First Person vs. Third Person

The last novel I read before I began writing about ten years ago was Odd Thomas by Dean Koontz. That book was written in first person point of view (POV). I enjoyed the approach and tried to emulate it. I have now completed nine novels. All were originally written in first person POV, the last being The Training Bra. I sent the third edit pass for The Training Bra back to the editor last week. Editing was a slow and painful process, and I learned three important lessons relative to first person POV.

a. When the story includes many characters, and all are in first person POV, it is difficult to communicate to the reader who is narrating at any given time. As I look back over the novels I’ve produced in the past, I can see why this wasn’t a problem sooner. My earlier novels had fewer characters and less complex plots. In the case of Odd Thomas, the entire novel was told from one character’s perspective, so there was no confusion. To avoid “head hopping” in my prior novels, I used separate chapters when the POV changed. That approach became harder as the number of characters and plot complexity increased.

b. When more than one character is involved in a significant event, and both give their perspective on what happened, the POV problem gets worse. If Character A has just completed his view of events in one chapter, and Character B then tells another version of the same events in the next, there is inherent confusion for the reader. When the reader finishes reading about the event from Character A’s POV, he/she believes the event has passed, and reading about it again in the next chapter causes a bump in the flow of the plot. One way to overcome this is to change from present tense for Character A to past tense for Character B. I eventually managed to accommodate both characters in that situation without destroying the story, but it was tricky.

c. A third problem with first person POV, but not as important as the two above, is that “show vs. tell” can be more difficult in first person. The reason for this is that only the character who is currently in charge of the POV has known feelings and thoughts. If the POV is being told from Character A’s perspective, then that character can’t know how any other character is feeling … or what any other character is thinking. Character A can only know about himself, and can only guess about what other characters are thinking and feeling from observed actions.

Fortunately for me, I had an outstanding editor … even more, she was patient. She helped me muddle through the problems of first person POV because she believed in the story. Without her insight, a really good story could have been bogged down with technical issues.

I have read that new authors frequently begin writing from first person POV, and subsequently switch to third person limited. Now I understand the reasons. Because of the issues listed above, I began writing the follow-on novel, The Trophy Wife, in third person limited POV. I have reached 65,000 words in that WIP, and find the pitfalls listed above are not a problem. The writing is easier when the entire story is told from an impartial limited perspective that watches all events unfold—a POV that knows the thoughts and motives of all the characters as needed. I doubt that I will ever return to first person POV, but it’s like saying good-bye to an old friend.

So, as a farewell shot, here’s one of the last examples of first person POV you will see from me. I call the excerpt “To Kill Or Not To Kill, That Is The Question.” The Excerpt is taken from my soon-to-be-released novel The Training Bra, the third novel in the Miss Havana series. Lilith is the Princess of Darkness, the daughter of Miss Havana and Lucifer. She is the absolute ruler of the underworld and reigns from the Throne of Judgment in hell. She has called Lucifer and two of his co-conspirators (Alice and Otto) before her to entertain her gallery of demons and shadow creatures as part of the Solstice celebration. For this day only, Miss Havana has been invited to sit in a straight-backed chair at the base of the throne, not knowing she will be part of the entertainment.

*****

Lilith leans forward, places her elbows on her knees and rests her chin on her hands. “Well, well, well. What an interesting little party we have here. What do you think, Mother, aren’t they just adorable?”

The gallery hoots and screams while throwing feces and vomit—the same kind of reaction you get when you piss off the monkeys at the zoo.

Lilith raises her arms to the gallery, taking in their accolades. This is the first time she’s had both Miss Havana and me in her sights for a long, long time. What better way to celebrate the Solstice than to humiliate the two of us together.

My daughter has a mean streak as broad as Alice’s ass, and she loves a good fight. She glances at me, and then to Miss Havana … and seems especially fascinated with our collars. Her glare falls on me, and then she passes her hand toward the collar on my ex’s neck. “Why don’t you try it out, Father? It’s quite gratifying.”

