Michael Loucks: Blog

Good Medicine is the story of Michael Peter Loucks, A faithful, Russian Orthodox teenager, who has lived his entire life in the fictional town of West Monroe, in fictional Harding County, Ohio. This fictional town and county are in Southern Ohio, about ninety minutes from Cincinnati and forty-five minutes from Columbus.

The story follows him from the day before High School graduation to college, medical school, and perhaps beyond. It takes place in the same universe as A Well Lived Life, and you'll see references to the other story, but it is NOT a 'Steve Adams' story. Mike is not Steve, and will never be Steve.

The first twenty chapters or so are exposition, character development, and setup. There is a heavy dose of Orthodox theology which has the purpose of laying the groundwork for the ethical and moral dilemmas that Mike will face during his education and medical career. You won't be able to understand Mike without that. As the story progresses, you'll see Mike involved with church, and having ethical, philosophical, and theological discussions, but they all work to help define who Mike is and how he relates to the world.

Unlike A Well-Lived Life, this story does not concern itself with real-world events except in the most minor ways. Generally speaking, all local names, places, and people are purely fictional, with the odd reference to real world events or real world locations. By avoiding most contact with the 'real world' in Mike's day-to-day life, I have, as the author, a free hand to construct the world in which Mike lives. Steve Adams does visit this mythical part of Ohio in Book 10 of AWLL, which will be published on SOL from Feb 1, 2019.

If you are a fan of Doctor Fran Mercer, she will appear, with increasing frequency, in Good Medicine.

I will release chapters of Good Medicine - Freshman Year on SOL from December 1st.

Well, Book 10, obviously! It's going to be 100 chapters, and just over 630,000 words. It does not yet have a publicly revealed name. Given the time to complete editing and proofreading, the expected SOL release date is on or about February 1st.

As you may know, I've been writing another series, Good Medicine, which to date has only been available to Patrons. Two books are complete, and I'll finish the third by the end of November. I intend to start releasing chapters of Good Medicine on SOL on or about December 1st.

As always, 'Early Reader' versions will be available about a week before publication on SOL, and complete digital copies of the first book will be available for purchase.

A note about Good Medicine - it occurs in the AWLL universe, and there are crossovers between the storylines. It is not critical to either storyline that you read the other story, but they do enhance each other. If you are going to read both, I strongly advise reading at least Good Medicine, Book 1 - Freshman Year, before you read AWLL2 Book 10

Another note about GM - the main character, Mike Loucks, is NOT Steve Adams, and has a very different outlook on life (this is also true of Jonathan Kane, the main character of Climbing the Ladder, a new series which for now is Patreon only). In order to understand who Mike is, there is a quite a bit of theology throughout GM. But Mike isn't a 'Bible thumper' - he's a fairly typical kid from rural Ohio who is a faithful Russian Orthodox Christian.

If you're a fan of 'Doctor Mercer', she plays a big role in Book 1 - Freshman Year. You'll also meet Pam Simpson's future husband, Dale Melrose, and a number of people Steve and the gang will interact with in AWLL2 Book 10.

One final note - the two main locations in Good Medicine are fictional, as this story is not historically rooted in the way AWLL has been. If you look at a map, you'll see that Rutherford is basically Hillsboro, Ohio and McKinley is basically Chillicothe, Ohio. Because of this, in Book 10 of AWLL2, Steve will make a foray into fictional Ohio, rather than actually visiting Hillsboro.

I hope you'll enjoy Good Medicine starting in December, 2018, and the return of AWLL in February, 2019.

Thank you for your loyal reading, and I appreciate each and every one of you.

More content is available on Patreon

Discussions are held on Discord

I have updated A Well-Lived Life 2 - Book 7 - Sakurako. This mostly corrects grammar, word usage, and punctuation.

The story did not change, but if you're keeping an eBook version, you may want to download a new copy.

Now that I've submitted Chapter 8 of AWLL2 Book 9 - Kami for posting, I've enabled voting on the story.

Thanks to everyone who has written to me about the story! I'm glad you're enjoying it!

I will begin posting A Well-Lived Life 2: Book 9 - Kami to SOL on Saturday, September 1. New chapters will be posted daily.

If you would like to obtain a pre-release version of Book 9 - Kami you may do so by contacting me by email at author@michaelloucks.com or via Patreon.

Details for the new book:

Chapters: 64

Word Count: 405,300

Time Covered: July, 1995 to August, 1996