I'd plug your above paragraph into one or more AIs and see what they come up with. Gemini has been pretty good with helping me name a few things.
Edit: Tower Wizards doesn't sound ideal. It doesn't suggest anything about what they are/do in the story.
I'll have to give a try too. 
When Isaac Asimov was asked what he would do if he knew he only had 1 year left to live, his answer was: Write faster! :-)
Congratulations, Jack. I enjoyed that book.
And I'm glad to see someone is getting their stories finished. :-)
How many books have you now published?
Yup. I actually emailed her outside the site a few weeks ago and explained why she's wasting her time. No one from this site is going to work with her at this point.
Vern, she may have done the review before I punted her account. Morag notified me that she was soliciting.
At present, anyone can create a new group on this site, but please keep the following in mind:
- It's a fairly small site, so new groups tend not to get noticed or used much, if at all. The groups currently on the site are the ones members considered worth retaining the last time obsolete groups were purged. Even now, the most active groups in terms of the forums are TNBW Premium and, to a lesser extent, Fantasy/Magic/Sci-fi.
- You can post your writing to any group of which you are a member, even if the forums are relatively unused. Potential reviewers may find your posted writings by looking in those groups. However, the most common way most members find new posted writings is by looking at the works scrolling by on their home pages or by looking directly in the portfolios of other members, especially those currently active (if someone's writing is scrolling by on your home page, that member is currently active).
- Always post your writing to TNBW Premium in addition to any other groups you may choose to create/post to. That ensures everyone on the site, including the most experienced writers, will see your work on their home pages, not just members of genre-specific groups. For further details, see an article pinned near the top of the Premium forum containing tips on how to maximize the reviews you can get on this site.
- The main way for others to know that you created a group is to announce it in the Premium forum (there is no automatic notification to others when you create a group). You ultimately are responsible for trying to drum up interest in and members for the group. Note that each member can belong to at most ten groups.
- If you have any questions about groups, feel free to post them in the Premium forum. That's one of its main uses and ensures the maximum number of eyeballs see your post. Someone is sure to reply, although it may take a day or two.
- If you're new to the site (and especially if you're a trial member who doesn't know anyone on the site yet), please ask in the Premium forum if anyone else would be interested in joining a group you are thinking of creating. Groups created at random without buy-in from anyone tend to flop quickly.
- Spam groups will be deleted, as will your account.
Sol, just notified me that the issue is resolved. I'm surprised your browser let you through with just a warning. Google didn't even give me an option to do so.
I haven't forgotten I still owe a number of you reviews. I got sidetracked by life briefly this week, but should be back to the round robin catch-up this weekend.
I appreciate your patience.
Dirk
Hi Bethel. Welcome to the site. If you haven't already found it, please have a look at an article in this forum with tips on how to maximize the number of reviews you'll receive here. The article is pinned near the top of the forum, so you can't miss it
Also, please note that advertising your services on this site is not permitted, whether in the forums or via private messages.
Please feel free to post any questions or concerns directly to this forum to ensure the maximum number of eyeballs on your posts.
Dirk
Yes, I've been suspending Luna accounts off and on for a few days. I imagine Bill has too.
Persistent, I must say.
Welcome to the site. What would you like to know?
Hi Vern. Click on one of your existing chapters to open it, and from there click on the Add Chapter button. Instead of allowing the system to increment the chapter number, set the same chapter number as the one you want to replace but increment the version number. Follow the usual steps to post it. At that point, you would have both versions of the same chapter active, and your reviewers would see both in the chapter pick list.
To make the older version inactive, you do that from within the same Add/Edit Chapter wizard. Click on the chapter you want to have hidden to open it, click on the white Edit button, and on either the content or publish tabs (probably the former) within the wizard, you'll see the list of all chapters, including both versions. Make the older version inactive.
If you ever want to see the older version for yourself, you go to one of the two aforementioned tabs and select view from the mini menu to the right of that chapter/version. Viewing the old chapter this way is probably the easiest way to find old reviews of that chapter without digging through all your reviews. You can also delete the older version entirely, although then you lose the reviews associated with it.
There are a few other ways to do the same things above, but I'm doing this from memory/typing blind, so this is the way I remember best.
There's a longstanding bug that, for some reason, prevents some images from working on the site. I mentioned it again to Sol recently in an update to the maintenance thread for another member. Haven't heard back.
