Lost Rambler

Update

This chapter is a little tricky. I am now rewriting it for the fourth time. I will get it to you ASAP. The rewards chapter will also come on Friday. Thank you for your patience.

Book Five, Chapter 97

~Riley~

For a moment, I panicked as I watched the big silver screen.

We had not planned on Antoine recovering.

Sure, we had hoped for it when we used his nightmare trope to try and ease some of his trauma so he might stand a fighting chance against the wolf, but that was a pipe dream.

It was uninformed. It was… meant to make Kimberly feel better.

Somehow, he had beaten the curse. I couldn’t be sure, but I assumed it was because our advanced rolling silver d...

Book Five, Chapter 96

~Antoine~

"You're here?" I asked the mechanical man, but it was more of an accusation. My heart was beating, my muscles tensed.
I was standing. I wasn’t lying on the ground bleeding out anymore. I wasn’t gored by the claws of a wolf.

I was wearing my cardigan again. Jeans. I was me.

What a disappointment—to die after exerting every ounce of my will, to finally be done, only to be reminded that this was all a sick game.

Silas, the mechanical showman, stood ab...

Schedule and Comments

I'm going to change the schedule back to T-Fri to line up with RR. They say inconsistency is the spice of life... or something like that.

Also, there is one more storyline in this book. I know that is ridiculous from the word count alone, but so be it. I think it will be pretty cool, but not exactly what you expect.

I hope you have enjoyed Stray Dawn.

If you saw anything from the characters that you think should be rewarded with tropes, talk about it in the comments and you...

Book Five, Chapter 95

~Antoine~

The wind carried away my shame, my weakness.

It whispered through the trees, filling me with the strength and joy of the pack. The wolf reveled in it, delighted to belong, to run, to protect. I felt the pull of Serena—no, the pack leader—like a thread in my chest, binding me to her will.

There was another force in the distance, but Serena shielded me from it. I hardly noticed as other wolves fled or defected. They were weak. I was not.

She was th...

Book Five, Chapter 94

~Kimberly~

I had pulled every thread. I knocked on every door.

It had all led me here to a field glowing beautiful and blue under the full moon with monsters approaching from the darkness.

We had guns. We had bullets, all left here for our final stand, for our last moments, our last chance to save each other.

Riley said we needed a showdown, and now we had one.

Were we ready? Was I?

The wolves howled. I could feel the sounds in my chest they were so loud....

Book Five, Chapter 93

~Riley~

Ever since we had unearthed Clara Withers, there had been this lingering question: what were we going to do with her?

The answer couldn’t be to leave her underground and ignore her. There were just too many possibilities.

We could have tried to set things up so that, when we removed the necklace from her desiccated body, the werewolf curse itself would fail. But I had no faith in that plan.

We could have tried to lead the pack leader to Clara in hopes that ...

Book Five, Chapters 91 and 92

~Kimberly~

I felt like my heart was connected by live wires.

The finale was moving forward so fast. As the day went by and the sun started to set, it was our last day. We had to survive, and I didn't even know if surviving through the night was enough or if we had to defeat all of the werewolves. Either way, if we didn't find a way to beat the pack leader, we would fail our rescue, and everyone who had died or been turned into a werewolf would stay that way.

I had to fight...

Book Five, Chapter 90

~Antoine~

I woke to the faint hum of a refrigerator and the soft rustle of curtains moving in the breeze.

My body ached to stretch, muscles tense but unfamiliar, like a coat that no longer fit quite right. When I opened my eyes, the light in the room was bright with the mid-day light.

I went to move, bracing for soreness, for pain.

And there was none.

My body moved like a tightly wound spring.

I looked around. No. I sniffed the air. My eyes were not domin...

Book Five, Chapter 89

~Riley~

"I'm certain that we could accomplish this much more feasibly with a bit of string," Andrew said as we finished setting up one of our many traps incorporating our silver nitrate and copper purification method.

