Emmeran: Blog

"Gloom, despair, and agony on me
Deep, dark depression, excessive misery
If it weren't for bad luck, I'd have no luck at all
Gloom, despair, and agony on me"

Yup, I posted the wrong version of Chapter 132 and gave the PM/mail system a workout. I apologize for the error.

I have reposted and while it's still not incredible is isn't inedible any longer. All my fault folks.

-Emmeran

Possibility vs. Probability.

I've addressed it before and you can find it somewhere back there in my blogs. I think it was around the time when I talked about images of story characters; nope, no NIL clause for my characters thankyouplease.

So yeah, more time error people. That's not what I was trying to write, I was researching and trying to put together a realistic 19th century African Prince and his wife.

Instead I got Urkel on the paper. I really don't get to consciously decide these things, if I did Crazy Mary would never have happened and Michelle would be back in OKC instead of slowly going Bi before our very eyes in 1822. I didn't plan any of those things but that's what came out while I was writing.

The greater effect of the "time errors" or "twitches" will be addressed in a different writing. I'm not ignoring it but I'm not going to start something new before I've finished this. I'll not start a rewrite or anything else until this story concludes.

Please don't twitch out before then.

-Emmeran

Three cheers for sentence structure and orderly punctuation, our editor is back! The words and sentences should stop looking like an untrained mob and start to once again resemble a well disciplined platoon of Marines marching up and down the parade deck.

Our editor chose to wait out the plague in the warm climes of Spain. While we fought the bitter winter weather he luxuriated in a warm condo on the Med polishing his lifetime's worth of achievement awards and wise investment choices. Well deserved luxury in my mind.

However that didn't remove him from the problems of plague, it just adjusted the temperature and allowed him to sell his snow blower. The plague still caused his occasional absences and he is a volunteer after all, regardless we're happy to have him back and so is the story.
-Emmeran

Those of you who have followed the detail of 10 Pound Bag closely will note that the amount of gold Zach has on hand has changed.

This is part of the rewrite process as I've learned more about the economics and micro-economics of the time. As the author and because this is fiction I've decided that Zach could take up to 10% of his liquid assets in delivered ores; limited only by weight.

I'll write a full blog post on the actual meaning of this over on my Patreon page but basically delivered for stocks or commodities means that you actually hold the certificate or item in hand as opposed to it being kept at a Holding corporation (Yes such things exist for investments).

Sorry for the in process change but this is my first attempt and I'm learning a lot as I go. Please feel free to publicly ridicule me should I forget to blog about a major in-line detail change to the story.

-Emmeran

Those of you who read my writings know that my current story has an enigma called Matilda. The person this character's traits were fashioned after is my beloved sister Sara. My love and admiration for my sister knows no bounds; her strength, will and perseverance still motivate me today.

It's highly likely that no person alive on this blue globe of ours remembers or even knew Sara's birth name. Sara was abandoned as an infant at a railway station somewhere near Pohang, Korea. Definitely not Five-Star accommodations for a new entry into our world but as her thread was spun such was her life woven. She was given a name by the orphanage that took her in; I learned later in my life that the name she was assigned was more like a product label to make her more appealing to western parents seeking to adopt. It was a silly name by every translation I've ever heard and hardly worth repeating, somewhere along the lines of 'Sunshine Flower".

I don't recall the year when she actually came to be my sister. I do remember that my parents had to go up to Chicago to pick her up; I also remember that she was tiny and frightened when she arrived. She was bequeathed the name 'Sara Ann Miller' by a set of signed documents and she was now the little sister of four farm boys living on a patch of land in eastern Nebraska.

Aside from the fact that she now had four brothers to deal with this should have been the start of a fine story. I dearly wish I could say that things had followed the proverbial 'American Dream' from that point but the fates wove otherwise.

The collapse of the family structure a few years later still echoes in many lives today. My father decided upon a new woman and the pair of them left two families in complete disarray and on crash courses with tragedy. Sara had barely begun her formal schooling when our world came apart underneath her feet. The farm was sold by edict and our family now consisted of an overworked and emotionally distraught mother and five very confused children. Sara was in the first of many a new school and as emotionally fragile as she was the family was no longer a bedrock. So much for happy endings.

What followed was a confused and nomadic existence without a lot of happy side notes. I was born the second of four natural sons and we had an adopted sister along for this roller coaster of a ride. I did get a front seat view of my older brother coming completely unraveled , which left me as the de facto consistent male persona in the family; the younger children developed a reliance accordingly. I was just a young man then and I sadly didn't realize their emotional reliance on me for decades.

I'm not really sure how many schools Sara attended growing up, but I'm fairly sure she outstripped my personal tally of fourteen. The impact on a person with her background could have been - probably should have been - devastating, but Sara seemed to grow stronger with every challenge life threw at her.

Sara didn't unravel.

Sara never wilted.

I left for the Marine Corps as soon as I finished High School. I rarely spoke to her and thus rarely thought of Sara at all. She was just another sibling and I was busy being a jarhead; while I was also busy being young and dumb she was dealing with a series of step-dads. Any trust and innocence she had left was brutally taken from her by one of our male relatives.

Life kept kicking her and Sara kept kicking back.

I'd visit with Sara on my rare trips home but each of us were busy with our own lives at that point. She slowly built stability into her life, she never gave up and was always busy. Sara was a hard worker and took any job she did quite seriously but a successful career just like a stable family always seemed to elude her. She still found success regardless, her self-discipline always made up for the lack of significant income. She made less and had more than most people I've ever met.

A horrendous traffic accident took Sara's health but she got back up and pushed forward. She had to use a walker or a cane but she didn't quit and she wasn't interested in pity. More importantly she never forgot how to laugh and love.

Sara met Andy and found joy, these last years have been the happiest of her life. I am grateful for that and am indebted to Andy for the rest of my life. He took very good care of my little sister and he deeply mourns her loss.

You could always count on Sara, you might have to take a brutal scolding but she was always there when someone needed her. She was one of the best people I've ever met and I already miss her dreadfully. Sara will always be in the books that I write, just look for the tough but loving enigma and you'll find her.

Sara left us early this morning. She leaves behind a much loved partner and her beloved pet dog.

My little Sunshine Flower is gone and a new star flickered into existence in the early morning sky.