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Unfortunately, it's been so long, many of the story details have slipped my meds-addled brain. Did all of the above events occur in the last book? I thought her blowing up the ship was near the end of one of the earlier books, after which she drops into the planet's atmosphere and becomes a synth. No? I don't recall the individual books being that long.

Regardless, 15K is definitely a lot to pad, which could make it drag. Seems like you need to add another act. Something worthy of ten chapters without feeling like filler.

One other option that occurred to me is that, instead of Michael boosting Connor's power without first telling him that that's what the wine will do, Michael might tell him the wine will boost his power, even though it's just plain wine. Connor, believing it's supernatural, boosts his own power just by believing the wine can do it (incredible power of suggestion). As Christ told his followers, you can move a mountain if you have faith. I'm not sure yet which way I'll go with the wine. If it's supernatural, I'd love for it to be a surprise to Connor.

Problem is, I also want him to leap from the top of "Mount" Megiddo (really just a tall hill) and land behind the attacking horde of demons, then attack them from behind while his cousins attack from the front. For Connor to attempt to leap over the horde, he would have to know in advance that his power has been boosted, so I don't think I can make it a surprise to him. Or Connor makes the leap, expecting to land in the middle of the horde, but the wine takes him across the entire horde. Decisions, decisions.

I can't remember if I already mentioned some of this, but I plan to have Connor battle a powerful lieutenant of Satan's while the rest of the final battle is unfolding. Connor and "Louie" never really like each other, right from the beginning of book two, where Connor is behaving super bratty, and  Louie is Satan's chief of staff at the Vatican. In fact, it's Louie who kills Connor's gay young lover, although I'm not sure if he does it on Satan's orders or because he knows it's what Satan wants. Connor, of course, blames Satan for the death, which triggers their battle halfway through book two (the one where Connor loses). Like Satan, Louie's zombie body is home to many demons, and he draws more to himself (into his zombie body) before his fight with Connor. That makes him incredibly powerful, though not quite a match for "boosted" Connor (after he drinks the wine made from grapes from the Garden of Eden). Since the wine only lasts so long, Connor's powers return to their usual un-boosted level, which is still very powerful, though not as powerful as Louie at that point.

The final battle between Connor and Louie will happen something like this: Louie rides out during the final battle to fight Connor one-on-one (a sword fight). Connor, still boosted, is clearly the stronger of the two, although Louie is no lightweight. Then Connor's boost runs out, and Louie begins to kick his butt. Connor's sword is knocked from his hand, and Louie keeps hitting him hard enough, Connor doesn't even have the presence of mind to draw the sword back to himself (using his telekinesis).

Fortunately, when Michael gave Connor the wine, he also gave him a small vial of the wine to carry with him, just in case. Connor also carries a vial of holy water given to him by Pope Romano in preparation for the battle. Connor, beaten to a pulp, is knocked down hard at one point, and the vial of holy water falls out of his pocket. That's when Connor remembers both vials. He uses the holy water to splash Louie's face, which causes him to back off just long enough for Connor to drink the other vial to re-boost his power just long enough to turn the fight around. It continues as a nasty fist fight, but Connor now clearly dominant. Once Connor has beaten Louie to a pulp, although both are still standing, Connor draws the sword back to himself and beheads Louie.

The other alternative is that Connor continues pounding Louie, and rather than use the sword, he hits Louie so hard with a final punch, he beheads him.

Neat trick: since Louie is a powerful demon, he uses his supernatural powers to set his sword on fire, and uses the burning sword to fight Connor, including sending flames shooting at Connor from the sword's tip. Connor lights his own sword, and they continue their sword fight. This seems somewhat like a lightsaber ripoff, so I may not do it. However, I at least have the option of doing so, because it's sufficiently different from a lightsaber that Mickey Mouse is unlikely to send me a cease and desist letter.

Sol, can the broken email links and overly short forum timeouts be fixed? See earlier posts/discussion for details.

I keep asking, but I haven't seen a reply.

Thanks
Dirk

If it's inline, go to the Reviews screen (the one with the four tabs that shows posted and received inline and regular reviews). It should be clearly visible on the posted reviews tab (marked as draft, I think). It hasn't actually been posted yet.

>There's a rare good prologue in 2001's Dawn of Man (https://screenrant.com/2001-space-odyss … nal-scene/).
Although I found the film painfully boring, the opening scene with the monolith, the apes, and the accompanying music were excellent. I loved 2010, which (mercifully) didn't spend too much time showing off a director's vision of a sci-fi future and just told a great story. It remains one of my favorite films.

>have learned to peek past the prologue before making a buying decision.
That I totally agree with. Assuming I ever finish a book, I always intended for both the prologue and chapter 1 of Rise of Connor to be available for preview on sites like Amazon. If you don't like those two chapters together, you won't like the book.

