, and proofreading for spelling, grammar, and punctuation. And when the book released, I still got email pointing out errors—some of them actually errors and some not. “That’s not the way lenses for a nearsighted person work!” I note that I was making changes in the posted content up through the end of August. But by then, SPRINT! was through the editing cycle and ready to begin posting. And I was nearly finished writing COACH!
I read every chapter again once it was posted to make sure I was satisfied that nothing egregious has escaped. Yes, it takes something pretty awful for me to go back and correct it at that point, and sometimes I only correct it on SOL and not in the eBook or my own site. But it’s important to me to read what my readers are seeing that day. It helps me respond when I get email and to understand what has their undies in a bunch in the public comments.
I believe that an honest reading of your own work is the most important (not sufficient) step in editing your manuscript. Every chapter I post, I’ve read at least five times. I started this post by saying I’m convinced there are writers who have never read what they’ve written. I’ve spoken to writers who have even said that and say it’s too hard to read their own work, or it’s embarrassing.
If you cannot sit and enjoy reading something you’ve written, why would you ever imagine that someone else would enjoy it?
One practice that I have used successfully on tricky books is to sit and read the book aloud. This can’t be overemphasized when applied to dialog especially. It has to sound right! And be sure you read the words as they are written. If something doesn’t sound right and you want to read it differently, then change it. This often reveals places where you would naturally use a contraction, but have used two words, for example. You will hear whether your characters have unique voices or if they all sound alike. You will find out exactly where readers are going to laugh or cry.
I will also mention that there are readers who will become volunteer editors for a specific project—subject matter experts. For example, when I wrote the Hero Lincoln Trilogy, reader iamblindman read the books and corrected any places where I had violated the rules of the Damsels in Distress universe, or could use a previous story innovation. When I wrote Pussy Pirates and The Assassin, a bunch of other SWARM Cycle authors read, commented, and corrected the manuscripts for canon violations—most notably Zen_Master and Omachuck. In writing the Photo Finish series, two professional photographers, Nightmare and ilox11, read the manuscript after the editing was finished to make sure I hadn’t made errors in any of the photographic processes I write about. These subject matter experts are incredibly valuable in the creative process.
My Sausage Grinder patrons ($10/mo) read and comment on my stories before they have seen the first rewrite or edit. These folks vote with their dollars to keep me writing. And I would be amiss if I didn’t recognize GMbusman who practically reads over my shoulder as I write and is often engaged with me in brainstorming where a story is headed and whether something I’m planning will work.
And after all the above, stuff still slips by us.
I’m sure I’ve failed to mention some of the important editors I’ve had. Two have passed away and are still missed. Pixel the Cat even reviews these blog posts for me. Next week I think I’ll talk about criticism: Fair and Unfair.
This is number fourteen in the blog series, “My Life In Erotica.” I encourage you to join my Patreon community so I can afford to keep writing.
I DID A TALK at Exxxotica in Denver back in 2017 titled ‘An Erotic Author’s Guide to Talking Dirty.’ Essentially, I said we needed more writers with a larger vocabulary than “Uh uh uh. Oh. Harder. Uh uh. Faster. Oh, F! I’m coming!” After you’ve heard that line in more than a dozen porn videos, or read it in a hundred erotica stories, it’s meaningless.
Of course, in video porn, it would also require actors and actresses who could remember their lines during sex. Writers shouldn’t have that problem.
I believe the reason most sex scenes fail, whether on screen or in writing, is because they are boring. The sex scenes are repetitive. One after the other everything is the same. I could sit down and write half a dozen sex scenes and writers familiar with the work of the other authors could identify exactly who I was imitating, because every sex scene that author writes is the same. Same foreplay. Same sequence of positions. Same result. Same afterglow.
Back in the early ’80s, I worked with an IBM Selectric Memory Typewriter. It had a cassette tape that could record a sentence or a whole page of type so I could produce form letters and only have to manually type in the name of the respondent. “Dear ____, [Execute]. I’ve been going over your rental agreement, ________. [Execute] You are currently delinquent by $______. [Execute] Please remit this amount by return mail. Sincerely.”
Each time the cassette stopped, I typed in the name or the amount, then pressed the execute key to resume having the cassette take over typing. I’m convinced some authors acquired the device, long before they had access to personal computers with word processors that have the same function, just so they wouldn’t have to retype the same sex scene over and over. “Bill and Mary [Execute] It was the best ever!”
