aubie56: Blog

I want to thank everyone who has downloaded "Listen to the Night." So far, it has the best download count for three chapters of anything that I have written. I wonder if that means that I should stick to SciFi Coming-of-age Westerns to please the most readers? Opinions welcomed.

Several people have written me about the following passage in chapter 10 of "Regrowth."

"... he fired a gun at Billy from a range of only about 10 feet. It must have been a 9 mm parabellum, but, thank God, it was not a hollow-point slug. The bullet struck Billy in the breastbone and knocked him tail over teakettle.
There was some penetration by the bullet because Billy had no yet reached the peak of his abilities."

Actually, there were two complaints. First, Billy was "knocked ... tail over teakettle."

My rational was that it was not the bullet itself that caused Billy to fall backwards, but that his body was doing what it could to dissipate the impact force to cut back on the resulting damage. The bullet could not penetrate his skin enough to make a difference, but what it could do was to break bones. I used flowery language to say that Billy fell backwards. In doing so, his body was doing what it could to soften the blow by falling backwards to the floor.

The second complaint was about the bullet type. Had it been a hollowpoint bullet, it might not have penetrated because it would have mushroomed into a larger diameter. The larger diameter could have caused more bone breakage, and the smaller diameter of the standard bullet meant less bone breakage.

Anyway, I apologize for the sloppy writing in not making it clear what I had in mind. Hopefully, I will do a better job in future such scenes.

The response to "Regrowth" has been much better than I expected; therefore, I have extended it with sequels to the tune of about 66,000 words as two sequels. That makes the total story written so far as nearly 100,000 words, and I am working on a third sequel that I estimate to be another 30,000 words when it is finished.

I have written the story this way because I have a fear of not finishing a story, and I can be more sure of finishing it if it is chopped up like this. The whole business will be connected as a series. Any more stories in the series will be treated in the same way.

These first four stories in the series will be posted one after the other in the proper order, and readers should have no problem picking up the next story in the series. Each story ends with a proper closure of the main story thread; however, there is some foreshadowing of the next story in line in the last chapter of the story being posted.

I hope you continue to enjoy the stories. And, yes, I have no idea at this point when the series will end because I keep thinking of things that can happen. By the way, suggestions are welcome, but there is no guarantee that they will be used.

Things are looking up a bit around here so I have finished a story I started some time ago, and it will be posted starting on Friday. The name is "Regrowth," and it is sort of a science fiction story, but also the story of how the hero comes to understand his role in life. This is the blurb:



This is the story of a young loser who turns into a winner after breathing some fumes that eventually make his body impervious to harm. After learning some of the less happy aspects of life, he becomes a vigilante. This a story about people as well as an action story, so I hope you like it. There is no sex because I did not think that the plot warranted it.



I have decided to go back to 3,000-word chapters because I was feeling some strain in writing longer chapters. We'll just have to live with the shorter chapters.

I finally found enough time to repost the screwed up chapter of "New Career - 1930." I think that I got all of the errors fixed. If not, please let me know and I will try again.

Thank you for your patience with me in this chaos of confusion. That is not a redundant statement-even the confusion around here is embroiled in chaos!