Lou Paduano | Urban Fantasy Novels | Sci-Fi Crime Series

Connections Commentary – Hints for the Future

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One final look at Connections! SPOILER WARNING is in effect for the Pathways in the Dark author commentary! Beware!

I mentioned 2 goals, didn’t I?

It’s been a bit since our last look at this tale but I mentioned having two goals with Connections. The first, and foremost, was the give Gilgamesh the boot from the series (for now). It was a necessary evil, but there was no way to make his presence work with where things are heading in A Circle of Shadows and set up Soriya’s growing isolation nicely.

The second goal, and the enjoyable one for me, was in laying out hints of things to come.

The good and the bad part of hints…

There are two sides to this coin and it is one of the points of my writing I work very hard at when outlining. Hints come at a cost. You are committing the narrative to an event of some kind that can’t be forgotten.

There has to be a payoff.

But it can be fun to create those moments. Connections is FILLED with them. Go on and read it again.

I’ll wait…

Done, yet? Good.

Every aspect of Connections is a hint for what is to come. Gilgamesh’s abduction by Ishtar and the forces of Anubis comes about because someone knows he is in Portents and working with Soriya.

Who? Who could be working in the shadows and manipulating events like that?

Then, of course, there is the big climax of the tale where Gilgamesh reveals his connection with Death and how it keeps an eye into the future…

The original ending of The Medusa Coin…

Yeah, I tend to keep my favorite bits even after they’ve been sent to the cutting room floor. In the original draft of The Medusa Coin, Gilgamesh meets Soriya in the Bypass chamber and offers hints of the future. He talks about events down the line and choices to be made that will impact everyone.

It didn’t work. It was forced and held no place for the narrative.

This later became the coffee house scene and the small tidbit about the Bypass falling if Soriya isn’t careful. Much clearer and it fit the moment.

Connections allowed me to revisit the original ending to The Medusa Coin, but use it in a fun, foreshadowing way for readers with a keen eye on what is happening in Greystone.

I don’t want to get into specifics. That spoils the game. And while I haven’t heard from many on the subject, I hope it managed to spark some ideas in your heads about what is on the horizon. That’s why I like playing with the notion of the future, of hinting at longer stories tucked into the background.

To spur imagination. To enrage readers (to some degree) and get them ready for what is coming down the line.

Connections Commentary – Build Up Then Tear Down

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SPOILER WARNING is in effect as the Pathways in the Dark author commentary continues!

Building Connections

Soriya’s arc in The Medusa Coin was all about building connections. She realizes her secrets from Loren, her lack of trust in handling the Erikson case, hurt their cause and almost caused Loren’s death. That couldn’t happen again.

Her eyes opened to the need for others, something she always wanted anyway. By the end, Soriya walks away from the Bypass to search for a new home.

And she gains an ally in Gilgamesh.

For me, at this stage in her arc, Soriya’s goal is to grow, to humanize, in a city where all kinds of insanity occurs to dissuade her from that. Making friends with Gilgamesh cements their bond by the end of The Medusa Coin.

And it causes her to trust in his presence.

Creating my own problems…

Unfortunately, I knew where we were headed in Greystone. For all my efforts of building up these connections, of cementing friendships for Soriya, I knew I had to end some.

I had to sever ties to push her where she needed to be for A Circle of Shadows.

That became one of the two goals in Connections. How to take Gilgamesh, who has just committed to being Soriya’s ally in the fight ahead, and knock him from the board.

I’ll be honest – I didn’t want to do it. At all.

I had the same fight when it came to breaking up Loren and Soriya. Driving the wedge between them was the toughest choice I ever made. Was it the right one? Absolutely.

Did I struggle with it? Oh, hell yeah.

The same held true in this. Gilgamesh was fun to write. There is untold potential in writing a character that has served as Death for centuries and is suddenly part of the world once again. (I wrote down three separate notes about potential stories while typing this…)

But his presence, his friendship with Soriya, for as much as I wanted it to be there, needed to move in a different direction.

Tearing them down.

Finding cause to do this was tough. Having Gilgamesh run from Soriya at the end, to disappear for fear of what might happen should someone else figure out who and what he is, was probably the toughest scene to craft in the tale.

I went back and forth on the how of it. On the reasons behind each choice.

There was a moment where killing Gilgamesh off made it easier than simply walking away. I didn’t want that. I wanted to know he was still out there, able to be part of the narrative to come.

By tying his fear to his connection with death, by making it about his potential to be exploited and used against Soriya cemented the decision for me. It also based his departure in friendship, in their deepening connection, rather than be abrupt and out of place.

Using the knowledge we learn about Gilgamesh and then tying it to the overarching story playing out in the background strengthened the final choice all the more.

What this means for Soriya down the line comes to light in A Circle of Shadows, this September.

Connections Commentary – Starting Points

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Continuing the author commentary of Pathways in the Dark with an in-depth look at the short story, Connections! SPOILER WARNING is in effect!

Starting Points

There were many threads left from The Medusa Coin to be pulled for this collection. Each character had a right to the spotlight and I wanted to hit as many as possible, knowing this might be the last time to explore them before the big finale coming your way in September.

When creating my wish list of stories to tell, Gilgamesh kept coming up.

I was never sure where to land on the idea of this mythic hero cropping up in Portents. Sometimes I go back and wonder if it was the right move or not, having someone with such a rich history involved in the story. Rather than wish the opportunity away, however, I hoped to utilize that history to create a fun little narrative for Pathways in the Dark.

At the end of The Medusa Coin, Gilgamesh promises to stick around and help when he can. He also serves to warn Soriya about the threat to come. That warning was my inroad into what kind of story I wanted to tell.

The message beneath the surface.

The title hit the nail on the head with this one. This tale is very much about connections. Personal connections like the friendship budding between Gilgamesh and Soriya. Or like those of our past, which Gilgamesh is forced to face as a result of his resurfacing in Portents.

There is also the hidden connection, kept secret by Gilgamesh. One from which his previous warning may have come from and one that was too powerful to leave undeveloped and unexplored.

Manipulating history

As I said, Gilgamesh comes with baggage. Many books have been written about the figure . Lots of books. Each depicting events pretty similarly but always with a vague allusion to certain events. I wanted to pull at those moments, use the characters mentioned in the historical epic and twist them a bit.

I also wanted to play with the role he played in The Medusa Coin, by adding to this myth. He was Death for all intents and purposes. He was the gateway for the dying to reach the next phase of existence.

That connection, above any other, in this story was the one that intrigued me most.

Gilgamesh’s past comes to light

This is another theme of the collection, one that I didn’t realize was occurring until the end. Much like Myers has to face her past in Blackmail and Loren is forced to confront Richard Crowne in Founder’s Day, Gilgamesh is not immune to the past.

Ishtar represented his mistakes, his past sins.

When he spurned her affections all those years ago, he created his own nemesis and one that cannot let him go. The fact that she uses Osiris to try and bring back Anubis comes directly out of her intentions in the Epic of Gilgamesh. Her promise to bring death to Gilgamesh for what he has done to her finally fulfilled after so long.

Every story in Pathways became that much more personal in nature by relating it directly to character. Building from within and then expanding the narrative that way kept the focus solely on each main character and their arc.

It is fun to build from plot and the opening scene with Soriya battling the Onna-Bugeisha definitely filled that role in this tale, but the strength of each work stems from the deep connections of each character.

Their painful secrets, their mistakes or even their triumphs are all great starting points to come up with new challenges and I was happy this one came together the way it did.

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