Tails of the Apocalypse

A Word from David Adams

When I was planning my novel series Symphony of War, I wanted to do something at once different and familiar. I wanted to borrow from every science fiction world I’d known and use what I liked the most: the result is the Universe at War. It’s like someone took Warhammer 40,000, Starcraft, Pitch Black, and Ghost in the Shell and threw them all in a blender.

This part of it, though, is something different. When we see Polema in “Demon and Emily,” it’s through the eyes of a dog. Getting this right was a real challenge for me; this story is the first time I’ve used first-person present to write, something I swore I’d never do. But it suits the mind of a dog so much better than past-tense forms, which tend to imply a narrator. A dog has a more limited mindset than a person; the only things that Demon thinks about are happening in the moment.

One thing that stumped me in the writing of this, though, is just how old Emily is. How would Demon’s mind process this? She’s largely unchanged since he was a puppy; as far as Demon’s concerned, Emily and her family are unchanging. It’s a bit of a mystery, but if you pressed me, I’m inclined to say thirteen.

Astute readers might note that the Polema of my novel, Symphony of War: The Polema Campaign, is very different from the Polema shown here. That world is a barren desert. This one is rich and green.

War changes a place, even in as short as four years, the span of time between this story and my novel.

You can see more of the old Polema in The Immortals: Kronis Valley, more of the Myriad arachnid invaders in the novel-length Symphony of War, and I’m sure we haven’t seen the end of Emily, either. Watch for her in a future installment of The Immortals.

I’ve attached a picture of me and my cat, Fall. Fall is totally adora-Fall, and she was sitting on my lap for, like, ninety-nine percent of the writing of this story. So there’s that.

I hope you enjoyed reading “Demon and Emily” as much as I enjoyed writing it.

For more of my writing, see my website at http://www.lacunaverse.com/. To join my new-releases newsletter, go to http://eepurl.com/toBf9. You can email me at dave@lacunaverse.com and you can find my Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/lacunaverse.