"Look, Antoine's rescue trope is supposed to be a test of Hustle, and I don't know if you noticed yet, but we haven't really had one—unless having a timer counts as Hustle-based, which I don't think it does."

He continued messing with the finicky mechanism ...

Update

I will be posting in the coming hours to catch you all up on chapters. This will count as Monday's post.

Book Five, Chapter 88

~Michael~

"You sure you're up for this?" Riley asked.

Was he talking down to me? Why not? Everyone is doing that nowadays. Maybe they were patronizing. Maybe they were empathizing. All the same to me.

"I know what to do," I said firmly.

I should never have told them that I dropped my subplot. Riley explained it—he said that because any one of us had the chance to be the main character in this story, our subplots were larger than usual, so they needed more time devo...

Book Five, Chapters 86 and 87

~Antoine~

The forest shifted again, the shapes of the trees melting into something both unfamiliar and known.

The air was full of energy, heavy with memories that weren’t mine—or weren’t fully mine. I stopped running, my massive chest heaving, and the wolf growled low in confusion. The world around me wasn’t the woods anymore. It was... something else.

I dug my claws into the dirt and put all my attention into what was before me.

A payphone stoo...

Book Three is Out

Book Three is out on Amazon if you are interested in that. The audiobook is out, too.

Book Five, Chapter 85: *69

~Antoine~

The forest was endless, but I ran anyway.

The trees bent and swayed unnaturally, their shadows clawing at me like they were alive. My paws tore at the ground, but no matter how far I went, the air clung to me, thick and heavy.

The wolf snarled in the back of my mind, restless and wild, but I forced it down, forcing myself forward.

Forward to where? I didn’t know.

I had messed up; I had ruined everything. They had talked about shame, heck, I had talk...

Book Five, Chapter 84: A touch of chemistry...

~Riley~

"Do you think it'll help him?" Kimberly asked, chewing on her bottom lip. She still stared after him long after he ran into the forest.

We were Off-Screen, and the tears that had started On-Screen were still coming down her cheeks uninterrupted. Maybe that was why she was a good actress. Because the feelings—to her—were real.

Even as we and the mercenaries started preparing for what was certainly going to be a big action scene, she would occasionally glance in ...

Book Five, Chapter 83: Always in the Forest

~Antoine~

Riley was up the stairs so quickly. He was getting away. I had to book it if I wanted to catch up. By the time I reached the top of the stairs, he was already all the way down the hall.

He didn’t look back, but he called out, "It’ll just be a second. I have to grab some books."

He was standing in front of a large bookcase, quickly pushing it to the side to reveal the doorway to the library. Had I been there before? I couldn’t remember.

I coul...

Book Five, Chapter 82: Rolling Silver

~Riley~

On-Screen

“And you’re telling me for certain that I cannot touch the body?” Andrew asked.

“Don’t touch the body. Don’t touch the necklace. Don’t touch anything,” I said, trying to sound panicked. “Not with your hands at least.”

He rolled his eyes.

“Well, we’re not going to get much of an autopsy done, are we?” he asked.

“Just look at her. Can’t you tell anything just by looking at her?” I asked.

Andrew glanced...

Book Five, Chapters 80 and 81

~Riley~

“Strangled,” Hawk said, as if he were talking to himself and not to the rest of us. He had his hat off and was pacing back and forth, working through the information.

"Don't see that a lot with werewolves," Antoine said. “I’ve never seen that with werewolves, in fact.”

We were On-Screen, so we had to give our characters' reactions to Lila’s demise.

It didn’t make a lot of sense for a werewolf to strangle a woman. In fact, the only ...

Book Five, Chapters 78 and 79

~Riley~

Somehow, we managed to squeeze all of us into that small hidden room behind the bookcase. We only had two chairs, so most everyone was left to cram amongst the stacks and hope there wasn’t an avalanche of books anytime soon.

“So, in the story we’re actually in, the woman in the painting is named Clara Withers, and she died mysteriously,” Antoine said. “Do we know how that affects the story?”

“Nope,” I replied. “I don’t think it has to affect thi...