I crawl to my knees and then stand erect, facing my ex. Miss Havana also stands, genuflects toward Lilith, crouches like a cage fighter and then begins sweeping from side-to-side as she comes at me, looking for weakness. I see vengeance in her eyes. Like an approaching storm, she’s ready to destroy anything in her path. This could be bad; she knows I’ll go for her collar and she’ll fight to the death to prevent it. The bitch will do anything to keep me from feeling good at her expense.

When she’s near enough to spit on me, she relaxes her fighting stance and extends her arms as though she’s going to give me a welcoming hug. What an idiot, like I’m going to fall for that. Before she can reach the button on the back of my collar, I grab the hair on the top of her head, pull her face into my sweaty hot chest and drop to the floor with her atop me. It seemed like a good plan at the time—just pull her head down and jam my finger on the button on the back of her collar—but the wiry bitch bites a chunk out of my chest, screams my name in unflattering ways and thrashes like she on PCP before kneeing my groin and bringing her head up hard under my chin.

Shit. I see stars. The bitch never had this much energy or enthusiasm when I bedded her. We roll around in the slime and, as I fight to prevent her from getting another good bite, her arm slithers unnoticed up over my shoulder like a silent rattlesnake and her bony finger presses my button instead.

My body goes rigid as a bank of capacitors the size of Central Park discharges in that scrawny little band. I bounce and vibrate atop the slime with little flashes of lightning darting out from my knees and elbows into the surrounding rock. The gallery celebrates big time with high-fives and caterwauls as my body slams again and again against the cavern floor, sloshing the oozing muck with such gusto that I actually create a froth outline around me like an aura of pain.

I had no idea I knew so many unnatural moves. Between my twitching eye lids, I notice Miss Havana is mocking me by trying to emulate some of my more unusual gyrations. What a heartless bitch.

The gallery goes wild as she stands and raises her hands to one and all, and only then do I catch a glimpse of Lilith’s hand as it flashes down toward her pocket. Oh, fudge, I fear she won’t find my controller there—the jig is up.

Before I can contemplate all the negative ramifications of the missing controller, Miss Havana goes momentarily rigid, and then begins spastic shaking before she catapults to the ground. I hear the familiar buzz of electricity from beneath her collar just before her knee jams into my crotch again, this time driven by 100,000 volts. I grab my boys and double up in pain while her body flops around like a dying fish. This is so unfair. She’s the one being shocked, but my testicles pay the price. We writhe together on the cavern floor.

By the time her final unnatural jerk causes her right leg to kick my left shin, the gallery’s screeching has reached a new high. This is a Solstice celebration they will never forget. I remind myself of two things. First, that Mr. Lucky just ran out of luck. That bastard lied to me—he only got one controller, not two. Second, that I’m here to please and, despite the personal risk to myself for doing so, I wobble to a semi-standing position and take a bow.

The gallery explodes in yowls, belches, curses, and all manner of noises that would never be heard above, and they show their appreciation with a rain of garbage the likes of which I have never seen. I feel like I’ve got my mojo back. As I make my slow turn, trying hard to stand straighter, I see what they are really cheering. It isn’t me.

My fucking daughter is holding up Miss Havana’s controller, like Nero might hold up a scepter to the cheering crowd before letting the lions loose on the Christians. To kill or not to kill, that is the question.

To my everlasting surprise, Lilith lowers her arms even though the entire cavern is chanting, “Again. Again. Again.”

I’m torn. Lilith has Miss Havana’s controller. Should I be chanting too? Those bastard demons. I’ll reward them later for this.

Lilith lets the audience bloodlust run its course and, when there is a modicum of quiet, announces, “Ah, my children, I am so pleased to be able to tickle your fancy. Your enjoyment of my parent’s pain makes my day. But let’s not eat all the ice cream at one sitting. How about I let them spend the night together before we play this game again tomorrow?”

Another eruption follows, even louder than the first. Lilith raises her arms, accepting their adoration, and adds, “Then let it be so. Happy Solstice to all creatures great and small!”

