Gravedigger chase is up. I had a little fun with it. Makes the scene about a page longer.

Thanks for the suggestion, Kdot.

I prefer Diet Pepsi or chocolate soy milk. You know, health food. tongue

I think you missed one of my posts above. It's unlikely to appear in the books, but I want an explanation for myself so that I have a set of rules to follow for consistency throughout the trilogy. My proposed rules also led to the discovery that one could have two demon-spawns each pass their demon chromosome to an offspring, probably making their child even more powerful than the parents. I don't see a use for that in the trilogy as envisioned, but it's within the rules should I care to explore it.

Minor correction to the above. Since one half of all chromosomes come from the mother, the demon encoding would come from only a male chromosome, not from both parents. So, if you have one demon chromosome, you're a demon-spawn with great powers. But what if you have two demon-spawns mate and the chromosomes handed down are both the demonic ones?  I wonder if I can use that somewhere.

I may never use the demon-science in the books, but I'd like to have my own explanation beyond hand waving. Basic elements: a female human, a demon father, a tussle under the sheets, and a fetus that develops normally, but harbors something from the father that gives it demonic powers. Chromosomes and genes seem like the ideal solution. So much is unknown about our genes, it's a reasonable place to encode for superpowers.

What if there is a chromosome pair in demon-spawns that is different from normal humans? Have it code for the demonic powers. The satanic equivalent of midichlorians. :-)

In the Omen, Damien's blood cells matched those of a jackal, which was his mother. I assume the father was Satan.

What a great question. I've been told that angels and demons in Catholicism can't reproduce, although some church fathers thought Satan could father the Antichrist. That, of course, was before knowledge of DNA, which I have now bumped up against. I need a Y chromosome. Perhaps the demon should sample a dead human (e.g., in a morgue or cemetery), which would give it the ability to assume that human's form, including its DNA. The problem then comes back to where in the child is the demonic essence and power? Perhaps a half-soul and a half-demon essence? Meh.

Hmm. I need a demon in human form to impregnate a woman in my story. I set it up in the exorcism chapter by giving the chief exorcist a complete human body, including on the inside. That means he has bodily fluids, including blood and semen. The tricky part is whose DNA does a demon carry? There has to be a male chromosome since the offspring will be male. It's not enough for the demon to possess a male body and use his DNA for that purpose. I need the offspring to be part demon. That's how the child will inherit demonic powers.

Suggestions?

Thanks
Dirk

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Such adoration from my fans. I am truly humbled.

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And you, dearest, are nonpareil.

We finally agree on something. :-)

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You're not interested in knowing which forums are most active? I rely on active forums to bounce ideas off other writers. One of our latest new members is also looking for active forums for her historical fiction project. Even my favorite haunt, Medieval Fantasy/Magic, is increasingly quiet. I don't want to use Premium for brainstorming threads because they get derailed too easily.

Even including the last forum posting date when browsing through groups would suffice. Saves having to drill into each group to do it manually. It's an extra piece of text on an existing screen. There's lots of room for it on the screen.

Sol could probably code it in less time than it took me to write this response.

Thank ye, kindly.

Is it just me, or is the bolded sentence incorrect? Specifically, Campagna is the POV character, but the sentence reads to me as if someone else were the POV character. Is it reasonable for the narrator to withhold information from the reader even as the POV character receives it (i.e. the details of the call)? She discloses the information in a paragraph that follows, simultaneously revealing it to her colleagues and the reader.

Inspector Campagna sat in her makeshift office in the basement of her precinct. Her phone rang. “Yes?” She listened intently for a time. “Excellent! We’ll head right over.” She ended the call.

Thoughts?

Thanks
Dirk

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Sol, would it be possible to add an enhancement that shows the most active forums? Given the many groups, there are many forums that aren't used. There's really no good way to quickly find "active" forums. I leave the definition of "active" to your imagination.

