David Dubrow

Author

What the Future’s Going to Look Like

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A few days ago President Trump extended the Coronavirus social distancing guidelines to include the entire month of April, which was unwelcome news for everyone save our political/media class of Twitter-addicted shut-ins. A major concern is not just when things will return to normal, but what normal will look like on the other side of this crisis. “We can’t return to business as usual,” the talking heads tell us.

Okay, but what does that mean? I’d like to think that we’ll make significant changes to our geopolitics, but there’s no guarantee that our leaders will do that. No doubt it will be impossible to get a consensus on what those changes should look like, no matter how many people die from COVID-19. Like so much, what happens next is going to be a waiting game while we importune the people we voted for to do what we voted them to do.

For my part, I’m still writing the science fiction adventure series I started last year. (Well, I’m trying to write it with everyone at home.) A theme in this new series is, somewhat unfortunately, a kind of contagion. I’m some time from finishing it, but in light of recent events, I don’t know how the story will be received. I know that there are likely many writers right now developing Coronavirus fiction of all kinds. We’ll see how that works out for them.

Disease was also a theme in my Armageddon trilogy. In the first book, The Blessed Man and the Witch, I introduced the secret war of Heaven versus Hell, with innocent people used as proxies to fight for the holy artifacts that would make a difference in the last battle. The second book, The Nephilim and the False Prophet, showed the characters attempting to stop Hell from gaining an insurmountable advantage, and how a third faction planned to change the nature of the conflict. Finally, in The Holy Warrior and the Last Angel, demons swarm across an Earth in which the angels are terribly outnumbered.

Hell’s victory plan involved the corruption of souls with horror and self-loathing; one way they did that was by releasing a virulent, incurable strain of leprosy. The American government’s response was to set up temporary hospitals (leper colonies) to quarantine the infected. Several characters wound up contracting the disease, which, while not immediately fatal, was nevertheless debilitating and disfiguring. Many sufferers attempted to conceal the symptoms by wearing gloves and/or surgical masks. In the following excerpt from The Holy Warrior and the Last Angel, Ozzie has recently joined up with Aidan, a teenage leprosy patient who fled a burning hospital in a stolen ambulance with Mrs. Cai; Lem, a bar owner now driving the ambulance; and Patty, a regular at Lem’s bar.

—

Ozzie glanced over his shoulder and found himself eyeball-fucking the weird, mute Mrs. Cai, who stared back and said nothing. Patty hadn’t moved. Aidan happened to look in his direction, and seeing him said, “Ozzie? Can I ask you something?”

Mierda. The kid hadn’t shut up for more than five minutes since they started this trip, and now Ozzie had broken the welcome silence by looking at him.

“What,” Ozzie said.

Aidan swallowed. “Uh…we’re all gonna have to fight, right? Fight the…the demons. Once we find the five angels.”

Ozzie didn’t reply.

“It’s just that…it’s not that I’m too scared to. You know, to fight. I mean, I am scared, but…well…I can’t see real well. I was gonna get cataract surgery next week, but…” Aidan lifted his gauze-wrapped hands. “And…the nerves in my fingers are shot. The ones I got left. I can’t feel anything.”

Leaning back, Lem glanced sidelong at Ozzie.

“We ain’t gonna leave you on the side of the road just ‘cause you’re sick, manito,” Ozzie said. “Just do what you can and stay out the way.”

“Can the angels cure us? You know, me and Mrs. Cai. People got cured in the Bible all the time.”

Ozzie shook his head. “No lo sé. Maybe.” He turned back around.

Squeezing the steering wheel hard enough to make his yellow rubber gloves squeak, Lem murmured, “I got it, too. The leprosy.”

“Sí. I know.”

Lem didn’t look at him. “I ain’t took these gloves off in five days. Afraid to see what my hands look like now.”

“Sí. Deal. We all got problems.”

Scowling, Lem shook his head and said, “We need gas.”