Part of the reason sex scenes become repetitive is because we lack an adequate sexual and emotional vocabulary. In writing Model Student 2, Rhapsody Suite, I came to a point where Tony was blindfolded and his girlfriends and their friends tormented him by making him guess which one had just kissed him. Eight kisses and about 3,000 words later, I had what I consider one of the sexiest scenes I’ve ever written and there was absolutely no sex!
Tony had to consider and describe to himself what each kiss was like, how the girl tasted, moved her lips, and used her tongue—even how far she opened her mouth. He had to compare what he knew about each girl with what he was experiencing.
‘Slip’ and ‘slide’ are two perfectly good words, but there are more words than that to describe how one person moves against or in another. And if he slipped his hand under her shirt as she slipped her tongue into his mouth and he slipped into her, the reader has already taken a vacation and jumped down several lines.
What’s more, simply going to a thesaurus and looking up synonyms won’t help. There aren’t that many to be had that convey the same meaning. So, you need to completely recast the scene. Think beyond the description of the act itself. Try, “His hand stole up her ribcage, like a thief moving from the shadow of one rib to the next, his prize almost at hand.” When you expand the vocabulary used for common acts, you open the door to far more interesting scenes.
Search out comparisons of each sense. If there isn’t a different word for it, use a simile or comparison. There is a scene in Model Student 5: Odalisque in which Tony finally discovers the scent of his lover Lissa in a spice rack as he is cooking and is transported by the smell of cardamom to thoughts of his lover’s embrace. Yes, you will never smell cardamom in the same way again.
At the same time that I advise authors of erotica to expand their dirty talk, I caution them not to overdo it. Just because you know a hundred slang words for penis and ninety-seven for vagina doesn’t mean you need to use them all in your story.
You shouldn’t be hunting through the Kama Sutra to find a new position for every scene. But if you are looking for ideas, The Joy of Sex is a great book even fifty years after its publication. You’ll also find a new website called OMGYES that talks to women about getting greater enjoyment from sex in very frank terms. Terms that women use.
In my experience, women use much less slang for genitalia than men do. I guess that having grown up with a vulva and vagina makes a woman more comfortable using those terms than men are. Having it while growing up, though, probably isn’t an adequate reason. Men can barely whisper the word ‘penis’ without choking on it. The word, I mean. A man is likely to use a number of different euphemisms for sex organs, while a woman will use the actual name or a single favorite.
Remember that men in general are so threatened by the use of some words that they restrict their use, as in ‘gay.’ Using euphemisms for genitalia builds a defensive barrier between the reader and the reality. If I say, ‘I petted her pussy,’ you have to draw your own conclusion as to if I’m actually talking about the vulva.
So, when you are writing a sex scene, find ways to describe the act that expand on it rather than trivializing it. When a man enters a woman in intercourse, believe it or not, other parts of his body have feelings as well as his penis! The shiver that begins in the back of the neck and runs down the spine like an electrical shock until his butt cheeks clench, for instance. If you cannot imagine it, you cannot convince your reader of it.
Engage all the senses. You don’t necessarily need to run down the list of see, hear, smell, feel, taste every time, but one might come to the fore. “I’ve never touched lips as soft, yet insistent as yours.” “Mmm. You brushed your teeth. I taste peppermint.” “Pinch. Harder. I need to feel you pinching me!” You get the idea.
Talk dirty to me, baby. It doesn’t mean just using vulgar words. Convince me that you are fully engaged.
This is number thirteen in the blog series, “My Life In Erotica.” I encourage you to join my Patreon community so I can afford to keep writing.
WE'VE ALL HEARD the writing advice ‘show, don’t tell.’ But what the hell does it mean. I started writing to tell a story. Now you’re telling me I can’t tell it? WTF?
I’m one of a hundred thousand writers who can’t define exactly what that means, but I can give countless examples. I’ll start with, “She was so funny we laughed our asses off.” That was an actual line I wrote in LNDtH6 El Rancho del Corazón. And then I reread the chapter, as I always do. Groan! I’d spent an entire chapter telling about how funny Elaine was, but nowhere in the chapter was she actually funny.
This presented a real challenge. How do I write a funny twenty-three-year-old woman in 1991? I am an avid observer of people, and especially enjoy observing young women. I found what comediennes were enjoyed by my daughter and ex-wife. When I was writing the story in 2014-2015, many comediennes were making a name for themselves on Comedy Central and HBO. I watched them all. I noted their mannerisms. I noted their language. And I set about writing a comedy monologue for Elaine to give and Rhonda to film. It wasn’t only the words that were to be used, it was the expressions, the camera angles, the intonation. I had to capture all that in a monologue that was actually funny.
