Novel Creation – Page 3

When Snippets Become Spin-Offs: The Murder Rule, and More (Part One)

Having pretty much completed the Snippet Posts for The Prodigal Band Trilogy, and having been working on ‘Spin-Off’ novels over the last several years since I retired from my previous job, and having published the three-books-in-one trilogy through Lulu for global reach using e-books, I figured why end there?

There are a number of minor characters that could bring about ‘spin-off’ novels, as some of them were actually murdered or ‘died mysteriously.’ I have even contemplated a ‘murder’ scenario of one of my major characters, but I’m not sure which one yet.

By ‘spin-off’ characters, I mean minor or support characters that play some important role within one or more of the three novels. The notion of ‘spin-offs’ was inspired by one of my favorite TV shows during the 70s, All In The Family. A comedy, and a satire of sorts of the politics of the right (Archie Bunker, and to a lesser extent, his wife Edith) and left (Mike Stivic and his wife, Archie’s daughter Gloria, who is a feminist). Naturally, Archie and Mike did not get along. Further, neighbors, including the Jeffersons, who were black, had issues with Archie as well, as did Edith’s cousin, Maude, an ultra-liberal. These supporting characters eventually featured in their own spin-off shows, The Jeffersons and Maude. Another spin-off, Archie Bunker’s Place, features several of Bunker’s buddies from the original series. Further, a spin-off had its own spin-off: Maude’s black maid, Florida Evans, was a main character in the show, Good Times, set in a Chicago housing project; yet, since Maude was never mentioned, it was not technically a spin-off. Finally, the show Gloria was created after Gloria divorced from Mike; the prelude to that was featured in one of the final episodes of All in the Family. So, we are talking four or five spin-offs here!

Two of the spin-off parts of the full novel are being manuscripted slowly but surely, with one or two more possibilities in the works. Both are roughly half-way completed, just waiting for more inspiration to finish, but they will be finished and will likely combine in a ‘three-or-four-or-five’ complete novel, in parts, with the likely title being The Murder Rule. Yep, I like mysteries, suspense novels, and crime stories. After all, there is so much crime and mystery and occultic scenarios going on these days of Covid, and now a ridiculous war in Ukraine, where of course the narrative blames it all on Russia. Sorry, there is more to this story than ‘the narrative’! And while God is in control, Ephesians 6:12 states it perfectly—the world is ruled by evil, ‘wickedness in high places.’

In order to introduce this novel-in-the-works, I will begin with a snippet that will introduce a major character within The Murder Rule. He is another rock star, singer Denny Spradlin of the band that helped mentor the prodigal band Sound Unltd, called Wolfin. (Note: it was originally called ‘Wolfen,’ but since that is the name of an 80s mystery movie set in the Bronx, I had to change the spelling.) Denny and his collaborator, guitarist Blake Fenmore, while loving their fame and fortune, eventually turn into nothing but party animals and eventually become lazy and stop producing hits, falling into has-been-dom, which leads to trouble and danger. Denny becomes a ‘useless eater’ of sorts to those controlling the music industry evil agenda; further, he is addicted to the opioid designer drug mentioned in the trilogy, called skuz.

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How I Designed the Book Covers for All Novels Within The Prodigal Band Trilogy

You know that expression—You can’t judge a book by its cover. Well, I agree with that. I’ve never bought a book based upon what the cover looks like. To me, the title of the book is more important; further, I tend to read non-fiction. As much as e-books, regardless of platform, are a great idea what with all the devices and e-Readers these days, I’d still prefer a paperback or hardcover book. And I am not the only one who thinks this way, as I recently sold a paperback of my trilogy to a neighbor who preferred actual books over e-books. And another thing: an e-book I purchased from Amazon a couple of years ago on the history and doctrines of Scientology (for research purposes) suddenly disappeared one day from my Kindle App! But hard copies can last forever, soooo…

Anyway, onto how I designed all of my novel covers.

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How I Wrote The Prodigal Band Trilogy, Parts One Through Three (Repost)

Part One

This post is not about how, in the 60s and 70s and 80s, I came up with the characters as a gang, and then as a band. This post is about how I developed the final plot involving good vs. evil spirits and entities using the prodigal band for good or evil purposes, how I was inspired this way and how I managed to write the three novels, the final one (The Prodigal Band) twenty years after the second one (The Prophesied Band). How I turned just an entertaining piece about the foibles of rock stardom into a spiritual plot using the Parable of the Prodigal Son of the Gospel of Luke Chapter 15 as a guide. Finally, it is about actually creating the novels using various software including ClarisWorks (for Mac) and Corel WordPerfect, Microsoft Word and Adobe Acrobat conversions for PDFs on both Mac and PC desktops and laptops. I reviewed the “why” in the previous post; now is the “how.”

