New to Lupe

Several days ago, I reminded you that as we hit the home stretch for Tales of the Vuduri, I won't have time to truly flesh out all the Big Ideas I had for the novel The Milk Run. Today I wanted to talk about a critical plot element which was totally coincidental. When Lupe is kidnapped at the beginning of the book, she whispers "New to Lupe" to Aason and then disappears. But the fact is, that wasn't what she said at all. She was saying "Nu2 Lupi" which is the name of a star and, as it turns out, the target of the long lost Ark IV. So how did this happen? Did I plan this?

I have always claimed these stories were true but that they just haven't happened yet. How else can you explain the amazing coincidences when elements I throw in randomly, years earlier, coalesce and become critical plot elements that drive future stories forward?

For example, I wrote about a terrible plague called "The Great Dying" as part of my future history. And later when I was constructing how the Arks were to be built, I made the forward 20% of the sarcophagi armored so that they would survive even a catastrophic crash. And I also wrote about a crazy future war between returning spacemen, the Ark V, and a hero named Hanry Ta Jihn, who started a revolt and saved the Earth.

I did not know until I wrote The Ark Lords that these seemingly random events were all related. I swear I did not know about the Darwin Project and the Darwin Virus Strain 4, aka the Lupine Flu, until I wrote that sequel. Everything fit together like a glove and I had the revelation that the Darwin people were, in fact, the ones that released the virus as part of their long term plan to "reboot" the Earth. How could I have known?

And so it was, when Rome and Rei were going to have a daughter, I decided to name her Lupe which was my daughter's Spanish name when she was taking Spanish in high school. After all, I named Rome and Rei's son Aason after my own son, Aaron. It seemed only fitting that their daughter be named after my daughter.

I had always known that the Ark IV had gone to Nu2 Lupi but I never put two and two together. It wasn't until I started writing the book that I came up with that phrase which supplied enough juice to power two chapters. What are the odds?

I don't know where these ideas come from but sometimes they are so weird that I have to believe they stem from a non-random information source. In this case, a possible timeline to the future. Do you believe me?