Rereading a book I wrote four years ago, and a bear

Something drew me to open up the first chapter of Semper and reread it this morning. Having just completed writing the trilogy (which is discounted/free this week), I thought it would be fun to revisit the chapter that began the story.

Did I stay true to the original characters as I first introduced them? Did the first chapter, written four years ago, properly set up the full story of the trilogy?

I think so, if I can be my own judge. In fact, I did better than I expected.

In that first chapter, Dane at one point thinks to himself,

I do not want to be the one that brings home the epidemic that destroys all of civilization.

I didn't realize it at the time, but that one sentence holds a tremendous amount of both foreshadowing and irony.

Also, that first chapter ends with a question that is never explicitly answered but which is the perfect first question in a discussion guide for the series.

Maybe it's just that I was looking for connections as I read. Or maybe those connections were already in my subconscious, even before I'd detailed the quarter million words in the story. Or maybe it's just luck or coincidence. In any case, it's satisfying.

FREDA will be free on Kindle November 1 through 5. The first two books, Semper and Forsada, are just 99 cents to celebrate completion of the trilogy.

And here is a picture of a bear I took, not far from the actual physical location where that first chapter occurs.