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How and Why I Came Up With the Names of the Trilogy Main Characters

When one writes a novel or a series, one has to make up the names of the main characters. There are all sorts of reasons one names the main characters particular names. I could probably name a hundred reasons, but for this post I will only name the reasons why I named my main characters—the prodigal band members and their women and a few others—what I named them.

I came up with these names for the most part in the mid-60s, but instead of a ‘prodigal’ rock band, they and the girls that hung out with them were a clique or a gang of sorts, and were ‘locals,’ fictitious teens living on Long Island which is where I grew up. They had no particular ethnicity or religion, but were as if they were the same kind of teens as the actual teens where I lived, and where I lived the population was almost all white (a few blacks or Hispanics or Asians where I lived), about 40 percent Italian and about 20 percent Jewish, with the rest being a mix of mostly northern Europeans (mostly German, British, French, Polish, Scandinavian, Czech, Slovak, or Russian). The most common boy’s names were John or Jack, Tom, Pete, Joe, Bob, Bill, Mike…typical common boys names. In fact, the surnames for the band members didn’t really come up until the latter 60s when the clique turned into a rock and roll band—a band from England, a year or two before I actually visited England as a high school graduation gift, along with the friend who suggested this trip, who happened to be Jewish (but not religious about it).

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Omegabooksnet.com Site Menu Updates

Two new MENU pages have been added to the site Menu above.

Links to All Snippet Posts. That way, one doesn’t have to scroll all the way down the Home Page to find Snippet Posts one might be interested in reading. All the Snippet Posts are listed, and it is likely that I am done with posting snippet posts.

About the Trilogy Characters. That way, you don’t have to scroll down the Home Page to read about the various characters: the band, their women and support characters, and the good and evil characters, and the spirituality involved.

This Character page will be added to, since I plan to write more posts about the characters, such as why did I come up with their names and other stuff. Cheers!

Random Trilogy Snippets of Random Events That Lead to Climactic Events, Part Three (from The Prodigal Band)

There really are two climaxes within the third novel of The Prodigal Band Trilogy, called The Prodigal Band. There is the one at the end where the band is victorious over the evil-controlled Mark Besst. Then there is the one right in the middle of the novel where the prodigal band Sound Unltd is nearly killed or seriously injured by a bomb planted under a seat on their private jet at the airport in Philadelphia.

This snippet post deals with the first climactic event. To begin the story that concludes in this post is the notion of why the prodigal band is called Sound Unltd in the first place. In Chapter One of Battle of the Band, the angelic Tooters tell their messenger, the ‘witch of the Hovels,’ what will become the name of a ‘rock band’ of the future that will carry out the will of The Creator. “Their name will be sound, unlimited.”

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Random Trilogy Snippets, Part Four: The Biggest Battle is Spiritual (Part Three)

In Part One of these spiritual battle snippet posts from The Prodigal Band Trilogy, a battle between the good and evil spiritual forces takes place at a 1995 concert. In Part Two, the battle is between the prodigal band members themselves over whether or not to “call up” the evil Corion and his Demons in a seance-like experience; the Demons had just given them a ‘song’ to record which would aid in the cause of turning the souls of their fans to evil. Since the forces of Good, the Tooters, gave them another song to counteract the Demons’ song, a standoff ensued between good and evil.

In this Part Three, the Tooters will say something rather ‘prophetic’ to the band’s drummer, Tom, who is looking for answers as to why ‘the witch of the Hovels’ (where Tom grew up) would ‘warn’ the band (or as she called them minstrels) about the Demons. ‘Minstrels’ is a medieval term for musicians; the ‘witch’ originally came from medieval times. She ‘warned’ Tom as well as band leader Jack about the Demons as the two as well as the others in the band and their women watched over singer Erik and bassist Keith who had mild heart attacks, and were physically in hospital beds while spiritually in a ‘void’ as the Demons tried to consume their souls. The Tooters, using another method, would also communicate with Erik’s wife Ger, who had ‘betrayed’ him earlier with bulimia she never told him about and having had an ‘affair’ with her personal ‘trainer.’

