Emotion

I have been working on Rome's Revolution since 1973. I've spent so much time and energy on describing the world of the 35th century that I felt the need to share it with the reader. However, the reader doesn't care. They'll take my word for it. What they want is emotion, tension, problems, not just solutions.

Our hero, Rei Bierak, never seems to be burdened much with intractable problems. Even though I have explained numerous times how his brain was modified when the Espansor Bands malfunctioned, it doesn't really help with ratcheting up the tension or the drama. In fact, it mutes it.

Take Rei's first issue: he wakes up in a foreign world, among strange people and the first thing he does is find the incomparable Rome to make his life easier. The next issue is that of the Stareaters. No problem, just invoke H. G. Wells and use a War of the Worlds approach and consume them.

When he gets to Deucado, Rome is in such distress that he takes her to the the Vuduri compound and miraculously isn't killed. In fact, Rome is rescued and while Rei is separated from her for a good portion of Part 2, you, the reader, never had any doubt that they would get back together.

The final portion, Part 3, where Rei and Rome return to Earth, hopefully proves to you that I "get it" and reading should be about the moment, not a blow by blow description of people moving from one scene to another. I'll be saving that for the screenplay. In the upcoming novel The Milk Run, it's going to be about experiences from an emotional perspective, screw the technology. The protagonist, Aason Bierak, is going to suffer more than his fair share of travails because that's what makes a story gripping. The technology? Been there, done that.

From here on in, it's going to be all about the emotion.