Confessor Interlude
Below are the end notes and editing notes to Confessor. The book is scheduled for print publication in 2023. If you would like a pdf contact James via email. If you would like an epub, contact Lynn through substack.
Parting Note
Completed with the help of CB, whose instrumental music played in the background for the last five chapters of this novelette, which otherwise might have taken me the week to complete in silence.
-James LaFond, 2:34 AM, Monday, March 18, 2019 in Portland Oregon
…
Vetting Confessor
An Experiment in Self-Publishing: 9/21/2022
Confessor uses my oldest character, an explorer of an ancient future, outlined in my oldest book, Tribes, an RPG source book that exists in two hard copies, one with my blood from a writing seizure/demonic attack suffered in December 2017 while I was writing Supplicant Song. Confessor is the sequel to Supplicant Song, which I write on the advice given in 1992, on Stephan Michael Sechi, author of Talislanta.
Thank you, Sir.
This story is intended as a pulp yarn and was quite enjoyed by C, the reader.
-4. Confessor
A Tale of Ancient Oth
2019, 11,832 words
Reading done by C
Editor: James
Publisher: Lynn Lockhart
…
Page 1: travelled to traveled
Page 3: Jakob, who I dedicated this book to, passed away 19 months ago. His family called him Jaker, a man too intelligent to look away from the glaring gaslight of our lives, a good friend of mine in his last few years. Indeed, I met Jakob just before beginning this story.
Page 6: Note to publisher. This format does not permit me to fix or form a table of contents, oh, oops, got it, its called an index on this app…
I do not recall anything about the writing of Confessor other than that I had decided to place the story upon a cultic island. The basic concept of Oth, is that it is an ancient earth, many millions of years in the future, that has been re-seeded with a human population by automatons sent back to earth for this purpose after some stars were successfully colonized from earth and the home world had fallen into a feral degeneration.
Page 9: corrected the spelling of cumulus clouds
Page 11: form to from,
Page 13: corrected spelling of aurochs
Page 16: World’ to World’s End
Page 19: eliminate a blank page
Page 20: axe to ax
Page 21: vison to vision, or to of
Page 22: was to way, since to sense,
Page 25: leathern to leather add knee before cap
Page 29: correct incongruently to incongruantly
Page 30: add a quote mark before “I seek
Page 31: capitalize Deacon and Monk, jingles to jingled, f to of,
Page 33: is to his
Page 43: vice to voice
Page 44: dinted to dented, last line
Page 47: a comma after art,
Page 48: haven to having
Page 50: form to from
Page 52: eft to left on last line
Page 55: pled to begged
Page 56: paragraph break at “A manic...
Page 57-58: every-thickening to ever-thickening, sentence break between petal and for
Page 59: capitalize My Wonder
Page 61: run, run to run; he ran, add them after break at page bottom, replace and with sentence break
Page 63: sentence break between deep and the man,
This is the most tortured and surreal sequence I recall writing. I do not recall writing it at all and thinking it now, quite bizarre. I have no idea where the idea—if it was an idea—for the leftward jade serpent tunnel originated.
Page 67: sentence break between horizon and for, second line, soring to soaring
Page 68: paragraph break-line drop at bottom of page
page 69: separate to separated
Page 75: paragraph break between heel and as soon, added comma, make sentence break before the ink,
Page 77: as he saw to For he saw
Page 79: sentence break between afar and Though
Page 80: Sentence break between sphere and so, sentence break after of the stair, sentence break after the bar, insert Phane [protagonist’s name] after swimming,
Breaking up long action sentences is the chief portion of this edit.
Page 83: sentence break between her hair and because
Page 87: planks or to planks of,
Page 89: sentence break and insert “ The jackal-headed”
Page 90: sentence break between switch step and Then, sentence break after spearheads at page bottom
Page 93: Sentence break between right and There,
Page 94: eliminated blank page
This is not the type of story I would want to write again, though I am glad I did. It seems an entertaining myopic. I do recall well the social and technological and metaphysical fabric of Oth, and recall now that I must have reread the source book completed in 1992 in writing the preceding yarn Supplicant Song. It also occurs that I have not published a word of this short novel. So, I will schedule the first 8 of 12 sections of Confessor to run on jameslafond.com beginning in January 2023.
Page 96: significant rewrite
Page 99: Pane is obviously an arrogant asshole, so “but” shall be removed from his dictionary, replaced to M-dashes with sentence breaks
Page 105: as he to as if he
Page 106: paragraph break between near distance and That, that to than
Page 109: first sentence, did to does, leeringly to leering,
Page 110; sentence break, with He was here added
Page 111: divided first sentence into two, broke second sentence into two,
Page 112: rewrite italicized internal monologue,
Page 118: server to serve, correct fulfill
Page 120: paragraph break after aggressive course
Page 121: is to his, sentence break after wider still
Page 124: sentence break after pisshole!, sentence break in middle of action scene,
Page 126: sentence break in the middle of the transmogrification scene, had to break mor elongs entences up through 133.
The Pit Unplumbed is, I think, the best chapter of fiction I have written.
Removed a blank page. My dialogue needs less editing than the action scenes, hopefully a sign of adulthood.
Page 141: chill to child
Page 143: Sentence break
Page 144: stop-gap to contingency
Page 149: plaid to played
Perhaps I will write more Tribes yarns. The world was built when I was young and might someday ask me to return.