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Random Trilogy Snippets, Part Four: The Biggest Battle is Spiritual (Part One)

Folks, I called my first novel in The Prodigal Band Trilogy ‘Battle of the Band’ for a reason. Not because there are contests called ‘Battle of the Bands.’ But because the ‘battle’ the prodigal band Sound Unltd undergoes is truly a spiritual battle whereby the spiritual forces of good vs. evil wage war to get this band on their sides—while the evil side ‘wins’ the band early, rewarding the band with fame and fortune as long as the band complies with the will of the evil side, the ‘war’ is won by the forces of good: the Creator, the angels known as the Tooters, and the human/spirit being, the ‘witch’ of the Hovels aka Morwenna as the band undergoes their assigned ‘missions of God’ and accepts Christ as Savior.

This snippet set on the spiritual battle features the battles between the Tooters and the satanic character Corion and his Demons (Gold, Silver, Bronze) along with two evil characters possessed by the evil, fake healer and new age cult leader Cole Blessing and his replacement, Mark Besst. The snippets are short. The first one is from Chapter Eight of Battle of the Band; the middle ones follow each other and are within the final chapter of The Prophesied Band, the final two are from Chapter Seventeen of The Prodigal Band. Some of these snippets are featured in previous snippet posts, such as https://omegabooksnet.com/2019/10/30/snippet-of-the-prodigal-band-trilogy-spiritual/

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How I Wrote The Prodigal Band Trilogy, Part Three

At the end of Part Two, I said that an actual spiritual incident I witnessed, which caused me to commit to Christ as Lord and Savior, inspired me to figure out a way to complete the ‘prodigal band’ story (using the Parable of the Prodigal Son as a guide) so as to create a novel trilogy that could spread ‘the message’ of redemption and salvation that anyone could accept freely, of their own free will. This incident certainly helped me to write The Prophesied Band, which ends with the prodigal band Sound Unltd being given ‘mission of God’ by the spiritual forces of Good. But would the prodigal band, having no idea about how to complete these missions, as well as being either atheist or agnostic toward Christianity and religion in general, be able to truly accept the missions and complete them?

In 1998, The Prophesied Band was published and printed (by a different outfit from the one that printed Battle of the Band), but this time I had far fewer copies printed—a wise decision! During that summer I sold roughly one-third of the number of printed copies at local festivals and writer conferences and made enough money to actually cover the cost of printing. By the following summer, I had sold about half of the book copies, and more than half by the fall of 2000. By then I had another Mac desktop and Corel WordPerfect software knowing that likely the next desktop computer would be using a Windows operating system (for one thing, a new Mac computer is almost double the cost of a Windows computer, and hubby and my kids wanted me to get one with Windows, likely with Windows 98).

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How I Wrote The Prodigal Band Trilogy (Part One)

This post is not about how, in the 60s and 70s and 80s, I came up with the characters as a gang, and then as a band. This post is about how I developed the final plot involving good vs. evil spirits and entities using the prodigal band for good or evil purposes, how I was inspired this way and how I managed to write the three novels, the final one (The Prodigal Band) twenty years after the second one (The Prophesied Band). How I turned just an entertaining piece about the foibles of rock stardom into a spiritual plot using the Parable of the Prodigal Son of the Gospel of Luke Chapter 15 as a guide. Finally, it is about actually creating the novels using various software including ClarisWorks (for Mac) and Corel WordPerfect, Microsoft Word and Adobe Acrobat conversions for PDFs on both Mac and PC desktops and laptops. I reviewed the “why” in the previous post; now is the “how.”

As I’ve stated in the previous post, in the 60s, 70s, and 80s, my mind made up the band and female main characters for the manuscript that I had no idea would become this trilogy. Then in the early 90s, I looked up at the stars and was then inspired to begin the writing journey—out here in rural mountain far west Texas, the stars are everywhere in the night sky on a clear night, unlike in urban and suburban areas. But what would be the main plot?

I started putting notes together with bound notebook and pen or pencil beginning with angels called the Tooters “prophesying” that a band would come about and be subjected to a tug of war between good and evil spirit characters as the band succeeded through the 90s and would eventually side with good over evil. Sometime in 1992 and 1993, using an old Atari XE computer which used a floppy disk “operating system” as a “hard drive” and where, once the disk set up the system, you take out the system disk and put in another floppy which holds the file one is working on (and where the new floppy holds about 48 kilobytes of space for the files)… In other words, only one or two chapters could be placed on each floppy disk, and, yes, they were indeed floppy! So using about five disks I typed in the first version of the book I titled “Rock Band” since I really had no idea what else to call the book. After completing this, I printed out a copy from each disk; I have no idea what printer I used. The plot was, in my opinion, weak as well—now why would angels call on a rock band to carry out a good agenda over evil when all the rock band members wanted to do was make millions and party and partake in sex orgies and get smashed on cocaine-like drugs? And then wind up in serious tribulations with seemingly no way out? So, in spring of 1994, I hit an impasse.

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