Shadow of the Storm ~ Missing Chapters & New Ending

Not long after Rob passed away, his brother, David, who’d served as liaison during Rob’s last days, mailed to me the notes Rob had made regarding overall plot and the new ending. I already had the novel’s first draft except for the missing final three chapters. The task ahead would be to reconstruct those lost

An excerpt from Rob's final notes regarding the novel's ending.

chapters and direct the plot to the new ending Rob had envisioned in his last hours.

Rather than tackling reconstruction of the chapters immediately, I revised what I had in hand, paring down the existing draft from 140,000+ words to a more manageable and publisher-preferred word count for novels. By the time I finished revising the existing chapters, I was fully refreshed on where the plot was headed and how to steer it to Rob’s new ending. To my delight, crafting the new chapters went rather quickly. Throughout writing the first draft, Rob and I debated various plot and character aspects, fully establishing his point of view and voice in my psyche. It was not surprising as I reconstructed the missing chapters to hear him in my mind, either objecting to or approving the direction the story was taking. In the end, we landed exactly where he’d indicated in his final notes the book should end.

Shortly before he lost his voice during hospice care, Rob assured me that he’d found peace with his life—the good, the bad, the in-between. “Sure,” he said one of the last times we talked, “I’d change some things if I could, but we don’t get to do that. And we don’t get to change whatever may lie ahead. We can influence the future, but what’s gonna happen’s gonna happen.” He sighed. “I won’t be going home, Chris. But let me tell you, I’ve had a good life—good friends, great family. Now I have cancer. Everyone dies. It is what it is.” He chuckled softly. “Piss on it.” 

No self-pity. No remorse. Only acceptance and truth. The past is gone. The future is something that may or may not occur. We control neither. All we have is the moment. Rob learned how to use the moment to its potential right up to the end. One result is Shadow of the Storm, a darn good story with meaning.

Societal fear and unrest on Earth have skyrocketed due to increasingly bizarre and destructive events around the globe. A team of the world’s top physicists, working for America’s ruling corporation, Nattech Inc., has determined that future-based “time ripples” are triggering the events. Nattech enlists Cheyenne Native Americans Wolfshadow and Sarah Boone to track down and eliminate the source of those ripples, an other-dimensional, megalomaniacal, narcissistic entity known as Mahu, whose twisted goal is to rule a gutted Earth.

Shadow of the Storm is slated for publication mid-October 2026 from Foolscap & Quill. Stop by Foolscap at https://www.foolscap-quill.com/ for an array of exceptional novels in various genres. Upcoming posts will explore other characters and the novel’s long journey to publication. Receive posts automatically by visiting https://windpoemcreative.blogspot.com to subscribe via the RSS feed. For more information about my work, especially the latest novel, The Crosses ~ A Baker Street Irregulars Mystery, written with my late spouse, Bonnie Del Aguila, available from MX Publishing and most bookstores, please visit https://csfuqua.com.