Can you try converting the image to another type? If I had to guess, the site probably doesn't handle newer image encoding. The oldest versions of .jpg files may work, although I've been told some jpg files do not (maybe there's a difference between old and new jpg files). If you can, try loading the image into a different image viewer (such as MS Paint, then save it to a different file format, and try loading that).
If all else fails, please email me a copy of the problem file (I'll message you with my email address). I wouldn't mind getting to the bottom of this and knowing if there's a workaround.
Thanks
Dirk
I have a hunch that Ben is trying to peddle the services of that link he included, having referred to it as the "best book publishing" options. And he's using a temp email service (mailshan.com), which are often considered suspect by admins, and hasn't done a single review on this site.
Ben, if this is legit, please refrain from throwing in links that seem so obviously intended to sell, otherwise your account may get suspended.
Thanks
Dirk
Sol, can you please assist member Penfold? He's tried uploading several different image formats for his cover page but none work. Also, please post here what the solution or workaround is as this keeps coming up, and I don't know how to assist people.
Thanks
Dirk
LoL. Yes, I did. He dabbles in a lot of stuff, some of which finds its way into his stories. He's done photography, journalism, writing, internet radio host, etc. and has turned many of them into moneymaking ventures. They obviously did something right because they owned a very large acreage outside of Calgary (just downsized to the townhouse next door) and raised six kids, with lots of pets, chickens, etc. He said his radio gig takes less than an hour of his time and he's able to do it from home. I think it's then bundled together by a media company with the songs he discusses and plays for a good 6+ hours in total each week. He's trying to get me to do an interview for his show, also related to music.
christircouchc is a spammer account and is now closed. Buyer beware.
christircouchc is a spammer account and is now closed. Buyer beware.
I'll have some of it in the story itself since many Catholics erroneously think the Left Behind series is also an accepted Catholic interpretation. I'll probably do it as part of a humorous moment involving Moses and Elijah, whom the group encounters yet again somewhere during the Holy Land trip. They'll be sitting on a park bench somewhere reading and comparing two books: one of the books from the Left Behind series and the other a Catholic study guide for Revelation (or an annotated Catholic Bible), and both men will be shaking their heads at the novel. :-)
There is already a moment in the first draft, which I'll keep, where Father Bianchi, the tour guide, explains how Moses & Elijah are working off a non-Catholic interpretation of Revelation; he'll suggest to them that they read a Catholic study guide.
There will still be hints in the book that Moses & Elijah are more than they seem, although I won't show them using any supernatural powers until the final scene of the book, where they appear at St. Peter's Square and stare at Connor from across the square with glowing eyes while drawing lighting into their staffs. Technically, suggesting they may be the real Moses & Elijah is a Protestant interpretation, but I think it's a funny moment for those who know their denominations.
Question: Do you always write Revelations in plural? Gemini says the correct name is the Book of Revelation but that many people use it in the plural despite that.
The angels and demons in the series are ethereal beings with (ethereal) wings, and angels can take physical form to make themselves look human, but with wings. Both angels and demons can fly in their ethereal state, and angels can fly in their physical form as well.
Demons lost both their ability to assume physical form and their physical/angelic beauty when they lost the War in Heaven, which many (most?) Catholics believe happened at the dawn of Creation. Augustine believed the separation occurred when God separated the day from the night in Genesis, a metaphor for good and evil.
Demons in physical form are the corporeals, which are dead human bodies, so whatever a living human can do in the story, a corporeal can do too, which excludes walking on water, which is a trick only Connor can do. Corporeals are generally much stronger than humans and perhaps faster (I haven't decided their speed yet). The only time demons in a physical form can fly is if they possess a (non-human) animal that can fly (e.g., the demonic locusts Connor fights at the Sea of Galilee during the prologue, and the demonic birds that attack their vehicle on the road in Israel).
My demons don't heal the sick. But they can heal signs of decay in the dead carcasses they wear as bodies. Also, for corporeals to work in the story, they can access/inherit the memories of the dead hosts if they get to the bodies quickly enough (before the brain cells die).
To ensure consistency across the trilogy, I had to make it that demons can modify the bodies they inhabit. In the case of human bodies, they modify the bodies to "heal" limited signs of rot in corpses; in the locusts, they are able to create scorpion-like stingers at the back of locust bodies. I suspect the author of Revelation didn't intend for demonic locusts to be demon-possessed living locusts with modified tails, but it avoided a big inconsistency of having demons be able to assume the physical forms of lower animals but not the physical form of humans, hence they can "modify" whatever creature they inhabit, rather than changing themselves from ethereal into physical form directly.