*****

The Training Bra should be available for purchase in a couple of months. The novel will make you cry laughing. Like The Substitute, the first novel in the Miss Havana series, The Training Bra does not have a social message. It is written for humor alone, and I hope you all enjoy it as much as I enjoyed putting it together.

Thank you for reading,

James L. Hatch

amazon.com/author/jameshatch

http://cookinwithmisshavana.blogspot.com/

Proper Editing Attitude

I just completed a grueling edit cycle with my new novel, The Training Bra. My editor (Solstice Publishing / Cheryl Nicholas) is very good at what she does. I know that in my heart, but I still catch myself thinking “she just can’t be right” when, in fact, she almost always is and it’s my novel that needs an adjustment.

I tend to write in first person, which can be confusing if there are more than one or two characters. As my editor and I struggled through the first ten chapters, she seemed confused about POV – which character was doing the talking – even though I almost always begin a new chapter when there is a POV change and I try to identify the specific character in the first paragraph of each chapter. At first I had trouble understanding her confusion – why didn’t she get it? I read the material again and wasn’t the slightest bit confused.

In frustration, I re-wrote the entire first ten chapters to try to clarify the POV, although I really didn’t understand why all that work was necessary. Then I had an epiphany. She wasn’t telling me she was confused – she was telling me other readers might be confused. There is a difference. She wasn’t confused at all – she was just telling me the book could be better.

And here’s the good part. I loved the re-write of the first ten chapters. After the re-write, in my opinion, the novel was much better than before. The POV was clearer and the humor sparkled. So, as I approached the remaining 23 chapters, each time I wondered “What is she thinking?” I stopped to change the comment in my mind to, “What can I do to make this passage better?”

In other words, even if it wasn’t exactly clear to me what she wanted (because editor notes can sometimes be cryptic), I knew she was telling me to fix something to make the book better. As a result, I tried to address every in-line change and especially the comments in the margin. She took the time to write those comments, and I didn’t want to leave a single one behind.

I sent the first iteration back to her last week. The novel is far better than before the edit cycle. There is more show vs. tell, and much more humor. The books are comedy; humor is important. I can hardly believe how many opportunities I missed to add more laughs when I went through the story the first ten times.

As I reflect on the experience, I am humbled by my editor's ability to see problems in my writing that I’m not sure, even now, I could have seen myself. I had the same editor for my last book, Oh, Heavens, Miss Havana! I thought she was terrific then, but this time she has been even more instructive. One might think I would start to get it after eight novels and one short story, but no. It’s clear I still have a lot to learn, and the most important lesson is probably this: don’t argue with your editor. If she tells you something should be fixed, don’t question, just do it.

Sigh.

James L. Hatch

http://www.amazon.com/James-L.-Hatch/e/B005CQB6E6

http://www.solsticepublishing.com/

Who Is Miss Havana?

 I have written three novels with Miss Havana as the main character (The Substitute, Oh, Heavens, Miss Havana! and The Training Bra), but I have not put Miss Havana’s entire face on the cover of my books or presented her complete image in any blog. The reason is that Miss Havana’s defining nature is her spirit, not her appearance. In each novel, she is described as stunning beautiful and, to be honest, I always have a picture downloaded from the Internet that I use for a “model” when I describe her in each book. The picture itself, however, is never revealed to anyone, except in words. The focus of each book is on the transformation of her spirit from one state to another.

What makes Miss Havana intriguing is that she is so darn evil at the outset (in The Substitute) that even the devil is captivated by her. Fortunately, she does have a few redeeming features that garner God’s attention, so she gets multiple opportunities to botch life as a living being. That’s a good thing because she doesn’t live very long in any of the books. If she begins as “flesh and blood”, she will soon be murdered – you can count on that. Why? Because the fun begins when she is in the spiritual realm.

Miss Havana’s spiritual appearance remains as it was while she lived, but she is free to haunt whomever she chooses. And when she does haunt the living, she can see their soul. In some cases, she is disgusted by what she finds, in others, not so much. Sometimes she acts to stamp out evil in violent ways; sometimes she doesn’t. There is always mayhem, but I try to present it in ironic and comical ways. In fact, her most violent bloodletting in Oh, Heavens, Miss Havana! is part of her spiritual transition, and she learns the hard way the world is the way it is for a reason.

