A Day in the Life of Finris and Gwendolyn

“Of course, the Olympic peace will continue for real during the Games,” the Empress from her throne stated as a law of nature.

“Indeed, my Empress,” the president from Brazzaville and the prime minister from Kinshasa pledged as one. “All the world’s eyes are focused here.”

“Yes,” she accepted in the dark as she accepted Finris Mau Abadan’s and Gwendolyn Capyanna’s faithful obedience. Her manipulations through the Uniforce of their ascension to the highest offices of their lands at this time in history made the Empress smile. “All the world will see when the Superstars and their ilk ‘crash’ the games and justify their destruction.”

So far I think President Abadan of the Congo and Prime Minister Capyanna of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (formerly Zaire) have my two favorite names in the entire Progeny Cycle that I WILL FINISH THIS SUMMER! And they even made a cameo in my first book Progeny (you can get it on Amazon and Kindle, ISBN 1418499455), but I hadn't named them then. Sometimes it takes writing out a passage to come up with a character's full name -- incidentally, it's how I came up with the Empress' real name later in that book. And the book that I am finishing NOW, tentatively titled Victory I've put off and put off and put off finishing, but not anymore. Indeed, over the last few weeks as I've edited the text and figured out what stays and what is needlessly repetitive, I am getting more into the story. And I hate it, but I have to add to the body count.

“My Empress,” President Abadan looked up with one eye from his prostration, “the heroes are here?” With some trepidation and disbelief, he apologized, “Forgive me, Supreme One, but my country’s security precautions,”

“Are not at fault, slave,” the Empress replied as she raised her hand for silence. “Do you truly think they’d have gotten this far without me allowing them to?”

Prime Minister Capybana couldn’t suppress a chuckle even at her mistress’ feet. “Of course not, my Empress. Abadan’s a fool.”

But on from this passage from chapter twenty-one (stylized 21) of Victory, one that my family has made is that our air conditioner is working again! Oh, it's been running since it was installed last summer in our post-flood house, but our dear electrician neglected to install a 220 volt outlet for it to be plugged into. And until summer this was not a problem ... then it got hot and sticky (the weather here in Minot is so changeable and lately we've had flood and tornado warnings all around) but for the beginning of summer it's actually quite mild. And we even got Sarah and Jeffrey to go to sleep with standing fans running in their rooms after a few nights! But I can appreciate the heat putting a lot of people on edge and this staying indoors as much as possible is quite taxing. One almost feels an agenda to it …

“No.”

The slave caught herself too late. Then the Empress turned to Memnon who knelt beneath her right hand, “Slaves, the Olympic Games will go on. But you,” she pointed to Abadan and Capybana, “will die for me.”

“As you will, my Empress,” all three proclaimed as one and two died from bullets to the brain. The survivor looked down at their forms and knelt before the Empress. “You see all, you know all, Beloved Empress.”

“I know.”

Among the three novels of the Progeny Cycle – Progeny, Legacy, and the upcoming Victory I'm excerpting today – I've grown quite a bit. When Victory debuts by summer's end, I will have spent part of the last twenty-seven years writing out this story, for the first chapter and a half of Progeny I started when I was a high school freshman (1986-87 school year) and just let it sit until after I'd moved to North Dakota and met Martha at the turn of the century. Now I'm married to her, got two wonderful children whom we took out to dinner last night at our local Perkins where THEY got to eat free with us, and I almost feel like I'm raising my fictional children in their even tougher world. You really think superheroes have an easy life? I think writing these books has dispelled my somewhat idealized versions of them … but you tell me, read them yourselves!

I'd love to hear your point of view, David