Apocalypse averted; book saved
Fiction is the truth inside the lie.
--Stephen King
Though it's never explicitly stated in the text, Wicked Game takes place between Thursday, May 31, and Friday, August 3, 2007. The book gives hints (what we called "context cues" in elementary school) as to the year, such as pairing those two dates with the days of the week.
Also, if you take the year of the hero's death/vampiric transformation (1995), subtract his age at the time (27), then add his current "real" age (39), you get 2007.
...double-checking the math in a moment of paranoia...
Yes, that's correct. 2007.
So a few hours from now, the timeframe of the book will be over. I'm deeply grateful that the world hasn't ended, because that would totally undermine the book's believability. It's bad enough that it rained on the night of July 4th in real life, when the two main characters are supposed to be having a picnic. And it's thundering tonight, whereas in the final chapter, the weather was clear (trust me, there's enough going on that a thunderstorm would be overkill).
So I tell myself that the book takes place in a parallel universe, one with a different pattern of air pressure systems. Oh, and vampires.
I'm looking forward to writing Book Two in the series (still tentatively titled Bad to the Bone), because by a weird trick of scheduling, I'll be writing it more or less in real time. It takes place from Halloween 2007 through New Year's 2008. So I'll experience each holiday through two very different viewpoints--my own and Ciara's.
And I'll once again cross my fingers against an inconvenient apocalypse.
A-Z Update: "Save Yourself" by Stabbing Westward
Labels: vampire series
2 Comments:
Posted by:
Anonymous at 8/03/2007 10:14 PM
But save yourself a trip: WICKED GAME doesn't come out until (all together now):
May 13, 2008
It is available for pre-order on Amazon, however. For those who really like to plan ahead.
Posted by:
Jeri at 8/03/2007 10:41 PM
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