Given how severe the corporeal bishop's reaction to swallowing holy water was, it should cause something far more severe than itching, even in De Rosa. However, I don't yet take advantage of the fact that even Satan is at least somewhat susceptible to holy water. In early version of the book's first draft, I had something similar to itching for De Rosa's reaction to that Christian chain locked around his neck, but readers knew almost immediately that he was a likely bad guy. So, I modified the effect of the chain to cause him stigmata pain/wounds whenever he murders one of the cardinals.
For what it's worth, demons cannot kill the pope, not even Satan. It would be too painful to try since he is the Vicar of Christ (he's protected from demons by God). That's where Connor comes in. Satan uses Connor to try to kill the pope, although the little demon-spawn couldn't go through with it when the time came.
While the chain in Revelation does seem big from a literal reading, Catholics view much of Revelation as figurative anyway. It therefore seemed reasonable (and convenient!) for me to define that chain to be a simple necklace with a Christian cross on it that Satan cannot remove and that causes him painful wounds to reflect the murders he commits in the book. A supernatural necklace with a cross is, in my mind, more powerful than any physical chain. In the final scenes involving Satan and his demons in the trilogy, they're all teleported to an asteroid, and all have Christian crosses secured around their corporeal necks, preventing the demons from escaping their dead host bodies and the asteroid as it spirals into the black hole.
Many Catholics interpret Revelation to be a spiritual story more so than a simple physical one, including the idea that there is no physical massing for a battle against Christ on Armageddon either. It's the reason, my final battle of the trilogy will be Satan's forces against Connor's forces, ultimately interrupted by Christ's return, not Satan and Connor against Christ. God the Father gives the angels the option to fight for Connor, which some of them do, led by Michael the Archangel.
It's an aspect of world-building. Corporeals inherit memories. And can become distracted by them. In this case, it was a way to narrate the opening of the book (excluding the prologue) from the viewpoint of someone greatly affected by the sieges two decades earlier and the renewed rationing of food now that the Vandals have made it into northern Africa. It allows me to set a much darker mood while still keeping the presence of Satan under wraps. If it was truly Satan's own POV, his reaction to everything would be vastly different than that of the priest he recently killed.
The following is long because I'm filling in a lot of blanks based on what I've decided for the story, some of which you may not know or remember. I think it holds together pretty well. Skim as needed.
In the series, demons are no longer able to take physical form (part of what they lost after the War in Heaven), unlike their angelic counterparts. As a result, Satan came up with the idea of corporeals - demons taking control of recently dead bodies and making them appear alive. Ordinary demons can only keep that up for a few months before the tendency of a corpse to rot exceeds their ability to heal the decay. More powerful demons can keep it up longer, although I don't go into details other than the fact that Satan, who also wants/needs to take physical form at times to carry out his plans, has the ability to maintain a corpse indefinitely. That's why Angelo De Rosa is able to keep his physical body from falling apart. In fact, at some point in our recent past (e.g., a century or two before Connor is born), Satan became trapped in the De Rosa body when Michael the Archangel slipped a Christian necklace (a chain in the Apocalypse of John/Book of Revelation) around De Rosa's neck.
One advantage of corporeal form is that it protects demons from the pain of stepping onto holy ground, which is why De Rosa can set foot in churches as part of his job as commander of the Order of the Black Cassocks, a special forces team within the Swiss Guard. The order was created centuries ago as a team of priests to hunt and expose corporeals and is led in the present by none other than the ultimate corporeal. The reason Satan is willing to get his hands dirty is that this is his carefully crafted plan to have Connor eventually become the head of the Catholic Church (then convert the rest of Christianity and eventually people of all faiths). Needless to say, Satan has a vested interest in winning the Last Challenge. 
