Rei's Resurrection

In the original "You are there" format of VIRUS 5, I wanted to give the reader the sights, sounds and smells of Rei's actual experience. However, this was delayed until Chapter 2. That is considered a no-no in action/adventure novels. You are supposed to meet the protagonist in the first paragraph and find out his (or her) dilemma right away. In the original book, you didn't know about it until Chapter 4. So once again, this chapter had to go.

If the little vignette about Silas Hiram was my best written piece, then this chapter was my second best. I spent a lot of time on it figuring people would judge my writing by the first few chapters. Luckily, the first three chapters will make their appearance in The Vuduri Companion whenever I get that done.

Anyway, I wrote this chapter from the third person perspective but so close to Rei's sensations that there is a lot of tell, not show. I presented Rei cold and immersed in a green, gloppy fluid as he was warmed up. Since he was only supposed to be frozen for three centuries max, I figured maybe the sarcophagus wouldn't work so well after 14 centuries. So I had the auto-defibrillator sensors malfunction and they tried to shock his heart back to life after it was already beating.

I figured that was a rather painful experience for Rei and he was lucky that it didn't kill him by stopping his heart. That would be ironic, huh?

Anyway, the current book Rome's Revolution does have a passing reference to this in the opening chapter. Here is the excerpt:
That plus the tender spot on his chest where the auto-defibrillator had burned him confirmed this was no dream.

But that's it. An entire chapter boiled down to one sentence. More tomorrow.