The Gathering Darkness (the Connor series) - Dirk B. (Page 37 of 57)

Well, this is stupid. Chapterhouse spent a whole book building up the threat of the Honored Matres and, in particular, the Great Honored Matre (aka Spider Queen) only to have her aide kill her with a simple poison in her drink. Did somebody forget about the existence of poison snoopers, a technology that had been around for thousands of years? Not even an exotic poison from the Scattering that advanced Ixian snoopers might not recognize.

--er don't care is not the right word... "accept its flaws"?

Works.

Another option is Connor heals everyone with the same action. I think this has weak new testament precedent though

Yup. Desktop version of Amazon also autocorrects your name. There's a small link at the top of the results page that takes you to the proper set of results (the ones I actually asked for), but it's easily missed, especially because their screens are so busy.

You're screwed.
Dirk

I'm a little concerned that too much violence is creeping back into my story in chapters 14 and 15. I considered adding holy water squirt guns to the Nerf-style rifles mentioned in chapter 12, but that's too silly. A better approach is bullets loaded with holy water. The holy water releases as the bullet disintegrates. That also eliminates the need for the toy rifles. Just use holy water ammo. That way, instead of having prolonged shoutouts with demons, they only need to be shot a "few" times with holy bullets, and the holy water causes them to disintegrate as happened to the chief exorcist that Connor splashed with holy water in chapter 11. No muss, no fuss, no dry cleaning. Tension can be maintained by focusing on what the demons do after they're separated from their bodies (e.g., the spooks try to possess the living, who wear crosses and say prayers to protect themselves).

Naturally, there is still other violence in the story that can't go away, such as the crucifixions and
the stabbing of Connor with the demonic dagger. My goal is to dial down the violence. Also, after the first few demons dissolve in chapters four and six, I won't mention the 'mass of tissue and bodily fluids' anymore. I'll just say they dissolved.

I deleted a bunch of posts that referred to your and your characters.

My target audience is Catholics, other Christians, and thriller readers, roughly in that order. I'm trying to minimize gratuitous violence, except for the crucifixions. Even there, I don't show the actual suffering, just the dead body. As for the stabbing, point taken. It may be too violent. I'll have to decide after I've written the first draft. It is an End Times novel, though, so suffering is unavoidable. One example is the two "locals" in the prologue, who are stung repeatedly by demonic locusts from Revelation. I'm happy I added the demons-with-bodies to the story to minimize human-to-human violence, but the shootouts were getting to be too much. Admittedly, I'm not sure if shooting a demon three times with holy water bullets is going to come across as less violent than the shootouts. Demons hit with holy water bullets will disintegrate to nothing, like the chief exorcist did. Demons dissolving into a mass of tissue and bodily fluids will only happen a couple of times until the cops have holy water bullets in chapter 12. Folks on my Catholic forum have told me, if violence is needed in the story, don't take two pages describing it in detail. Angels & Demons is a good inspiration for its Catholic/thriller elements, but the killer blows away cops at every turn, which I don't want. Human cops may be injured in my book but will not die since demons can't aim any better than stormtroopers.

I will eventually post the story on the other review site since it has active Catholic authors. That won't happen until I've written and edited the second draft. Hopefully the feedback won't require a full third draft. In the meantime, Clairedeplume has been providing me with Catholic feedback.

As for a platform, I'm many years away from publishing the first novel and don't want to spend time building an online presence until I'm closer to finishing the book. I may try for a Christian publisher, but there aren't many of them, so I'll probably self-publish.

I think that covers it.

I doubt Claire is a regular thriller reader, but I could be wrong. She's also not Catholic, but knows Catholicism from her younger days. She's definitely provided some good Catholic feedback.

As for the age range, it's probably not too different than non-Christians, roughly fourteen and up, provided I keep the violence under control. I have one advantage and disadvantage compared to Dan Brown. The advantage is that there is no fictional telling of the End Times from a Catholic perspective, except a book written over one hundred years ago. Many younger Catholics read the Left Behind series and think it's Catholic, which it definitely isn't. Interestingly, Pope Francis recommended the century-old book. It's called Lord of the World. The similarity to my series title is a coincidence, but it will help me on Amazon and other sites given the matching algorithms they use.

The "disadvantage" I have compared to Dan Brown is my book is much more religious than his, with more everyday Catholic elements, including a lot of praying. I had Connor pray silently for the dying cardinal, but I plan to go back and verbalize that, as that is more likely in a setting of so many religious characters in the room. They would want to join in. Those are probably a turnoff to secular readers, but I prefer it that way. One element to the story that will annoy serious Catholics is that I have a gay priest running an orphanage of boys, and the most senior cardinal in the Vatican allows it to continue. I have other elements that some Catholics won't like, such as God the Father accepting a new challenge from Satan that is winner-take-all. Also, the idea that Jesus will return as a boy. Those are not supported by Revelation, even though I found wiggle room in Acts 1 for the latter.

I didn't look for reviews before deciding on a largely Catholic story, but, now that you mention it, I'll look up reviews for Lord of the World. It's very different from my book, but avoids almost all violence and suffering. Basically, it skipped most of what's in Revelation. Fortunately, as I found in my research of Revelation study guides, Catholicism leaves it very open to interpretation, so I have a lot of room to maneuver.

EDIT: The reviews for Lord of the World were all over the place. Some loved it. Others thought it was awful.

Although I'm more than happy to have Rambo fans read the story, I'm definitely not worried about attracting them. If I was, I wouldn't be worried about the violence, and I would strip the prayers.

I actually haven't seen 9. Gave up on the franchise. Rogue One had a pleasant ending, but that's been the only one I liked in the past 21 years.  Time to cut my losses lol

Palpatine being back is actually consistent with the books, believe it or not. In Episode 3 they mention some Jedi/Sith can cheat death and he reasons that caving himself cloned is a decent backup plan for the unexpected ( But cloning Darth Vader is not ). Ironically, the books did the clone wars worse than the movies which kind of treaded lightly

A star wars staple (even in the books) is a desert world, which is pretty much impossible in a star-faring society.

Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars colonization series even nods to this because they take ice comets and do low orbit runs for like 20 years to build the planet's water reserves. It costs pennies to deflect a comet if you have broken the fossil fuel barrier. So ya, I can see Herbert's point-- at least he had a purpose for the desert world

Rented Star Wars 9 to watch on my new TV. Now that the nostalgia has worn off, I realize it is a horrible film. Half the film was about Rey and her friends racing from place to place trying to find the way to Exegol, the Emperor's hidden planet. I had mental whiplash given how much hopping around they were doing. They eventually stumble upon a Sith blade that leads them to Endor, where Rey uses the blade to home in on a specific part of the wreckage of the second Death Star lying in the ocean. That leads her to Palpatine's wrecked throne room, where a side room hides one of only two wayfinders leading to Exegol. Kylo Ren somehow found the other. The room with the wayfinder was designed to display it, meaning Palpatine must have placed it there decades earlier in case someone wanted to find Exegol. But why would Palpatine need a wayfinder to Exegol given that he boasted in ROTJ that the rebellion would be crushed at Endor and Luke would fall to the dark side? And who designed the Sith blade that magically points Rey at the right part of the wreckage?

All the plot holes in Gilligan's Island can't hold a candle to the crap in that film.