Celtic Bard: Blog

Chapter 16 of Justice Resurrected has been submitted and should be up for your enjoyment today. That is probably all for this week, unfortunately. I have had to host my nephews this week for certain reasons, which has left me a bit busy chasing them around the house.

OK, so Chapter 15 of Justice Resurrected was posted on Friday and Chapter 3 of Enter the Darkness has been submitted. The next chapter of Darkness will not be ready so quickly, I tried to get Chapter 3 to you all as quick a possible due to the way Chapter 2 ended. Chapter 16 of Justice will be ready on Friday as usual, assuming nothing unforseen occurs.

And so to a Quick Word on Enter the Darkness. While the main character through whose eyes the story is told is a female, there are large parts of her life history and experiences that I drew from my own life. Like Alexa, I grew up in Cold War Europe, visited Washington, D. C. on more than one occassion in the mid-80's and early 90's, lived in Ft. Leonard Wood, and experienced the culture shocks of going from places as different, culturally, as West Germany, the Northeastern U. S., and backwoods Missouri. I also grew up in the military, though I never had the honor to serve due to various circumstances not within my ability to change.
As my story Death and Love in Marjah might have indicated, I hold the U. S. military in the highest regard, despite (or perhaps because) of my dislocated childhood. It was in pondering some of the things I saw and experienced, and the realization that a majority of Americans do not view the world in the same way I did because of those experiences, that got me writing things along the lines of Marjah and Darkness. I am not entirely comfortable writing in the real world, though some of the things in both stories stretch the idea of "real world" a bit far. I much prefer to write things like Justice Resurrected or the Am'mortal stories or the longer stories from which the stories from The World of Xeuxondra Universe are taken. I like the idea of creating an entire world, or worlds, which I can people as I wish and manipulate any way I wish without having to adhere to laws of reality that have already been set. Having said that, I am glad that stretching myself creatively has found an appreciative audience, one which is not shy about goading me on in my endeavors.
All of which, I guess, is a long-winded explanation of the story behind Enter the Darkness and how much I appreciate the response it has gotten.

So enjoy the new chapters and I will leave it there for now.

P. S. I am also working on some companion material for Enter the Darkness that I may post in the near future. Some of it requires research, so it is slow in coming and is part of the reason the posting schedule for Darkness is irratic and not as quick as Justice Resurrected (not to mention Justice is already written and only needs editing).

For everyone's enjoyment (and some frustration, unfortunately), Chapter 2 of Enter the Darkness is ready and submitted. Likewise, Chapter 15 of Justice Resurrected will be submitted on schedule on Friday (possibly very late Thursday).

To explain the frustration part, the second chapter of the new story Enter the Darkness ends on a bit of a cliffhanger. As a reader, I know this is annoying and to have to wait to find out what is going on is tough, so I can only apologize and promise to try to get the next chapter out ASAP.

Chapter 15 of Justice is not so cliffhanger-y, so there should not be too many irate readers e-mailing me about it. For those of you who wanted Princess Alyssa back and wrote me wondering how that was going to work out now that she is back, answers will be yours on Friday.

Also, I want to apologized for the typos in Chapter 14 of Justice last week. I was a bit busy and rushed the chapter to posting without my usual diligence on editing. There was also a Webmaster error that chopped the last paragraph off (for SOL readers only, for some reason). Those have been fixed and the chapter reposted along with the Cast and Glossary to reflect updates and/or minor errors readers caught for me.

So, enjoy this week's offerings and *cringe* I appreciate response and constructive criticism.

Chapter 14 of Justice Resurrected is submitted. It is a few hours late, but the last couple of days have been a little busy for me and so it was delayed until I got some time tonight to get to it.
Some of you have been writing to me about certain characters you wished I had not written out of the story line and about some of the more romantic possibilities that you felt were cut off because of that. If you fall into that category, then the next few chapters should be more to your liking, though I should warn that there will be some unorthodox relationships in the next couple of chapters as well. I believe I already issued such a warning, but it doesn't hurt to repeat it so I don't get outraged e-mail about it later.
So enjoy the latest chapter and thank you for the support and response to work that I treasure. That you have also found it something worth enjoying is gratifying.
That is all for now.

OK folks, the Webmaster has spoken and decided that he would take the Cast file I submitted, The World of Titia-Lohr, and Justice Resurrected and combine them all. Maybe not how I would have done it, but then I am not the Webmaster. So those of you who had The World of Titia-Lohr in your Library and cannot find it, that is what happened to it. It now appears as "Glossary" on the chapter page on Justice Resurrected, between Cast and Chapter 1. Sorry, but the Webmaster hath spoken.