Extending the Theme

From my last blog entry I alluded to the fact I have a few storylines going on in the current book I’m writing. The bad part about this is I have an idea where two of them are going, but I'm stuck on how to introduce the third. The third, of course, is the meeting of Opus Wright and Jeremiah Stone. I find this particularly difficult to sort out in my mind because of the time frame of where they meet in the story and how to blend that into this particular novel. It’s something that’s bothered me for quite some time, so I’ve left it in the back of my mind and just concentrated on the two storylines going on now. It’s a good thing I did this because I had an epiphany yesterday on my drive up to Pittsburgh to watch a baseball game and eat some ‘Peace, Love, and Mini-Donuts’ (which are well worth the stop if you’re anywhere near the Strip District).

My epiphany came in the realization that a friend of mine is reading Book 4 of the Jeremiah Stone series (the prequel) and the night before we were discussing a few aspect of that story. And besides getting some great feedback, I also remember that novel being rather short (about 57,000 words). Also, the end of it discusses the second time Jeremiah dies, but only briefly. So as I was driving and thinking about all this, I came to the conclusion I could actually expand the ending of Book 4 by adding the meeting of Opus and Jeremiah. It would actually be quite easy and would be a great precursor to where Book 1 starts.

Now with this dilemma out of my head, I can concentrate on just dealing with Opus and his nemesis in my current project and forget about adding a storyline which would probably not fit very well, as if it was just added there in an adhoc manner. SWEET!

Now for a bit of Book 4 (unedited):

Shifting his balance beyond gravity’s norm, Jeremiah twisted to the side sliding his body around as he ducked under a massive right hand before his own uppercut caught the guy just below the ribcage lifting the man from the floor. For any normal person, this would’ve been an incapacitating blow leaving them curled into a ball on the floor, but this guy was tougher than anyone he’d fought so far. Though the man grunted heavily at the punch, he only stumbled one step before backhanding a swing. Jeremiah was no amateur though. Ducking under the clumsy attack, Jeremiah struck upward again until his fist pounded into the man’s jaw, breaking it.

This time the man went down, but surprisingly he didn’t stay down and was crawling, stumbling, back to his feet. Jeremiah didn’t let him get there as he dropped to one knee while hammering his elbow into the back of the man’s shoulder collapsing the supportive arm. There was a deafening crunch and this time, as the man collapsed to his side, he wasn’t getting up.

Rising to his feet as applause exploded from a few and jeers arose from other, Jeremiah looked himself over. He’d been hit a couple times and would show bruises for it within a few hours, but he was relatively unscathed. He’d been lucky and avoided getting hit in the face by the man’s club-like fists. Now all Jeremiah had to do was make it out of here with his money, back to the MIT to close out his school debts, change his identity and the name on his transcripts one more time, then find some other school which would accept him. Maybe Yale would be a good choice, or Harvard. Either offered the best instructors his newfound money could buy and he like dealing with the best. Besides, despite his brutish manners, he was at the top of his class at MIT.