WITH THE ANGEL OF DEATH TO LEAD US

 

The bill of Destiny is coming due, and Major Richard Blaine hopes it is only he, not his Spartan 300, that will have to pay it.

WITH THE ANGEL OF DEATH TO LEAD US

“Yet the real carrier of life is the individual.

Only man as an individual being lives. The state is just a system, a machine for sorting the masses.” 

- Carl Jung

 

I learned many harsh truths in New Orleans. One was:

Character is fate.

Liars and cheats eventually destroy themselves. The corrupt overreach. The ignorant make fatal, self-inflicted mistakes. The narcissist ignores the data that challenges them and the warnings that could save them.

Hitler’s insanity had propelled him into a position of leadership—because of his voracious ambition, his utter ruthlessness, his oblivious shamelessness—but eventually, inevitably, his supposed “strength” had become a magnet drawing the world’s retribution to his doorstep.

How many thousands would die on just this one day as a consequence of the events his grasping, cruel actions had set into motion?

Another truth I learned in New Orleans?

Destiny is the Bill coming due.

To say there were a lot of bills coming due in the mail, not just for Hitler, but for all the Allied troops was an understatement.

General Marshall had not learned a thing from Operation Tiger.

The LCTs entering the channel were sailing into chaos. It was pitch black, no lights, no nothing. To say pandemonium reigned was an understatement, because they not only had LCTs but picket boats and escort craft and all kinds of ships trying to sort themselves out.

 Radio silence prevailed, the ships could not use blinker lights, and the captains could not do anything but curse and swear until the whole thing got sorted out.

Sentient laughed within my mind, ‘Let us help them sort things out, shall we?’

“All right, Gentlemen!” I yelled. “Swing those packs on your back. Sling your Sig Spears over your right shoulders and hold on tight to the Scooter Handles in front of you.”

I followed my own orders and shouted to Amos and Theo. “You two up here! We’re about to join the party!”

No sooner had they climbed up beside me, than the Rocinante shot out of the darkness into what seemed to be a spinning spiral of blazing stars.

The air through which we flew was beyond frigid into downright South Pole freezing. It stung my eyes and numbed my face. I could feel the tears freeze under my eyes and stop stiff on my cheeks.

“Gehenna!” cried Amos.

“Oh, shit!” yelled Theo.

The Rocinante soared high above the dark waters of the Channel in the pre-dawn dusk.

Pvt. Jace Mercer shouted, “What happened to our canopy?”

“You got spoiled, Jace,” I barked. “Real Higgins boats don’t have them. Besides, the troops on those destroyers have to look down and see us … and our colors!”

“What colors?” Kent asked.

“These!” I yelled and pointed up at the flag at the end of the pole which shot from the middle of the deck with a WHOOSH!

The ancient Phoenicians represented a confederation of maritime traders rather than a defined country. What the Phoenicians actually called themselves is unknown, though it may have been the ancient term” Canaanite.”

Whatever their true name, whatever knowledge they possessed and lost … they once had the ability to make their sails glow bright in the night.

As our Spartan Helmet flag now shone with the brightness of a neon light.

Klaxons from all the destroyers under our flying boat thundered loud in the night. So much for radio silence.

We certainly were making an entrance.

Cloverfield swore, “Our bulkheads are shrinking!”

“The better to see us!” I shouted. “We have a legend to create.”

“What about the music?” laughed Nurse Reynolds.

Theo grumbled, “Of course, this strikes her as funny.”

“I’m surprised she didn’t ask about the fireworks,” said Amos.

I stiffened as Sentient murmured in my thoughts and groaned, “She’s about to get both.”

In the light of the possibilities of Man’s intuition, his nature is certainly a lamentable imperfection.

But you work with what you have.

‘I was thinking the same thing about you, my champion.’

The Rocinante was still shooting straight out into the night as if shot from Artemis’ bow.

Searchlights stabbed up at us from the destroyers. Controlled by sound locators and radars, searchlights could track bombers, indicating targets to anti-aircraft guns and night fighters and dazzling crews.

We were definitely going to catch it if Sentient didn’t act.

I no sooner thought that, when my ears shrank from the booming voice of Kate Smith which thundered as if screamed from each inch of the Rocinante.

Sentient slammed our craft beside a huge destroyer as Kate Smith belted out “God Bless America!”

I read the lips of Nurse Reynolds, “When I said I wanted something with swing, I didn’t mean swinging the flag of a country not my own.”

I thought darkly it was a country good enough to fight for hers. But then, I was feeling a little edgy as I saw the guns of two destroyers slowly aiming our way.

Abruptly, it seemed Sentient wanted to show the destroyers for what country we were fighting.

A cannon of our own clicked out from the middle of our deck into unfolding metal joints, and a huge series of explosions of fireworks erupted from it. 

My Spartans ducked their helmeted heads … including the usually unflappable Nurse Reynolds.

I followed the blazing arcs of fiery arrows. I hushed in a breath.