Miss Havana is an enigma who exists in the gray area between good and evil. She often acts in evil ways, but always with the best of intentions. The mayhem she causes on “the surface” as a spirit generally results in damage to Lucifer’s realm, but not always. She also manages to offend God a few times. Even the best of intentions can go terribly wrong, and both God and the devil have often put their face in their hands while shaking their head wondering what manner of tornado they are dealing with.

Although Miss Havana begins as an evil soul in The Substitute, she is on a path of continuous spiritual growth and redeems herself with a single selfless act that saves the world near the end. In between, she becomes Lucifer’s mate and produces a female child, Lilith, who is more evil that either of her parents … and who eventually overthrows them both. In Oh, Heavens, Miss Havana!, she exasperates the Proprietor of purgatory and the light creatures that carry out the Proprietor’s instructions. As she muddles through probation, she offends just about everyone before failing completely. She does, however, learn some spiritual lessons about love that causes God to give her another chance at life. 

In The Training Bra, Miss Havana is returned to the surface as an eleven-year-old girl named Shelly. She is innocent but, unknown to her, she retains some of the powers she wielded as the Queen of Darkness in hell, and as the fake Angel of Death while she ran rampant in purgatory. Lucifer snuffs her out by the time she reaches age eighteen, and then the eternal battle continues above and below. In this case, the “eternal battle” is both the battle of the sexes and the battle between good and evil. This time, however, she scores brownie points with God because she tricks the devil into working for God’s kingdom. In addition to shaming the devil for eternity, she also manages to save the world (again). It’s complicated.

I am now working on the fourth novel, called The Trophy Wife. Like the other three books, The Trophy Wife has the potential to cause enough laughter to bring a reader to tears. In the prior books, whenever Miss Havana meets with God, she bats her eyes and asks, “Is there a Mrs. God?” He has ignored her advances in the past, but this time she catches his attention. Remember, her spirit is getting more tolerable all the time. I am weaseling her way into God’s heart, so she can become His main squeeze. I intend they should have a child together named “Angel”, and that will set the stage for the fifth novel called, Sisters, where Lilith and Angel collide.

I have posted excerpts from The Substituteand Oh, Heavens, Miss Havana! in the past on various blogs, but I have never posted excerpts from The Training Bra … until now. The Training Bra is currently in the edit cycle at Solstice Publishing. It should be ready for release in about six months, so that will give all of you enough time to read the first two before the third is available. A PG-rated excerpt from Lucifer’s point of view is provided below. This scene takes place after Lucifer kills Otto, a mobster, to gain access to his stunning wife, Alice. Alice subsequently blows Lucifer’s host body to pieces with a ten gauge shotgun, and Lucifer kills her as his final act of vengeance. The spirits of all three end up in hell. "Mr. Fixit" is mentioned at the end of the excerpt. That's the name of the knife Lucifer used to kill his father.

-----------------

Even though it is pitch-black and lava-hot in hell’s waiting line, I recognize a familiar smell ahead. The ceiling is only three feet high here, forcing supplicants to eternally stoop, so I lean forward in my crouched position, moving my nose forward ever so slowly until I bump something soft—it feels like collagen cottage cheese but smells like Alice. Did I miss something? I thought she was firmer than that. “Alice? Is that you? I can’t tell for sure because your ass feels dimpled.”

“Fuck you. It’s the humidity.”

Still a lying bitch I see. I decide to attempt pleasant conversation while I wait for Croco to find me. “I trust you had a pleasant journey because I have a feeling you won’t like your extended stay.”

“Asshole! Shooting you must have got my heart pumping so fast it exploded, but screwing you sure didn’t. You were lame. Your whole family sucks.”

I slip my hand forward to cop a feel and she bites my fingers. “Come on, Alice, there’s no sense being a bad sport about this. You need to relax.”

“Fuck you!”

“Well, we don’t have to make this just about us. Have you heard anything from Otto?”

