Hellbender 2: Chapters 1 & 2

"Nothing to see here! Just a catfight. Just a sexy sexy catfight."

Here’s a special treat: a preview of the Hellbender sequel (tentatively titled Hellbender 2: Double Hockey Sticks). I mean, it’s a treat for me, because it’s often over a year after I write a sentence in a novel before someone else gets to read it — that’s a really long time in the age of Twitter. Getting novels out is hard. I was hoping to get the third Superego out last year, but it should still be coming soon. And I’m nearly done with the second draft on Hellbender 2, so I’m hoping to also have this complete novel out later this year.

Anyway, this is a raw second draft, only edited by me so it probably has lots of typos. I don’t think anyone would want to see what a first draft looks like; those are usually unreadable to anyone other than me as they have lots of brackets around things where I just didn’t bother to come up with a name yet or notes to myself on things to change later plus it could often be missing whole sections and just have a note instead. The second draft is where I finally get it into a readable form and after that, it first goes to the alpha reader (my wife, the lovely and talented SarahK) and then to beta readers. When Hellbender 2 is ready for beta readers, I’ll also make it available to all paid subscribers.

So, here are some of the further adventures of Doug, Bryce, Lulu, and Charlene:

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Chapter 1

Forces beyond Doug’s understanding were out to destroy him.

Now, there were a lot of forces Doug didn’t understand — like magnetism — but they weren’t out to destroy him. They were also plenty of forces out to destroy him — like armies and criminal syndicates — but Doug understood those pretty well. What really concerned Doug were what was out there that he couldn’t quite comprehend but he was also quite certain meant harm to him and his friends.

“So I was thinking—”

“Shut up, Doug. No one cares,” Bryce shot back as they crept through the woods as the sun set.

“Cut the chatter,” Charlene chastised them.

“I also would like to say something about how we should not be talking,” Lulu added. “I am just going to reiterate that point at length.”