Next...

I blew off synopsizing the last two chapters of APoS because more moments manifested themselves into it. I finished this draft, finally, and it's now 537 pages/121,019 words...and 28 Chapters. I added one more at the end and intensified some other aspects of the story.

Part of this was Brendan retracing the route of when he was kidnapped, brutalized and almost killed by some racist rednecks. I built up how he's now fully feeling the terror that he was going to be killed, something he was too hopped up on adrenalin to pay attention to as it was happening. It grows in intensity until he actually finds the place he was taken to...and it's a churchyard. Where he damn near died, and no one even tried to stop it. He explodes into anger, tears up the area using his motorbike while cursing the people in nearby homes who let him be attacked, and speeds off in a fury.

When he gets home, he shaves off his mustache and part of his scalp to careen into a punk phase. Then he talks Everett and Jeremy into taking him to listen to a San Antonio punk band called The Next play at Raul's in Austin.

They have a song written by Skip7, the guitarist, called Monotony that works perfectly with Brendan's state of mind. Ty, the lead singer, howls it with an amazing amount of fury. Legal issues may force me to change all of this detail, but I'm not going to worry about it till I get there. Right now, it sets up another moment that will happen in Book Three.

I helped a guy named Mark Rublee shoot a documentary of them for his final project at Trinity University's film school, and it turned out well. As I recall, I had a bit of a crush on Skip...the blond kid with the torn sleeves...God, that was in 1979.