“Can we make it? We’re almost at the Lincoln Tunnel.”

“This thing drinks more gas than a Caddy. You want it to shit the bed in the Tunnel? What if we got to chase the angels around like we did in Philly?”

—

Take care, and stay healthy.

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The Armageddon Series: The Rest of the Story

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I started writing the Armageddon trilogy in early 2013, with the outline of The Blessed Man and the Witch. My intent was to follow the original Star Wars trilogy style: set up the overarching concern in the first volume (in this case, the end of the world), have the main characters try and fail to overcome this concern in the second volume (The Nephilim and the False Prophet), and then complete the story of good versus evil in the third volume, The Holy Warrior and the Last Angel. So it’s taken me close to six years to write and publish all three books.

Overall, I saw my intent through in the writing. Each book in the trilogy comprises a segment of the overall story of the end of the world. Each character had an individual character arc in not just each book, but through the entire trilogy. When characters like Hector and Siobhan and Ozzie and Kyle weren’t driving events themselves, they were affected by other events, which then altered how they acted in response to future events. Some characters underwent significant transformation both physically and spiritually, like Reyna and Siobhan. Others stayed more consistent…and suffered for it. I wanted to make them as much like real people as possible without robbing the reader of entertainment. If you make everything too realistic, with the real world’s lack of closure and unspoken secrets and unfulfilled ambitions, nobody’ll want to read it. So everything gets wrapped up in the story.

My success in all these things needs to be judged by the reader. Of course I’m going to say I did a good job.

I had two themes that I wanted to bring out in the third book to keep it from becoming a tedious recitation of descriptive horror at the end of the world; these themes guide my faith, so I think they’re important. The first theme is that God is all good all the time. There’s an objective good in the novel, represented by God and His angels, and there’s an objective evil, represented by the Devil and his demons. The second theme builds on the first: even if we don’t know what God has planned for us, we should trust that He is all good all the time, and knows what’s best for us. In other words, I wanted to make the issue of faith a driving force in the story without preaching. So many of the characters (who were areligious or, at the very least, pretty secular before the first page of the first book) come to faith through pragmatism. They learn from their experiences. It’s what mature adults do.

Except for the ones who don’t. And we see what happens to them.

Robert Thorn, Damien’s father in The Omen, wasn’t a religious man until evidence showed him that his son was the Antichrist. Chris MacNeil didn’t believe in the Devil until her daughter was possessed by a demon in The Exorcist. You get it.

Despite all my planning, there were certain story elements, particularly the Watchers’ plan to save humanity, that I hadn’t fully realized until writing the second and third books. I knew it was all going somewhere, but I wasn’t sure where until the end. Dunno how I came up with the Watcher’s Ark. Or what it would look like inside. I can say that Naram-Sin’s Nephilim body came to me in a dream.

But somehow I got there. I got to the end. While I was stalled on certain story elements I wrote or contributed to other books, like the Appalling Stories series. But I always knew I’d finish this story, as difficult as it was. Hopefully it’s satisfying.

What’s next? Something more science fiction-oriented. Less heavy. Smaller stakes. Not as dark. But I think you’ll enjoy it. I’m done with horror for the time being. I’ve written the horror story I always wanted to write. That’s not so bad.

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Cover Reveal: The Holy Warrior and the Last Angel

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The third book in my Armageddon trilogy, The Holy Warrior and the Last Angel, finally has a release date! I can’t say exactly when it will be, but think about jack-o-lanterns and fright masks and you’ll be in the ballpark.

This is it: the conclusion of an epic tale of angels, demons, faith, and the occult at the end of the world. Whatever you think is going to happen won’t, I can guarantee you that.

With that in mind, I’m giving you a sneak peek at the new cover.

 

Having all three books: The Blessed Man and the Witch, The Nephilim and the False Prophet, and The Holy Warrior and the Last Angel would look great on any virtual bookshelf!

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