After a brief silence, Alice responds. “Not that I give a crap, but I did hear a bellow way ahead that sounded like him. Then there was a hissing sound just before a rancid odor of burning flesh drifted through.”

I’m about to give her a playful little push into the searing hot broken glass walls when Croco taps me on the shoulder. “Boss? You’re early. Did you bring any beer?”

A disgusted look crosses my face but I know Croco can’t see it in the dark. The bastard only thinks about his own needs. What about me? “Why in My Home would I bring you beer, Croco? Have you ever done anything special?”

“No, Boss, but the Solstice is almost here. I just thought—“

I cut him off before he can build up any expectations. This is My Home, not the surface. We actually have a job to do here. “Solstice is just another work day, Croco, and I hope you’re ready for it. Get me out of this line. Alice has an attitude as stinky as her butt.”

As Croco escorts me toward the front of the line, I hear Alice shout her last words, “Fuck you asshole!”

We soon enter Croco’s den, and I put my feet on his coffee table as I settle in. “It’s good to be home, Croco. Everything is right on track on the surface. Is everything ready here?”

He doesn’t answer. Instead, he motions me toward a small peep hole he uses to look out into the Great Hall of Judgment. “You might want to watch this, Boss. It could be important.”

I strain my eye trying to see what’s going on in the flickering torchlight. Lilith is in a discussion with someone. Then it hits me. To my horror … I see Miss Havana standing before the throne. “Why is the bitch here, Croco? What’s going on?”

The beast shakes his head, making his jowls slop back and forth like one of those wet string mops. “Can’t say for sure, but I know she’s in training—something to do with the horsemen and the apocalypse.”

“Really? I set those three bastards loose an eternity ago because I couldn’t manage them. Insolent and independent—that’s what they are. They never fit in. Maybe Lilith will try to get control of them now. It will be fun to watch her fail.”

I see my ex-mate still has a great afterlife body. I shudder with delight as I study the smooth curve of the back of her neck, picturing in my mind how wonderful it would be to shove Mr. Fixit straight up through the back of her skull.

------------------------

Thank you, SASD, for hosting me today. And thank all of you who made it to this point. If you are interested, you can find reviews of my books and the first chapter of each at http://cookinwithmisshavana.blogspot.com/. Further, all of my books are available for purchase at http://www.amazon.com/James-L.-Hatch/e/B005CQB6E6. BTW, if you haven’t “friended” me and would like to, please feel free to do so. My facebook URLs are provided below.

Sincerely,

James L. Hatch

Author for Solstice Publishing, xoxopublishing.com and Eternal Press

https://www.facebook.com/JamesLHatch

https://www.facebook.com/pages/James-L-Hatch/122349661172963

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Miss-Havana/182620898417164

The Rise of the Antichrist (Titter Titter)

The rise of the Antichrist is a serious subject, but is treated in humorous ways in The Substitute. Biblical requirements for being the Antichrist can be obscure, so it’s best to begin with an example to show how the subject can be comical. I especially enjoyed: he (the beast) must appear to survive a fatal injury [Rev. 13:3]. The first excerpt below addresses that requirement.

The excerpt takes place at a point in the story where Miss Havana has overthrown Lucifer as ruler of the underworld during the twenty-one years he trained their daughter, Lilith, on “the surface.” With great ambition, Lilith strives to become the Antichrist, but runs into harsh gender discrimination—the Antichrist must be male. She arranges for her death, goes to hell, overthrows her mother, and plans to return to the surface as a male, but finds she can’t trust her father or mother to run the underworld without supervision. Therefore, she reluctantly assigns the Antichrist job to Lucifer, and sends her mother to watch his every move, not revealing the identity of the body Miss Havana’s spirit inhabits. The excerpt is from Lucifer’s POV.

--------------------------> Excerpt from The Substitute
Indeed, I could enjoy this assignment a lot and am already looking forward to becoming intimately acquainted with all the temple virgins, regardless of how much time that might take and even if they really aren’t, when an extremely negative thought occurs to me. What if Miss Havana is one of them?

