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Hi Tamsin. My apologies for not responding sooner. I'm still massaging things, but I think I simplified things enough for the chapter to work. Since Augustine's real-life views conflict with my story, I'll have Satan include in Augustine's cover letter to the pope that some of what Augustine saw in his supposed holy vision disagreed with his own well-known views, which gives me the flexibility to break a few rules. Of course, the reader learns at the end of book one that the holy vision documented by Augustine was actually written by Satan, so stuff doesn't have to happen as Satan suggested. That fixes most of it.

In book three, the reader learns that God the Father accepted Satan's challenge, including some harsh (totally heretical) consequences, because he knew Satan would be unable to truly corrupt Connor (indirectly, his son) into throwing the supernatural dagger, created by the Father, at Christ. Christ, naturally, could easily sidestep the dagger, but he agreed as part of the Last Challenge to stand still and accept whatever Connor decides to do. The only way Satan could win would be if he actually showed Connor that he loved him, which he doesn't. Even faking it doesn't occur him.

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I spent part of the evening farting around with Gemini, getting it to analyze my trilogy (themes, archetypes, biblical connections, etc.) and some back and forth on the series title. It didn't like "As Darkness Gathers" either. :-) It gave me a bunch of suggestions for alternate titles, all of which stunk. But the chat did lead me to "Savior of the Damned - An Apocalyptic Saga" which has a nice double meaning: In book one, Connor is the supposed Emissary of the Lord, come on behalf of God for one last attempt to turn people from evil and save them before the imminent Last Judgment. Of course, at the end of book 1, you learn he's really the Antichrist. Then at the end of book 3, he learns that he was always intended to rule the damned (those not saved) across The Thousand Worlds, punishment planets (part of the "virtual" Lake of Fire) of various levels of severity for different degrees of sin/evil (Hitler and Stalin will be neighbors, lol), and that Connor's real task, as the immortal Lesser King, is to lead them all to holiness. The more holy a population becomes, the more paradise-like their worlds will become as well. Naturally, there's much more to it.

EDIT: Just realized when I shortened the book one title to The Emissary that I forgot to check how often that title has been used (way too much). So, the book one title will have to go back to The Holy Emissary.

How about this? Don't forget to turn up your volume to hear the song with the video.
https://photos.app.goo.gl/kji93qHFmNBrub5EA

>>I’m pretty sure an AN/UYK-3 is the missing link between me and finally achieving some level of control around here.

Now that you mention it, some of those switches might be useful in trying to herd cats. Or trying to keep Gandalf from knocking over the Christmas tree or a scratching post at 2 AM.

Dirk

Assembler? Tsk, tsk. Kids these days.
Charlton Heston would have poked machine code directly into RAM!
On a Timex Sinclair 1000!!!
Before breakfast.

In a moment of insanity, I briefly considered getting a second cat, thinking they could keep each other company. But ... twice the cost, twice as much carnivore poop, twice the hair, twice as many zoomies, twice the critters trying to jump on a hot stove the second I turn my back, twice as many paws and tails always one centimeter behind me, twice the demands for attention, twice as much distraction from writing, twice the sound of galloping hoofs across my hardwood floors, twice as much destructive mischief, etc. And there's no telling if they'd even get along.

In other words, Marilyn, you're a saint!

But, Gandalf is also an insanely sweet little furball, affectionately referred to as demon-spawn several times a day. :-) My brother and his partner, Maria, who have two cats, came over to finally meet him, and she absolutely adored him.

He's also devilishly clever. When he hears me moving around in my bedroom in the morning, he comes in and meows up a storm until I feed him. Well, my contractors were already in the house one morning working, and he went down to them and meowed up a storm until one of them decided he must be starving and fed him breakfast (he knew I wouldn't mind him feeding the cat). Sometime later, when he heard me moving around, he came up and meowed up a storm until I fed him. :-)  That's not the only time he's manipulated me into doing what he wanted.

His IQ is definitely higher than mine, although, apparently, that doesn't take much. :-)

I stopped posting and reviewing many weeks ago due to being sick (chronically exhausted and then the flu), drained of time by my contractors (who wrap early next week, yay!), and drained of even more time by my cat, who insists on playing fetch with toy springs (hours a day if I allowed it) and won't go to bed unless I do. Hell hath no greater chaos than a cat being ignored or up too late. I'm also stuck on a major plot point and working through it requires serious focused time, which the little furball doesn't allow much of.

You have to have them hosted on another site, then point your forum post at the image on the other site. I use postimages.org (it's free), but there are others. Some of what follows is from memory, but close enough you'll be able to figure it out. Very easy to get set up with them (you'll need to create an account, as far as I know).

Upload your image(s) to your postimages.org account. Click on My Images on the upper right of that site. Hover over the uploaded image that you want to link to. One of the floating icons that appears over the image is for "sharing". Click on that icon, and you'll get a list of possible link addresses that you can copy into your forum post here. Use the link address for "Thumbnail for Forums". Click the copy icon to the right of that link address, and paste (ctrl-v) into your forum post, like so:

Voila! It'll take you a few minutes to set up the account on the other site, but once you've done it once, the whole process will seem trivial.

Click on Quote on the bottom right of this post to see the link address I copied here to bring up the thumbnail above. The entire line beginning with "[url=" came from postimages.org (the image itself is hosted on postimg.cc, which is what the url points to). Just copy and paste as I noted above.

Anyone who clicks on the icon will be taken to a full version of the image on postimg.cc. I'm sure some of the other link addresses might be useful too, but I haven't played with them.

Dirk

I swear, my cat seems more like a toddler all the time. He gets upset/vocal and starts biting (though mildly) when I stop playing fetch with him, despite 1.5 hours of me throwing colorful toy springs down the hall for him to chase. And he's a holy terror at bedtime, when I put his toys away to stop him from making noise while I (and my neighbors) are trying to sleep. It also causes him to stop running around on my hardwood floors, which sounds like a lightweight galloping horse running up and down the hall.

Of course, now that he's asleep, he's absolutely adorable, but then what sleeping toddler isn't? :-)

Speaks for itself.

J.R., since it works for some but not others, can I suggest you send Sol a copy of the image file you were using?
Send to: contact@thenextbigwriter.com

I checked. Although there is no exact match for Gathers the Darkness it brings up a page-full of close matches, mostly all close variants of those words. Oddly, my title, As Darkness Gathers, gets far fewer close matches. The exact match is the one novel I mentioned earlier with the same name as my series, and it shows up as number 1. Given the way Amazon operates, I would have expected at least a dozen other, irrelevant, promoted titles to show up first. After all, Jeff Bezos has obscene boat expenses to pay for.

I meant you don't need to use text as part of your book covers here, whether you add them yourself or let the Publish wizard add one for you. Your chosen cover on this site is never displayed here without the name of the book, short story, or poem being either beside, above, or below the cover image.