The fireworks became a blazing American flag over our heads. I frowned.

There was something wrong with the star section of the fiery flag shimmering in the night.

There were fifty stars not forty-eight.

‘I was feeling nostalgic for the future.’

The deafening music changed. I guess Sentient heard Rachel’s complaint.

Glenn Miller’s “In the Mood.”

Sentient had her own sense of humor … and of revenge.

The Rocinante turned sharply, heading full tilt as if to ram the nearest destroyer whose gun had been aiming at it.

We didn’t slow as we neared. We sped up.

Pvt. Evans cried, “Oh, a truckload of ‘Hell No’s!’”

Rabbi Stein yelped. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!”

Theo grinned, “Hey, I thought you was Jewish?”

“I just converted.”

Impossibly, a void appeared in the destroyer’s center. Blazing spirals of brightly burning stars appeared to race out towards us. 

Then, as if the vacuum of space grasped for us, we flew into the celestial apparition.

With a flash of blinding white light, we shot out the other side of the destroyer.

Klaxons bellowed behind us as we sped towards the dimly seen horizon.

“Doc” Tennyson swore, “Oh, they are definitely going to blow us out of the water for that!”

Sentient spoke to us all through our helmet speakers.

 “Oh, no, they will not! Behold, the Angel of Death as she carries you over that yonder battleship!”

I didn’t think a single Spartan kept from yelping in fright … me included … as the Rocinante seemed to be propelled from underneath by some mighty force which sped us through the lightening twilight.

Contrary to what many think: twilight happens twice every day:

Once before the sun rises as the sky is getting light, and again after sunset before the sky is truly dark.

Earth's atmosphere scatters the sun's rays to create the colors of twilight. On worlds with no atmospheres, such as the moon, it gets instantly dark when the sun sets.

The winds of our passage blew the long hair of Nurse Reynolds out from under her Spartan Helmet as if she were a new recruit to the Olympian goddesses.

Knocking all of us so that we staggered, the Rocinante slammed down hard on the waters on the other side of the battleship whose own klaxons were blaring to high heaven.

Heaven answered back.

Just before the Rocinante hit the water, a huge, winged figure soared out from under us.

I don’t know if the others cried out, for I was too busy doing it myself.

I couldn’t make out many details. A heavenly clot of blood, the dawn’s brilliant blazing sun nearly blinded me.

The Angel of Death.

Though I knew it was merely a physical manifestation of Sentient, it still unnerved me.

Black armor upon whose surface the Sun struck eye-stinging fire. Flaring wings of deepest ebony, rimmed with flickering flames of fire which lapped at the surrounding air as if thirsty.

An eerie voice rippled from the Angel of Death. It should have left its vocal cords bleeding and raw.

 It was Winter shrieking heartless victory as the last Ice Age shrouded the world in an eternal frozen crypt.

I heard a thousand cries from the hundreds of destroyers and battleships from men driven to near madness at the sight of her.

“Tod dem Dritten Reich! Death to the Third Reich!”

The Angel of Death pealed in wild laughter like a demoness released from Hell to devour souls,

“Hitler! Du hast gegen den Wind gesät. Jetzt werden Sie den Wirbelwind ernten.

Hitler! Thou hast sown to the wind. Now, thou wilt reap the whirlwind.”

With that, black mists swallowed us.

 

WHAT DRIVES A SPARTAN?

 Major Richard Blaine is faced with the daunting task of saving the men who believe in him when he does not believe in himself.

WHAT DRIVES A SPARTAN?

“You have no control over how you are perceived. But you can make a damn good stab at it.”

– Major Richard Blaine

 

The greatest and most important problems of life are all fundamentally insoluble. They can never be solved but only outgrown.

Like war and its resultant tragic waste of life.

Sadly, I didn’t see Mankind outgrowing them anytime soon.

I guess I would just have to work my damnedest to survive it … and if I could wrangle the survival of my Spartan 3oo at the same time that would be … well, more than seemed humanly possible.

‘Which is where I step in.’

‘That better be some stepping.’

‘It will not exactly be stepping.’

I looked down at Sgt. Savalas rousting my men out of their bunks and brooded.

Not many of them were in the Army by choice. Only a few of them had any patriotic passion that they would speak about.

To my Spartans, Churchill’s radio rhetoric sounded a bit embarrassing. They had no great faith in the new world, they had no belief in any great liberating mission.

 They knew it was going to be a charnel house. All they wanted was to put an end to it all.

In my mind, I went over what I knew of their personal lives.

Men who had only little of life, men with little education and less knowledge and with no philosophical supports.

 Men with ailing, estranged or poor or needy families. Men who had never been loved, men who had never had high ambitions or wanted a new world order.

Yet, here we were all going, as ordered into the meatgrinder that was named Omaha Beach.

But nearly all of them would rather have died than let down their buddies or look the coward in front of their bunkmates.

Of all the things that our bloody time in Sicily had accomplished, this sense of group solidarity was the most important.