After I wrote the monologue—and I thought it was pretty funny—I sent it to several trusted women and asked if they thought it was age appropriate and 23yo female appropriate. Even my ex-wife said I should consider writing comedy routines for comediennes. That was just the first. I had to maintain the conceit that Elaine was truly funny in her television show, Chick Chat. I ended up writing a dozen monologues for her.
It wasn’t the first time I’d had to deal with the issue, and certainly not the last. This is where research can only take you so far. Sometimes you have to become the character, at least in your head.
When I wrote Nathan Everett’s The Volunteer (Wayzgoose on SOL), I had to put myself in the head of a chronically homeless man. I began drinking wine—a little too much wine, but carefully rationed out because I couldn’t afford to over indulge. I went hunting for scraps of cardboard boxes and scrawled signs on them. I even considered standing on a street corner with a pile of book boxes and a sign that said, “Wrote a book. Please Help.”
I had to get inside the head and thoughts of the homeless man I was portraying in the book, and it nearly drove me crazy. I couldn’t just say, “And then he stood on a street corner panhandling.” What was going through his mind? What was his reality? How did he respond to the dollar dropped in his hat? And then, I needed to express it as G2 experienced it. I couldn’t just tell his story. I had to bring the reader inside that chaotic mind of this homeless man.
I’m pretty sure that all ten or twelve copies of the book that will ever sell, already have, though I’ve just released it on bookapy, ten years after it was first published. Once I was inside the mind of that man, I couldn’t write a happily ever after ending. I didn’t kill him off, but he ended the story much as he began it: alone and empty.
The Unitarian church I attended didn’t appreciate my telling them that their efforts to end homelessness were failing. They were doing good, but they weren’t ending homelessness, which was even on the rise in our county. What’s more, I told them there were people who would always be homeless. Some were even phobic when it came to houses. That’s a hard thing to consider when you just want to do the best for everyone and have defined ‘the best’ as being a roof overhead.
I never got closer to actually being homeless than having a sixteen-foot travel trailer pulled behind a pickup truck from campground to campground, wherever I found was cheapest. I have a bigger trailer now and don't move around quite as much, but that's still the way I live.
One of the things I have discovered as I attempt to show and not just tell—notice I’ve put a modifier in now because you will always ‘tell’ part of the story—is that it prevents me from taking the easy route out. I can’t say, “Every time anyone brought up the joke, they laughed.” In reality, I have to know what the joke was, what the environment was in which it became a standard of humor for this group, and what the key word was that caused people in this group to start laughing. Then I could set it in improbable situations.
The three stood looking at their departed friend in the funeral home, tears running from their eyes. “Royal flush,” one said, just loudly enough for his friends to hear. Sam covered his laughter with a renewed bout of noisy weeping as Lil dug her fingernails into Jack’s arm on one side and into her own palm on the other. Someone in the back of the chapel whispered, “They really loved that guy.”
When I wrote Devon Layne’s “Model Student” series, I thought of a character who became so obsessed when he was painting that everything else ceased to exist. He had a playlist that he listened to as he painted the Mural and each song led him into another part of the painting. You had to feel what he was feeling in order to see what he was painting.
That is showing, not telling.
Next week, let’s get into some of the nitty gritty: Talk Dirty to Me, Baby.
FOLLOW-UP
It was completely coincidental that today's chapter of Exposure also contained a female comedienne that I had to write a routine for. It was fun and challenging!
This is number twelve in the blog series, “My Life In Erotica.” I encourage you to join my Patreon community so I can afford to keep writing.
The first time my editor told me to ‘steal their shoes,’ I wasn’t quite sure what he meant. His comment was, “Everything is too easy for both the hero and the villain. There is no reason for them to fail. It’s a walk in the park. You need to steal their shoes.”
The reference was to that great Christmas movie, Die Hard. While sneaking around the building, trying to get to the hostages, McClane (played by Bruce Willis) is discovered while he’s barefoot and a bunch of windows are shot out. He has to run across the broken glass in his bare feet. That not only means he is injured and it is difficult to walk, but also he’s leaving a trail of blood, so the villains can track him.
In Nathan Everett’s The Gutenberg Rubric, I rewrote the beginning to injure Keith in both his eyes and hands, two things critical to the success of his mission. But I’ve found I need to remember this advice over and over while writing.
Lazlo Zalezac, rest his soul, created a fun universe called “Damsels in Distress” and I decided to write a series of stories in it. They aren’t long stories, but were incredibly fun to write. I checked in with him before making my contribution to be sure my concept was in keeping with his vision for that universe. He said he liked it and to publish it.
