Foreword

Hi! Welcome to the fourth book in the Variation on a Theme series. This started as an experiment as to whether I could write a story (much less a competent, or even interesting, story). With about 1.4 million words published: so far, so good.

Book 4, as you might expect, takes themes and characters developed over the past three books and both continues and expands their story. A few of the many threads running through Variation on a Theme include: no character is necessarily gone, minor characters can suddenly become important, friendships grow and change (and sometimes fail), people may be connected in unexpected ways, and small actions can lead to larger-than-expected consequences. Book 4 expands on all of those (and more) in ways both predictable and (I hope) unpredictable.

Unlike previous Variation on a Theme books, I’m starting out posting this one with comments enabled. Highly inflammatory comments may be deleted, as may things that are significantly off-topic. I’m not sure how a spoiler might get in there, but those might get deleted, too. My hope is that I never have to delete anything, but I’ve never used comments before, so we’ll see. Better to over-warn than not.

If you have a comment that you would like a personal reply to, please use ‘Feedback to Author’ and not the comments section. I intend to read and participate in the comments, but I may also miss things there. We’ll see how things go.

If you’ve gotten here without reading ‘Variation on a Theme’ books 1-3, put this book down right now and read the first three books. Trust me. You’ll have little idea what’s happening, why it’s happening, or who these people are. And, of course, there are major spoilers all over the place in this book for the first three books.

If you’ve read the other books and liked them, great! Please rate them, write a review, whatever. I like feedback. If you have story suggestions, feel free to pass them along. As you might guess, I’m writing well ahead of publishing, but I still may be able to use your ideas in this or a later book.

I am greatly indebted to the editors who have contributed so much to Variation on a Theme: Robin Pentecost, Steve, Gerrit, Pixel the Cat, Sam Spam, and two mystery editors. I am particularly thankful to Steve for tireless work on improving my writing style and pointing out weaknesses in the story, and to Pixel the Cat for many collaborative assists along the way. This story would be considerably poorer without their efforts; the errors that remain are all mine.

If you find messed-up grammar, punctuation, spelling, any of that, let me know. I try hard to avoid those mistakes, but they slip through. Sometimes it’s just that the words fly forth faster than the fingers can keep up. Sometimes I’m still writing when I should have gone to bed hours ago.

Please rate, please review. Please, please be mindful of spoilers in your reviews. There are some big spoilers here. I’m hoping people can experience them as they were meant to experience them.

As I’ve said before and will say again: if you think you have a story in you, let it out, or at least try. Sit down in front of that blank screen and just start telling your story. If it goes nowhere, that’s fine. Maybe you can figure out how to improve your craft. There are many resources out there to help. If it goes somewhere, all of us will be richer for having it in the world.

On that subject: while it’s not how I got started, I support NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) and their various projects. If you’re new and need help with motivation (and, possibly, with peer reviews, though I’m not sure how friendly they are to some SoL content), give it a try!

I apologize for the errors, typos, clunky phrases, or whatever you find. I appreciate comments, corrections, questions, criticisms, and what have you from readers (along with praise, of course), and I try to write back to everyone who takes the time to write to me.

Thank you for reading.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. This includes real people who enter the story (some already have; more definitely will). The universe Steve and Angie and friends live in is not our universe, and those people might be very different in that universe.