And now, the guest post!

What the Heck is Emerging?

By: Thomas S. Flowers

With the recent release of the Subdue Series, I thought it would be a nifty idea to talk a little bit about

what the book is really about. Nearly a year ago, I dreamed up this magnum opus of sorts for what I

deemed to be a telling of my “war experience.” But not just my experience, but also my understanding

of war and what war can do to people, how war changes people as traumatic experiences typically do.

Please understand, this is not a topic I talk lightly about. It has taken years for me to build up the

strength and will power to do so. What I’ll discuss here is my run-a-bout publishing journey, per say, and

why I wrote such a difficult book. It started when I finished writing my story. In the end, I had a massive

150,000 or so manuscript. Initially, I wanted to keep the series together as one book. I had shopped the

book around to several publishers. Without turning this into some long publishing story, suffice to say I

had stumbled upon Limitless Publishing, LLC, through a writer resource page. I heard back from LP about

a month after submitting my book. And…well, not to brag or anything; they loved the story. The only

problem was that it was too long. Most publishing houses, if not all, try to keep books to a 100K

maximum. This has nothing really to do with the author in so much as it has to do with

marketing/publication costs. If you’re a big time writer, like Stephen King, you can write whatever or

however long you want and folks will line up at Barnes & Noble to buy. Sounds fantastic, right? For me,

to keep the costs low, I had to go smaller. Instead of deleting parts in the book, I agreed to turn Subdue

into a series, thus Dwelling (book 1) and Emerging (book 2) were born. As luck would have it, Subdue

had a natural split in the middle of the story. Book 1 (Dwelling) became a character focused book, where

I spent most of my time letting my readers get to know the characters and their wounds and motivation,

if any. And because there are four central protagonists, I pretty much needed to take up an entire book

just to talk about them! So, if Dwelling is a character focused story, what’s Emerging about?

Great question!

Emerging is a situational focused story. With Dwelling you were able to get to know the cast; with

Emerging you’ll get to see what happens to them. Characterization is still key. With anything I write, I

focus on characters. I believe, as I was brought up reading the likes of King and Barker and Bradbury and

Tolkien, if you can create believable characters and make people care about them, the hard work is

already accomplished and you’re free to create one hell of a book. Even if what happens is totally

implausible, so long as the characters are human being, as in real humanity motivation type stuff,

everything else is for the most part fair game. The Subdue Series is fictional, paranormal, perhaps maybe

even a little horrific, or dear me, do I even suggest…literary? I’d like to think so. But I’ll let the readers be

the judge of my work! Because book 2 is situationally driven, the pace I think is faster. The book is

longer, but I doubt it feels that way. Or at least not in my own head.

As Dwelling ends with a bit of a cliffhanger, Emerging picks up a few months after the events at the end

in book 1. Without spoiling anything, I can say that a majority of the focus is with the house in Jotham

and the characters interaction with the house that drive the plot in this second Subdue book. I’ve

received some positive comments regarding some of the “flashback” characters. Don’t worry, Augustus

and the Fetcher family do make a minor appearance in the continuation. Questions about the house are

answered, to a degree. Some mysteries are better left unsaid. You might also catch a Lovecraftian vibe

in book 2. As with situation, I delved a bit more in mythology and dread. For those readers who’ve read

Dwelling and have commented on how much you have come to love those characters, I cannot promise

not to break your heart. As with life and war, some damages are unchangeable. In keeping things real,

heroes do not always necessarily save the day, as it were. Certain themes return in book 2, mostly about

suicide, and I hope as you read you find some of those motivations or justifications. There is also a more

developed theme (hopefully) about the American Dream. I’ll say nothing more on the subject.

You may be asking, “Why write about this stuff if it is emotionally difficult?” or “Shouldn’t some things

be left unsaid?”

Another great question!

Yes. Emerging was hard to write. Both books were. But aren’t the best stories worth sharing difficult to

write? Consider H.P. Lovecraft’s short story, “The Outsider,” as a superb self-examination of personal

fears and anxieties of how the “outside” world sees us. Or consider up and coming author Duncan

Ralston’s debut novel, “Salvage,” a classic ghost story that doubles as an examination of depression and

overcoming fears of not only our place in society, but of our past. Or even Clive Barker’s excellent

novella, “Cabal,” where he used mythos to talk about his fears of how society views and is too often

prejudice against homosexuality, seeing them as some monstrous thing. I’m not saying mine is as good

as these, but I think it fits within the same category, because these are things we ought to be talking

about, the woes and bitterness of society needs to stretch loose the rust and engage in meaningful

discourse. Above all, we are (as those mystics like to say) not islands. It matters not what you believe, be

it God or science or Kabala or whatever, our species was made for community. If we’re going to live

together, we got to learn how to talk with each other, and what better way to do that then through

story.