I am a fan of disaster movies and books. Anything that wipes out a good portion of humanity has my attention,, but it took me more than ten years to write a story about it. I first concieved of the attack featured in Redaction in 1999.
Anyone remember the Y2K hype?
Yeah, I didn’t buy into it, but as I sat in a fast-food restuarant watching their kids play with their toys in their plastic wrap, I had a wicked thought. But what to do with it? Fast forward several years and days after radioactive steam was released from our local nuclear power plant and the public was notified. Days. A friend who lives in the land of Denial said that couldn’t happen, we would be notified and the city evacuated.
Right.
And people accuse me of making things up. If you’re a fan of the genre, you know leaving a city is almost impossible in the wake of a disaster. So how could I and my family make it out of Phoenix? I mulled the thoughts over and over, until finally something clicked then it was a matter of finding the best characters to tell the story. Enter the five characters in Redaction. Oddly, the character I like best, Manny, came last, but if you look closely–each one mirrors facets of the other. Yes, Trent does mirror Mavis.
But you probably don’t want to hear about Redaction, you want to hear about the sequel tentatively titled the dying time or trail of corpses. Yeah, sounds like a light and fun read. I will say this, Redaction didn’t end where I had originally planned. There were things that were supposed to happen that didn’t. Why? THe book was continuing on but I was at the end of the 6 months I allotted to write it. So I ended it on an upbeat note but knew that I left many things left unfinished, some of which would leave a few readers unsatisfied.
I had always planned for there to be 2 books in the series. Except now, there will be three (maybe even four depending on how things end with book two and if I want to write about the establishment of the new world down below) The originally planned sequel was to take place 100 years after Redaction. And yes, I will still write it.
So what do I have planned for the new sequel to Redaction? Someone mentioned that it wasn’t clear if the biological attack happened in Europe as well. In my head, yes, but that will be clarified in book two. There will be nuclear meltdowns across the globe. You’ll see first hand the deaths from anthrax and other factors which will clearly delineate who belongs to which category of people–sheep, wolves, dogs and lobos.
And mostly there will be the showdown between the wolf, Trent, and the lobo, Mavis, as each try to remake society to their own specifications. Some characters we’ve met will die, others will live. But each character’s actions will make ripples that will turn into a tsunami 100 years down the road.
For now, I’m still working on a book under contract, but then because so many have asked, I’ll be finishing up the sequel to Redaction, maybe titled walk to live (Don’t judge me–Redaction was originally title Urban Rot until the week before it was published).
Which Iknow hope to have out by September, maybe mid-August-depending on my editors. But, I will post the first couple of (unedited) chapters beginning in May to whet the appetite.
Linda Andrews 
I loved this story (Redaction)! Once I started reading I couldn’t put it down! Hurry up with the sequels
I hope to begin working on it again come mid-March, but it’s hovering in the back of my head going what if you… And it’s driving me nuts. I’ll be very glad to work on it again.
I love survival/apocalyptic novels. Yours was a big satisfying meal of a novel. I’ll be waiting for the next one. A big fan. Susan Jones
Thanks so much, Susan! I’m pretty sure the next one is going to be bigger.
I’m looking forward to seeing what happens to the characters from Redaction.
So am I:-). It’ll be interesting to see how the story turns out.
I just finished Redaction. I live in Buckeye, so it was great reading a book set in Arizona. I also like to read apocolyptic-style books. Yes, the apocolyptic event is thrilling, but also is the fight for survival. I am awaiting with anticipation for the sequel as I am also Justin Cronin’s sequel to The Passage. Great reads.
My only criticism of Redaction is that about 50 to 65 % of the way thru, it got a bit slow; but then picked up again.
Thank you Linda for writing such a compelling book set in Arizona.
Take care, Justin.
Thanks Justin. It was great fun to write about my hometown, even if I was destroying it. Although, technically the destroying part won’t happen until the sequel.
First, congratulations on writing such a good story. The characters are three dimensional and the plot is compelling. I stayed up until the wee hours of the morning reading the last half of the book on my beloved Amazon Kindle. However, I can only give it three-and-a-half-stars out of the five-star rating because of the incredibly high number of grammatical errors and almost complete lack of editorial judgment.
An example of the grammatical errors is the confusion between “passed” and “past.” Although I did find the consistency of this error comical, the fact is “passed” is both the past and past participle of the verb pass. “Past,” on the other hand is a noun that means a previous time, as in “That was in the past”; an adjective that means ago, as in “That was some time past”; or a preposition meaning beyond, as in “It is way past your bedtime.” A good proofreader would have caught those for you.
What I consider to be lack of editorial judgment is exemplified by the many times you chose to be clever rather than direct, especially in your narrative. For instance, your choice to substitute a unique play on words rather than a tired cliché is commendable except that you do it so often it becomes distracting and pulls the reader out of the story. Also, there are times when the narrative gets so bogged down with minute details that it slows the scene’s momentum and once again the reader is pulled from the story and forced to notice your style. There are also times when the credulity of a particular scene is stretched beyond the reader’s ability to suspend disbelief. Now, don’t get me wrong here, I realize editorial judgment is almost as much a subjective art as an objective one and often says as much about the editor as it does the writer. That’s why finding a good editor is probably one of the most important things a writer can do. A good editor is going to point out your foibles and help guide you through the pitfalls of polishing that final draft.
I tried looking up your publisher, LandNa Publishing, on line. It seems to be a self-publishing outfit. If I’m right about that, then does that mean you are responsible for hiring your own proofreaders and editors? If so, I encourage you to invest in your future by hiring them now. I sincerely believe you are a talented writer with original, thought provoking ideas and I just know that with a bit of professional assistance – the kind both John Steinbeck to Stephen King have used, you too will one day enjoy prominence as a fine American Writer.
In closing, please know that I look forward to reading the sequel to REDACTION. I sincerely hope you find my comments here to be helpful and don’t find offense in anything I’ve written. Afterall, you’re the published author, while I’m still waiting for the publishers to respond to my queries.
– PEACE –
Thank you Lori for taking the time to read the book and give me feed back. I’m glad you enjoyed the story and, yes, I will have a more experienced editor for the next edition (hopefully to be published next month) who will take care of those problems (but will leave my voice and most of my cliches alone:D). As a writer yourself, I know you can appreciate the need to protect an author’s voice and the very real fear that a bad editor can kill it. So far I’ve had a handful of publishers and probably twice as many editors– one of whom tried to completely wipe me out of my book. Not cool. Good luck with your writing and please drop me a line when you’re published, you can always guest on my blog:-)