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If you have a moment, can you please check out my Archangel Syndrome post on the last page of my Galaxy Tales thread. I'd be interested to know what you think of my way to put some distance between the story and God.

Thanks
Dirk

K, did you mean that I should just name the voices Archangel? Giving them distinct names eliminates the problem of who is conversing with Apollo/Joseph in chapters where they appear together. I've had reviewers tell me that it confuses them because they expected God to be talking to both in those chapters, which is understandable but breaks POV.

v4 notes
What about this? A new mental illness, called Archangel Syndrome, regularly appears among the galaxy's ruling elite in which the afflicted hear archangels promising galactic peace. It's believed to be caused by too much inbreeding among ruling families. The real cause is Dr. Jorge B. Francis messing with the past. There is, of course, no known cure. The afflicted are encouraged to resist the archangels. Apollo naturally assumes he has the condition and keeps the archangel a secret since it could get him killed by his family, who subscribe to the motto "Only the mentally fit shall rule!" Joseph first hears an archangel (and his dead grandmother) at age four, before he knows about the syndrome. They encourage him to keep it a secret. When he does finally hear about the syndrome, he decides, based on his Christian background, that it's not really an illness, just God trying to save the galaxy. Apollo will hear the Archangel Gabriel and Joseph will hear the Archangel Michael. Dr. Francis will need technology to pull this off, otherwise he would have to impersonate all of the archangels and dead characters himself, around the clock. That's a better job for a computer. Hence the AI that serves as a galactic news anchor.

Since there is no useful link between Aussie from the prologue and the news anchor AI, I'll probably remove Aussie from the story completely, which eliminates the nonsense from the prologue and some of the excessive violence. Sorry, Janet. I just need a name for the AI. It should either suggest a link to the archangels (e.g., Angel) and/or a link to Dr. Francis (e.g., Francis).

Anyone have a better name?

Hmm. There's a wrinkle related to taking God out of my Galaxy Tales books. Young Joseph and young Apollo both know who the Christian God is (for Apollo, it's through his mother, a Christian), and hearing a voice claiming to be God is not uncommon depending on your type of mental illness and the severity of it. Naturally, prophets of old also heard God. That meant I had an actual mystery: Are the boys really hearing God or is it all in their imagination?

But what reader is going to suspend disbelief when two potentially ill cousins both start hearing Saint Michael the Archangel, albeit starting at different times in their lives? Doesn't work. Even with two different archangels, it seems highly unlikely that two mentally ill boys growing up light years apart in entirely different societies would both start hearing archangels when there are so many other major biblical characters to choose from (e.g., Adam, Moses, David, etc.). Theoretically, Apollo could hear a Roman god, but that breaks the story completely, and I'm targeting a Christian audience.

One possibility is that Joseph and Apollo are in contact over Galaxinet from a young age, and Joseph (who is older) mentions St. Michael because that's who he's secretly hearing, and then Apollo starts to hear an archangel, too, but maybe a different one. That would allow me to use a simple, catchy series title like War of the Archangels or something similar. I don't know how to pull it off, though, since chapter one (their first appearance) is already complicated with a fast forward through three time periods, four ages for the boys, and the introduction of the supernatural being(s) for both. I had a bitch of a time making all of that understandable. Now throw in a war of words in the interstellar Royals Forum when the reader barely knows who they are, how they're related, and what age they are relative to each other while they're arguing.

Thoughts?

Technically, that's just editing in the text window, even though you deleted text. There is a separate menu option to completely delete a chapter. I believe it's under the Content tab of the Publish Wizard. I almost never do that, preferring to make the old chapter inactive and adding a new chapter with the same chapter number, but with an incremented version number. Only the owner of the portfolio can then see the inactive chapters (and their reviews), whereas your readers only see the active chapters. Although editing the text requires no additional points, the chapter also doesn't reappear on the home pages of everyone on the site. Adding a new chapter with an incremented version number requires points and makes the new chapter reappear on everyone's home page.

You can either edit over the existing chapter contents with the changes, which requires no points, or republish, which requires points. Generally,, if you want people to rereview the new version of the chapter, hide the old and republish the new. If you just want to make the changes for new reviewers going forward, then edit over the old. It's all done through the Publish Wizard. Just explore and you should be able to figure it out. If not, drop another note here along for help. Note, if you delete a chapter, all of the reviews associated with it will be deleted as well. Fortunately, you can just make it inactive if you plan to revisit it later. Also, publishing the revised chapter for points will make it reappear on the home page of all members.

JP, Christine,

Mike has multiple pages of stories up under his portfolio (many actually). It's on the second page. Published with points.

Woohoo! Done with Revelation study guides. Sick to death of them. The last one really needs an editor. 800 pages of repetition and rambling and endless chapters, although the author made a cool case that cell phones are the mark of the beast. It turns out that when you convert www to Hebrew letters, you get the sequence 666 (w in Hebrew is the sixth letter of their alphabet). The mark of the beast will be required to buy and sell goods in the Antichrist's era, and any web-enabled smartphone gives you access to e-commerce on the global 666 network, which is filled with all kinds of immoral and anti-Catholic content. He argues that the mark of the beast was mistranslated from the original Greek and actually refers to phylacteries, the religious objects frequently worn by many ancient Jews, including John, on their hands or heads. So the cell phone is the mark on the hand, and Google Glass was the first instance of a mark on the head. The book is painful to wade through, so I'll save it for when I'm bored.

I've got it. I'm going to make Aussie/Michael a galactic news anchor. After all, she and whoever controls her are trying to change events in her time, so where better to put her than reporting the events of her time. She'll be the one impersonating Saint Michael the Archangel et al and I'll drop hints in her broadcasts that it's her doing so. Rather than involve Hinkley in this unrelated subplot, I have a much better candidate: Dr. Jorge Francis, the religious scholar and historian who lives in the year AD 7329 and regularly researches and writes about Joseph and Apollo and their effect on history. His reports already appear as epigraphs in recent drafts, although I'll probably do more of them in the next pass. Talk about a perfect fit. The last book in the series was always intended to be set in AD 7329, long after Joseph and Apollo are dead.

I can die happily now.

Short of making her a roving reporter, I'm currently at a loss for a role for her. If I put her near Joseph (e.g., his assistant) it then begs the question why him and not Apollo.

I don't have a single Darth Vader. I have Nero, whose purpose is to drive Apollo and Joseph to finally begin their journeys by way of the first attack on New Bethlehem. At that point in the story, Admiral Lupus takes over until the very end, bombing 20M people on Magellan and then destroying New Bethlehem. Aussie was intended to play a contributing role by arming terrorists/rebels to ratchet up the chaos throughout the story. She wasn't intended to appear until the very end, at which point she's on the run and becomes Caligula's robopilot when he flees for his life. Her 'character' arc isn't working, IMO.

Potentially, Professor Hinkley could secretly continue to run his company, jumping around time to bring futuristic inventions to market. Him running Acme eliminates the need of another character to do so. It simplifies that aspect of the story. He founded Acme, invented time travel, and is believed to be using the latter to keep his monopoly on tech.