My prologue has been criticized for having too many characters (Romano, Connor, Father Bianchi the tour guide, Antonio the ghost, and the head of the Swiss Guard protecting Connor in the Holy Land (can't remember his name offhand), but it's a necessary evil since the prologue is simply an excerpt from chapter 32 in the Holy Land, where all five characters are always present.

I don't think it's a big deal, though. Connor and Romano are obviously the key characters in the prologue and are featured again/fully introduced in chapter one. The rest will pop up again later, so I don't really care if the reader forgets who they are in the meantime. I think readers know that prologues often leave a lot of unanswered questions, usually intentionally so.

It boggles my mind that some readers claim online that they never read prologues, which I think is stupid. The author obviously thought the material important enough to the story to put it before anything else. Technically, mine is optional, but I kept it to set the tone of the book and to showcase key elements of the story as an enticement to read on (Revelation/Apocalypse, Catholicism, Connor's remarkable powers, the Holy Land (esp. the Sea of Galilee), and Vatican Swiss Guards).

Better than Connor defying the laws of physics with no plausible explanation, the wine from the Garden of Eden will be the source of his boosted power.

I think the solution to how to handle the stench of so many dissolving demon corpses is that Megiddo is considered holy ground. They won't dissolve within its boundaries, or they don't stink when dissolving. Probably the former. Whichever way I go, it needs to be consistent from book one on, where some demons died in a church.

How about Omega Force as the name Connor coins for his cousins?

The other option is for someone to explain that once the Antichrist is born, Satan will not receive another soul for another kid.

I was trying to think of a better way to handle the fact that Connor is much more powerful than his "cousins" from the breeding program, rather than just say it's due to some unknown in Campagna's DNA. If I do use the mother's DNA as the source of why Connor is much more powerful, the geneticist could be the one who verifies that her DNA augments the DNA that Satan bred into the kids he used. In other words, she could be a carrier of the genes for those abilities, though not herself able to benefit from them. But when you combine them with De Rosa's enhanced DNA (from his breeding program), you get Connor, the most powerful human of all time. But, you ask, how did she get those genes? Simple. One of her ancestors was among the few who ever escaped from the South American compound. Since her ancestor took off, she's descended from a breeding line that Satan lost access to. After many generations, she's a wild variable unintentionally injected into the breeding program by Satan himself, when he raped her. How's that for karma?

Although Connor is the most powerful human, he's not as powerful as he'll be when he eventually gets into the final battle. There are a number of ways I could handle that. For example, perhaps St. Michael brings him ancient wine derived from fruit from the Garden of Eden. I like that, but Connor may also go back to the Sea of Galilee for some skinny dipping at the urging of everyone's favorite kooks, Moses and Elijah. If you recall, an angel in book one confirmed that the waters had been blessed by Christ, perhaps when he performed his miracles there (e.g., Peter's huge catch of fish), and that the waters are supernatural. That's why modern Christians go to the area to be baptized in its waters. The waters or the wine, or both, enhance his powers to a degree he doesn't realize until he gets into battle. I'm thinking of having Michael withhold true knowledge about what the wine can do; he'll tell Connor a made-up legend of the wine's powers to improve virility, or some similar nonsense. Connor will discover his power boost when he enters battle.

When you combine Connor's DNA-driven abilities with the wine and Galilean water, he goes off the scale, power-wise. For example, he'll be able to swing his sword across the throat of a demon, decapitating him. But, there's nothing too special about that. Where the fun starts is when the heads of the next three demons near the decapitated one also go flying off, all the result of Connor's first slash. Since one sword can't reach four heads at once (unless they surround him), the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th demons are decapitated by a directed concussive force or shockwave resulting from the power of Connor's slash. It happens so fast, the force/wave behaves as if an extension of the sword itself. Physics-wise, it's total crap, but I don't care. It's a cool effect that I intend to use a number of times during the battle.

Better yet, Connor has his cousins join him for a swim in Galilee, and Michael shares some of the same wine with them. Naturally, they won't reach Connor's level of power (only he'll have the ability to mow down multiple enemies with just a slash, punch, or kick), but it would be easy for a small fighting force to hold its own against a much larger army of demons. One issue will be the stench of so many demon corpses in close proximity.

Last item, then I'm going to bed: Naming contest. I need a great name for Connor to call his genetically enhanced cousins, which includes both young men and women. He could call them simply "cousins", but I'm hoping for something more interesting, relevant to the story.

G'night.

>I'm a little nervous about breeding in supernatural powers but will comment later.
It's no different than if the powers were the result of artificially editing the human genome. Basically, my story implies that humans can have such powers (i.e., the "potential" to have such powers exists in all humans), whether by editing the genome or breeding the necessary edits into the genome.