Thanks
Dirk

Interesting. Celine Dion is worth $800M. Makes me wish I had stayed in the choir in elementary school.

Couldn't find the von Neuman, but the Symphony of a Thousand is decent. Not my preference for background music while writing, though. Il Divo is awesome, too. I prefer that while driving.

Miles who? I prefer Celine Dion and the Canadian Tenors. Home grown stuff. They're getting rich, I stream them so much.

Ray & Kdot, please ignore the comment at the top of my latest scene (the gravedigger) that the detectives already believe they are hunting the Antichrist. There simply isn't enough setup for that assumption yet (all they have are sightings of someone powerful and a ring). I'll see if I can work more evidence into Act II that causes them to change their minds about whether it's a demon (their working assumption) or the Antichrist. TBD.

Scene 3.4, The Gravedigger, is up.

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You probably already thought of this, but I usually put something at the top of the scene/chapter (centered) to indicate time jumps. Those also serve as the markers for scene breaks. My first chapter of Galaxy Tales was an extreme case. It fast-forwarded through key childhood experiences of the two kids in the story. I jumped four times in a single chapter, resulting in four scenes. Something like:


AD 4005

Four-year-old Joseph lay in his big-boy bed...


Five Years Later -- AD 4010

Seven-year-old Apollo sat in the game room...


Seven Years Later -- AD 4017

Sixteen-year-old Joseph descended the stairs...


Same Year -- AD 4017

Fourteen-year-old Apollo rode in a four-man swampcraft...



The references to N Years Later meant that the reader didn't have to go back to the beginning of each scene to figure out how much time had elapsed between scenes. Also, the scenes began by giving the age of the POV character of each scene. Finally, giving the exact year allowed me to orient the reader as to the millennium in which the story takes place, especially 4017.

In my current novel, I have two interwoven storylines, back and forth, usually on a scene by scene basis. Each scene is posted here as TNBW chapter to make it easier to review. The scenes are named based on where I think they will fall in the published book (eg, scene 1.1, 1.2, ..., 2.1, 2.2, etc.). Since the storylines are mostly independent, with only occasional overlap, I decided to group the scenes based on chronology. Scenes that are closely spaced in time are grouped together, while larger jumps in time mark the end of one chapter and the beginning of the next. That has resulted in groups of four scenes, with minor exceptions. Unfortunately, my grouping method has hit a wall recently, with no obvious places to break between chapters. I now have up to eight scenes with no major jump in time. If I keep grouping four scenes at a time, I will be forced to split closely related scenes across chapters.

Suggestions?

Thanks
Dirk

Cool. I wrote the draft interrogation of the gravedigger in one day. I'll clean it up and post it sometime Tuesday. Still have to make up names for the new characters and try to verify a few Italian police procedures, assuming I can find any in English. There wasn't much the last time I looked.

Finally started the next chapter, although I still have old stuff to fix. Finding and interrogating the missing gravedigger turns out to be easy. Interrogating Father Coppola may break a few things I already wrote. I have two more scenes left involving Connor in Act I, so the two interrogations will fit nicely in between. I think I have a good cliffhanger for the end of the act.

I'm debating whether the Antichrist should be more hands on in the murders of the cardinals. Currently, the suspicion of the detectives is that they are pursuing a powerful demon who may be taking his orders from the Antichrist, who is a supernatural human. If the Antichrist is hands on, that means he's personally involved in the break in at the orphanage, the killings, the attacks on Connor, and the videos of the dark being. I think there's more tension in hunting the Antichrist directly rather than one of his demons. Also, demons are easy to spot. Throw some holy water on someone and, if they disintegrate, they're a demon. That doesn't apply to the Antichrist since he's human. Makes him harder to track down. The only tricky bit is that humans can't slip under doors like my current demon does, so I would have to fall back on the Antichrist's supernatural nature to make that possible. The other advantage of a hands on Antichrist is that I don't have to waste time linking the demon to him. The clues lead directly to the Antichrist, not his henchman.