If you’ve had a chance to read “The Boy Who Ran” and want to read more, there are two unpublished chapters available on my web site. These include:
The Original Prologue As I was writing and revising, I also sought feedback from test readers. Unfortunately I didn’t have younger readers available to me, but then the book was written for 10 and UP. I liked the original prologue myself, but then I knew where the story was going. Because the book starts out with a measured pace and there are a lot of details about the way The People live and teach before the pace picks up with The Group Hunt, some of my readers suggested that the original prologue was a little slow and the book needed something more visual up front. I had already visualized what had happened so it was easy to write the alternative prologue (the one in the book). I replaced the original prologue before I ever got close to the copy editing stage, so it’s not as clean as it would have been, but it reveals a little more about the boy’s personality and the intensity of what he feels about being perfect.
The Past and the Future is another chapter I didn’t publish, mainly because it would have interrupted the faster moving chapters towards the back of the book. This chapter was intended to provide a little insight into Great Storm’s character and to reinforce the value that was placed on Morning Song. The Chief Elder spent a part of his youth in the north with the people of the great water—the great lakes—as a part of the arrangement for his being allowed to mate with a woman from that village. While there he became a very close friend of the man who would become the chief elder of that village.
In addition to these unpublished chapters, I have a page discussing the authenticity of the details in the book. Like any fiction that deals with a time before a written history exists, some literary license had to be taken but I tried to be as close to what might have been the situation as possible. The facts were researched and where I needed to fill in the gaps I researched the traditions of the descendants of The People.
Finally, my second book: The Balance, due out later this year, is in revision, but I’ve posted chapters from it under the page entitled The Balance. There are three chapters posted and I intend to post a new chapter every month or two as I get closer to release later this year. The final version will probably have 50 or so chapters total. The Balance is a much different story, a YA tale set in the future and with a mixture of eras. While the people have enjoyed advanced comforts in their past, most technology has been banned by the Council of God, the theocracy that emerged when The Balance between a spiritual society and a technological one—or between The Order and The Council was lost. Thus there is a mixture of the futuristic and the obsolete. The main character, a product of the Order’s genetic engineering program is among the last vestiges of their organization. She suffers from the effects of her design and its a struggle to get through each day without being discovered—a death sentence. The three chapters posted are: The Prologue, Chapter 1 and Chapter 2. Prologues have a place in my books. They are out of the time of the story, or a way to covey some other important aspect of a character. They provide a glimpse into something important to the overall story—although how they fit in isn’t always obvious at first. Think of them as Chapter 0 if it helps.
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