I’d read all the stories in that universe and discovered how some authors had gotten around different strictures Lazlo had put on it. They were making firearms out of ceramics, having portals open directly between earth and Chaos, and developing technology that the medieval planet was not supposed to have. And, it seemed, all the heroes were military heroes and engineers. With their superior technology and experience, there was really no reason they shouldn’t succeed.
So, in Sleight of Hand, I took away their shoes. I first went back to the initial restrictions on the universe and abided by the rules that had been set up. Second, I started with a hero that was as far from being a military hero as I could make him. He was a theatre major who was paralyzed from the waist down in an auto hit-and-run while saving his sister-in-law and niece. In my book, he’d shown his heroism, but he was crippled. He had no engineering or military background. He had nothing but his wits, acting ability, and his sister-in-law to get him through.
He had every reason to fail and die on his first mission. He didn’t. He succeeded, was healed in the healing chamber, and brought back a damsel as well as his sister-in-law. Working within the increased restrictions of this universe challenged me to think of all kinds of ways that this hero could use the talents he had to accomplish things that were normally relegated to people who were fully able-bodied and had military and engineering backgrounds.
This was obviously not the only time. My heroes are often—maybe usually—underdogs. They don’t have the stature or physical capability of their contemporaries. They have to overcome a disability. And they have to solve problems that they don’t have the usual skillset to solve.
In Living Next Door to Heaven 6, El Rancho del Corazón, the euphoric beginning of the book is shattered by the news that the farmhouse where they were planning to live has burned to the ground—just before they were to move there. I mentioned in a previous post that I was close to 40,000 words into the story (that would eventually be 200,000 words) and I threw it all away to start over. Sometimes I’m slow at realizing things. It took me that long to realize that everything was too easy for the clan. I had to steal their shoes.
In my original draft the parents stepped in with an insurance settlement that rebuilt the house in time for the clan to start classes in the fall and get Brian’s TV show on the air. It was all too easy. The parents took care of everything. Not only was it too easy for the clan, it was boring. They didn’t need to work for their home. And rewriting it made a lot of things clearer in the conflicts that would drive the story later.
I often read stories and think, the main character is a superhero. There’s no reason for him to fail. There’s no real conflict in the story. Take The Da Vinci Code, for example. Robert Langdon, the hero played in the movies by Tom Hanks, was an expert in symbology, had an eidetic memory, could hold his breath as he swam multiple lengths of the pool, and had contacts all over the world. There was no reason for him to ever face failure, and so the conflict felt forced. You knew from the very beginning that he would walk in, solve the mystery, and walk out. By the time Langdon was immersed in a sensory deprivation chamber and presumed dead in The Lost Symbol, I was ready to breathe a sigh of relief that the guy was finally gone. And I simply couldn’t force myself to read Inferno or Origin. Give the guy amnesia and let him become the person who could figure things out instead of already knowing them. Take away his shoes.
There is a common theme in most do-over stories. An old guy gets electrocuted, struck by lightning, caught up in a wormhole, contacted by aliens, shot, or run over by a cement truck and then wakes up in his fourteen-year-old body to live his life over again. He has Wikipedic knowledge of everything that happened during his lifetime so he knows all the best bets, investments, or inventions to make in this lifetime that will make him rich. He understands all the things that went wrong in politics so he can save the world from the current moral collapse. And most of all, he has years of experience with women which he can put into play to seduce all the fourteen-year-old girls he wants and it’s okay because even though his head is 80, his body is only 14.
When I wrote Double Take in “The Transmogrification of Jacob Hopkins” series, I stole his shoes. Yes, he is sent back to his fourteen-year-old (almost fifteen) body, but he is in an alternate universe. It’s very much like what he grew up in, but he didn’t go back in time. The new timeline picks up at the same time his old body dies. So, all that perfect memory of the past sixty-five years is worthless, not to mention it’s not perfect. “So, I can’t beat the Koch Brothers in cornering silver?” Jacob asks. “That was the Hunts. The Kochs tried to corner the government. No billions for you,” responds the powers-that-be.
Without knowing what got him there, he has to deal with his new self’s history—the nightmares and desires that led him to attempt suicide. And he doesn’t know the history and society that resulted in this new world he’s living in. His old self is as much a stumbling block for him in the new world as he is a help.
There is so much more. Next week, I’ll talk a little about what it means to “Show, Don’t Tell.”
Enjoy!
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