Would Lilith be that conniving? Would she act to take away my pleasure by placing her mother in the position of prostitute? As I think it through, I rule it out, although her mother would be well qualified for that job. Whoever will be watching would have to be close to me most of the time, like one of the secretaries or the gargoyle that watches over the church budget.

Before I can sort out who my antagonist might be, Lilith casually flicks her hand and I find myself overtaking the body of an obscure Saudi prince in an open courtyard. Apparently Lilith has reached an accommodation with the purgatory Proprietor because there is no delay. This time, I rather wish there had been because, the moment I am firmly entrenched in my new body, I see ten men in a semicircle, all with rifles pointed at my heart. A man in a red and white uniform off to the side shouts, “Fire!”

The bullets hit me with astounding speed, but fortunately I’m able to divert each one through the tissues of my borrowed body into non-fatal areas. Without question, they sting as much as Croco’s branding irons. If the asshole in the uniform had just waited a few moments, until my powers fully materialized, I could have avoided this entire mess. But no, he just had to be hasty and you can be sure the moment I recover, I will smite that bastard!

Before I can heal my wounds, two men in black terrorist-like uniforms rush to my side, throw a white sheet over me, douse it with refreshing cool water, and… Wait a minute. I smell a diesel-gasoline mix. Oh, crap, it’s a wick! Before I can scream, “Don’t you fucking dare!” the entire sheet erupts in flames. That pisses me off even more. I just got here, for crying out loud, and I haven’t experienced a single temple virgin! Enough! I stand defiantly with flames shooting up my sides and back and glare menacingly at the throng gathered to cheer my demise. No, that isn’t happening today.
--------------------------------

Yes, even something as serious as a firing squad can be an opportunity for humor when dealing with the supernatural. Ah, but you say, “Hold it! How about the biblical reference that says the Antichrist ‘will have no regard for the desire of women’? Doesn’t that make him homosexual?” That reference would be Daniel 11:37, but the King James translation of that verse is a misinterpretation. The New International Version is more accurate: “He will show no regard for…the god desired by women….” Lucifer is lustful throughout The Substitute, and during his charge to become the Antichrist, he still prefers women.

In The Substitute, I considered the Antichrist not one person but two. During her time of training on the surface, Lilith grew evil to the core. She paved the way for Lucifer’s rise, meeting almost all requirements, including that he must come from among ten kings in the restored Roman Empire [Daniel 7:24; Rev 13:2 / Daniel 7:7].

To satisfy the requirement that the Antichrist’s name be related to the number 666—but not necessarily in an obvious fashion [Rev 13:17-18]—Lilith offered, “I have personally courted ten of the world’s richest men, extravagantly wealthy kings from the oil-rich areas around the Mediterranean Sea, to help defray the cost of my sanctuary. That cost has exceeded even the most generous estimates. Therefore, I have agreed to set aside rooms on the tenth floor for exclusive use by them. To their discredit, they have yet to realize that the sum of the first ten digits following the decimal point of pi raised to the tenth power equals 666—a little game I play.”

That was the tenth floor of the church she established in “Sin City”, Las Vegas, where she offered an endless bowl of tuna spread and a loaf of white bread that replenished itself, in part to satisfy the requirement that the Antichrist’s arrival on the world scene must be accompanied by miracles, signs and wonders [2 Thess 2:9] and in part to mock the distribution of fish and bread during Christ’s Sermon on the Mount. Still, Lilith believed there had to be more, as she stated before her carefully choreographed death:

------------------------> Excerpt from The Substitute
As my power grows, I continue to review what must come to pass to achieve my ultimate status, but I’m both frustrated and impatient because of the rules I must follow. Why am I female? Why must I return below and re-emerge as male? Who made up such a heinous rule in the first place? Why can’t I simply proclaim myself the Antichrist now and be done with it? But, no, Mother assures me I must follow the rules like everyone else, lest everything be thrown into chaos, whatever that means. The only way I can complete my journey is to return as one of the ten kings in the restored Roman Empire. Lame indeed!