Satan misinterpreted a hint given him by God for how to win the Last Challenge. God told him to become the shepherd who saves the drowning lamb, a reference to Connor. Satan assumed that meant he had to make Connor as powerful as possible so that Connor would side with Satan in deciding the Last Challenge, which God and Satan agreed would be decided by Satan's spawn, the Antichrist. There are actually two challenges: a fake one to divert the Church, and the real one. The fake challenge is that Satan supposedly bet God that not a single living priest will be found worthy of Heaven during the End Times. Satan uses that to steer the meeting into recommending that the Emissary of the Lord, when he comes, eventually be made pope. Satan suggests that in the meeting to ensure God "wins" the challenge (since the Emissary is sure to be worthy of Heaven).
Given the above, I think it makes sense for Satan to personally oversee key parts of the plan, in this case as Archpriest Philip of Rome. The real Philip is killed by Satan after Satan brings the Augustine documents to the Lateran Palace, where "Philip" received them and will steer the attempt to reconcile Augustine's holy vision with the Apocalypse of John, just as Augustine "suggested" in the letter he sent along with the detailed scroll documenting his vision. Only the letter actually appears in the book (as part of chapter one), though the scroll is referred to a number of times in the story. I may yet use quotes from the scroll as chapter epigraphs. Satan also killed Augustine and briefly took over Augustine's corpse to write the documents and set the above events in motion. Having taken over Augustine's corpse and done it in the year 430 (when the real Augustine died), Satan acquires the ability to perfectly forge Augustine's handwriting, and when the documents are retested in the distant future, not only does the writing match, but all testing will confirm that the paper and the ink are from 430.
Naturally, all of the above is done under deep cover, so there will be few hints that Satan is in the story in different bodies over the centuries to minimize suspicion among humans about any one corporeal hanging around "too long" for an ordinary human. When Satan gets trapped by Michael, that becomes his "permanent" corporeal form for the duration of the trilogy.
It is indeed tricky (and perhaps unfair) to be in Satan's and Connor's points of views since neither can think of themselves as Satan and the AC. I only use their points of view once each early on (Satan at the meeting and Connor at the youth seminary). I could have written those chapters to avoid their points of view, but I thought it would be a nice touch for the story and sets up Connor as the likely Emissary of the Lord. In his case, I drop quite a few hints in his first chapter (chapter three if you don't count the prologue in the Holy Land) that he is in fact the Antichrist, although I doubt anyone will pick up on it on first read. It reads like the POV of a teenager who is probably the Emissary but doesn't realize it yet. Augustine prophesies that the Emissary will eventually engage in a battle to the death against the Antichrist; although Augustine supposedly doesn't know who wins that battle, he does foresee that the AC is far more powerful than the Emissary, and Augustine doesn't see how the Emissary can survive that battle. I wonder who wins that battle. :-)
If you haven't already read it, please have a look at Connor's chapter (three) in the Emissary - Strongest Start book. Let me know if I'm being "fair" to the reader. I'm still rewriting chapters one & two, so skip those for now. They probably haven't changed much since you first read them.
Thanks
Dirk
Hi njc. Nice to see you still "lurking" about. :-)
The "flashback" is written as if those were truly the feelings and memories of Philip of Rome, the dead priest. I use a brief trigger (the environment of the room) to justify calling it a suffocating gloom, then give a somewhat more detailed description of the room as the corporeal walks around the council table lighting candles and lamps, plus a page or two of recent history about the Roman Empire as it relates to the events of twenty years past that triggered the flashback. Those events are also relevant to the meeting because the Vandals invaded Africa a year before the meeting, and are fighting their way to Carthage, where they would cut off the food supply just as happened during the sieges against Rome.
The only time a reader could claim that Satan wouldn't react that way (the "suffocating gloom" and a few other "dark" adjectives), my take on it will be that the environment triggered a memory from the dead human. It gives me the freedom to describe the aforementioned history from Philip's POV, after which Satan "shrugged off the unbidden memory".
After that, he impersonates the priest during the meeting, which I also wrote as if it was really the priest speaking, during which he tries to sound objective while steering the meeting where he wants it to go, paving the way for Connor, who won't even be born for another 1600 years.
Philip also speculates, without reaching any conclusions of his own, as to why Augustine's documented vision deviates in key ways from the Book of Revelation, suggesting the latter is actually a divine warning of where history will end up if mankind doesn't change its ways, rather than a description of what will actually happen.
The end of that meeting "proves" the existence of corporeals (warned about by Augustine), allowing the other characters to conclude that the vision was indeed real. Indirectly, that's me steering the reader toward suspending disbelief about the divine warning and corporeals, which Catholic/Christian readers would otherwise balk at.