Book Five, Chapter 77

~Riley~

Even with my life on the line, I couldn't stay in that little room filled with books forever.

I had to get out and stretch my legs. If there were some narrative thread that required me to be around, it almost certainly wouldn't reach me if I was locked away behind a hidden bookcase.

Truth be told, I wasn't so certain that my character was innate to the story. I might not even really have my own subplots the way that Kimberly and Antoine certainly did.

That's ...

Update

Chapters tomorrow. I will do a big push starting tomorrow to get this storyline done. If you have any feasible requests for the storyline, any topics you want me to be sure to cover, speak now lol

Book Five, Chapter 76

~Kimberly~

It amazed me how early exploration quietly became my favorite part of a storyline.

It amazed me that I even had a favorite part of a storyline. It wasn’t too long ago that I couldn’t bear to think about them at all.

Exploration was fun… Talking to NPCs, finding new locations, the thrill of a discovery that could take the story in a whole new direction—the innocence before the killing starts.

I didn’t want it to end.

But it would. It always ...

Book Five, Chapter 75

Just because Carousel decided to redress me didn’t mean I lost access to my luggage tag or to any of the items I’d brought in my hoodie pocket.

It just meant I now had to try to find a way to squeeze my headphones out of the narrow breast pocket of my suit jacket.

I literally had to disassemble them just to get them out. Luckily, I didn’t have to try to get my Walkman out too—that would have been impossible. The pocket was made for glasses or a pen. Cell phones hadn’t be...

Book Five, Chapter 74

~Andrew~

By far, the most accurate measure of success during research was the On-Screen/Off-Screen indicator.

The difficulty with playing a character who is supposed to be an expert on the supernatural is that, in the pursuit of research, you often find yourself learning things that your character was already supposed to know.

It can be deflating to stumble across an interesting tidbit—a tiny morsel that you believe might unlock clues to the mysteries of the paranormal�...

Book Five, Chapter 73

~Antoine~

As I looked over the group of mercenaries, all eyes trained on me, I was hit with memories from my basketball days. That era was so long ago. Damn. I guess it really just hit me again—I was a retired basketball player. I’d been itching to quit for years, but when the time finally came, it wasn’t on my terms, and somehow, I hardly even noticed. Anyway, these mercenaries—they were like my old teammates back then.

There’s nothing like having a team, the common g...

Book Five, Chapter 72

More soonish.

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~Kimberly~

"I'm getting all kinds of footage," Riley said as we walked back up through the basement path that would lead us back into Witherhold Manor. "There are so many hikers, campers, and people staying at cabins along the river. Carousel's been taking footage of them all day, but I think some of them are werewolves. I don't know which ones, though. I can see the way it focuses the camera on some of them, but I'm not sure exactly...

Rewrite

• I don't know what will happen with the last chapter. It doesn't sound like it accomplished my goal, so I'll have to think on it. Thank you for your suggestions, but I don't plan on having it come earlier in the storyline. I might just cut it. We'll see. It is still canon, regardless.

• I added a short conversation between Riley and his friends about his parents to the RR version of chapter 62. People thought it was odd that they didn't talk about it, but I had planned on ...

  2024-11-07 19:27:12 +0000 UTC View Post

Book Five, Chapter 71

Before I opened my eyes, all I felt was a pang in my heart.

Something deeply, deeply painful was on the horizon. I didn’t know if it was the horizon in front of me or behind me, but as I sat there still breathing the air of a dream, I knew that this character I was playing was real.

They weren’t always. Most of the time, it felt like they existed within the four corners of the script alone, but in this story and some others, I knew there was more to this character.

I cou...

Book Five, Chapters 69 and 70

The next Post is on Tuesday instead of Monday.

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When I awoke, I found myself tied to a chair inside the main hallway of the manor.

At first, I was groggy and didn’t understand what was going on, but as I came to my senses, the horror of what had just happened took over me.

The relief that we were still in the storyline—that we were still alive—was little solace. We were still at the very beginning of the Party Phase; thi...