I have, therefore, decided to establish one last church before I personally meet my mother for extended discussions on the next phase of my rise to power on earth. That church shall be located at 666 Rambon Way in Jerusalem, near the Old City, leaving only my return as a male king and the change of the calendar to mark my re-arrival.
---------------------------------

In arranging for her own death, Lilith intended to place the blame entirely “on the other side”, and set the stage for a return in victory as the Antichrist. Unfortunately, on re-entering hell, she finds her mother and father at each other’s throats. She displaces them both, and reluctantly orders Lucifer to become the Antichrist—with Miss Havana to watch him—thus fulfilling the requirement that the Antichrist receive power from the devil [Rev. 13:2].

Yes, Lilith was careful to meet all expectations of prophesy, even in planning her own death and resurrection. The passage below gives insight into her view of this part of scripture:

------------------------> Excerpt from The Substitute
And so my newest and most ostentatious church hosted a conclave for as many of my followers as possible. They all came together that beautiful spring day in a large field near the Mount of Olives just East of Jerusalem’s Old City, an appropriate locale to end the existence of the only living member of Lucifer’s family. Not one soul expected to observe the most spectacular event in modern history.

Knowing they would be my last words uttered in this world, I delivered an impassioned oratory, outlining how far my church has come in such a short time, ensuring international cameras captured both my words and my beauty on film, and laying out my concerns as well. I state unequivocally and without fear that my success has so riled and threatened the other side that I will personally be murdered by a violent act of nature, an act so wanton and so lacking in compassion it will reveal the true nature of our enemy and drive many converts to us.

This is my moment, the moment of revelation. I explain in detail the events that will soon come to pass before unveiling a huge hourglass containing brilliant white sand. “When I am taken violently by the supernatural, this day, the ashes of my few remains will be added to the sands of time in this glass. I say to you, before the glass is turned one thousand times, I will rise again to lead my church, a king with my own realm, the one who will lead you to glory at my father’s feet! And you will all bear witness it is I when I return, for I will not only be a king you will know and recognize, but I will recover from a fatal wound to rise in glory against all odds!”
--------------------------------

So, how does she accommodate her death? I don’t want to be a spoiler, but I can assure you it is dramatic and meets biblical requirements. You can also be certain Lilith was aware of the “downer” requirement, that the Antichrist wouldn’t be succeeded by another earthly ruler, but by Christ [Daniel 7:26-27]. She considered that requirement “boasting” by the other side, and didn’t take it seriously (to be forewarned is to be forearmed). Certainly she did not believe that her mother, Miss Havana, might inadvertently act as an agent for the other side.

The Substitute is a paranormal comedy, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t biblically accurate, or that the end-time events depicted in it couldn’t happen. Biblical Antichrist requirements make an entertaining story that can be enjoyed by both believers and non-believers alike. For those who have studied Daniel and Revelations, The Substitute can be especially interesting if one tries to identify all the biblical requirements as they unfold.

Having said that, however, I offer a warning and a comment. Although everything in The Substitute is presented in a comical way, the book is probably “R-rated” because of language, violence and a couple of sexual encounters that occur but aren’t described in detail. I know, I know. The same thing could be said about the Old Testament, except for the language, but still, in today’s world, it’s better to be safe with a warning than to say nothing. Also please note that, while I have identified a few biblical verses above, none are given in The Substitute. It is possible to complete the entire book, and not know it follows the Bible in any way.

Author’s note: Tony-Paul De Vissage gave The Substitute a five-star rating at http://www.tony-paul.com/-paul.com/. To see that review, choose “Livre Revue” from the top of the main page, then select the “Go to Archive” button, and finally scroll to the February 17, 2011 review for The Substitute. Tony-Paul De Vissage also gave the sequel to The Substitute, Oh, Heavens, Miss Havana!, a five-star review on July 1, 2011. Be sure to check it out.

Oh, Heavens, Miss Havana! will be available near the end of July 2011 at http://www.solsticepublishing.com/. The Substitute is available in .pdf from Solstice Publishing, and in Kindle format at Amazon.com.

As always, thank you for reading.

James L. Hatch

jhatch6@hot.rr.com

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