If only I had been mentally with them at the time.

‘”If only” are the two most useless words in the human tongue.’

I spoke loud to get their attention, “General Bradley has called our invasion the greatest show on earth. And we are honored to have the grandstand seats.”

Pvt. Pablo Dimitri snorted, ““Hell! We’re not in the grandstand! We’re down on the damn gridiron!”

Chuckles echoed all through the Spartans, and Theo snapped, “The Major was talking, Dimitri. Drop and give me fifty.”

There were more than a few smiles, for Pablo could have easily done that many one-armed.

Pvt. Alfred Kent, a former student of archaeology, called up, “Major, we’re here on the Rocinante, but where does the Brass think we are?”

“Funny you should ask, Kent. Sentient has given them the illusion that we’re on LST 500, crammed alongside 2,727 other ships, ranging from battleships to transports and landing craft that will cross on their own steam.”

I laughed, “More vessels, as Admiral Morison has pointed out, than there were in all the world when Elizabeth I was Queen of England.”

I swept out both arms as if I were P.T. Barnum. “And we’re about to give them a show they will never forget.”

‘And to create myths while we are at it.’

‘Why is it so important for you to create a myth around me and the Spartans?’

‘To be a good human being is to have a kind of openness to the world, an ability to trust uncertain things beyond your own control.’

‘Like this war?’

‘Like the war within and this war without.’

I saw Theo stiffen, and I realized that the strange helmets Sentient had given him and the other Spartans allowed him to hear her.

‘The paradox of the human condition is that while your capacity for vulnerability — and, by extension, your ability to trust others — may be what allows for tragedy to befall you.  The greatest tragedy of all is the attempt to guard against hurt by petrifying that essential softness of the soul, for that denies your basic humanity.’

I felt the hair brushed back from my eyes again. ‘I have seen entire civilizations retreat into the thought, “I’ll live for my own comfort, for my own revenge, for my own anger, and I just won’t be a member of any type of society anymore.” That really means, “I won’t be a human being anymore.”’

I nodded. ‘I see people doing that all around me where they feel that society has let them down, and they can’t ask anything of it, and they can’t put their hopes on anything outside themselves. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy.’

Cloverfield scowled up at me. “You have these kinds of conversations with Sentient all the time?”

“Yes.”

“No wonder no one understands you.”

“Helen Mayfair did.”

Reese snorted, “Then, she must be a saint.”

I nodded in agreement. “As in St. Joan who killed for her God.”

Reese grunted, “I really have to meet this gal.”

A door silently slid open in the bulkhead to his left, and Nurse Reynolds stepped out in tailored combat fatigues and her own diminutive Spartan helmet.

“Me, too.”

Theo sputtered, “R-Rachel!?”

“Doc” Tennyson caught Theo’s eyes. “I asked her to join us, Sergeant. Her skill and unshakable calm saved lives with those Tiger survivors.”

“I outrank you, mister!”

I shook my head. “Not in medical matters, Sergeant. In medical matters, Tennyson outranks us all.”

“You still should have asked me.”

Rachel said, “I asked him not to.”

Theo glared at me. “You know that beach is suicide!”

“If I thought that, I’d be the only one going, Theo.”

His face was a sight. “Yeah, maybe. But everyone knows you’re crazy.”

‘Enough! We are done with lurking in the Outer Realms. It is time to birth Legend … Myth … Magic … Madness! Let the Führer beware! We are coming!’

Over our helmet speakers came Eisenhower’s Order of the Day:

“You are about to embark upon the Great Crusade, toward which we have striven these many months. The eyes of the world are upon you. The hope and prayers of liberty-loving people everywhere march with you. . . .

“Your task will not be an easy one. Your enemy is well trained, well equipped and battle-hardened. He will fight savagely.

“But this is the year 1944! . . .

The tide has turned! The free men of the world are marching together to Victory!

“I have full confidence in your courage, devotion to duty and skill in battle. We will accept nothing less than full victory!”

Reese cat-called, “Tell that to your suicide note, Ike!”

“Corporal,” I said,  “it is easy to mock if you’re not carrying the burden yourself.”

Pvt. Stewart Taylor protested, “You forgive him? But he tried to kill you in your hospital bed!”

“The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong. And we Spartans do not know how to be anything else, do we?”

The chorus of support was a bit on the anemic side, so I guess that is why Sentient pipped Axis Sally into our speakers:

“Come on over. We are waiting for you. Your spilled blood will grease the treads of our Panzer tanks.”

Even some of my men thought that the Nazi's named their tanks "Panzers" because of the black jungle cats.

But Panzer, in German, literally meant "armor."

Pvt. Evans laughed, “Sally, you come on over here. I got something for you that I know you will like.”

“Language, Private!” I snapped. “There’s a lady present.”

Theo glared at me and mouthed, “Whose fault is that?”

Rachel mouthed, “Mine” to Theo.

She and most of my Spartans yelped as all the bunks disappeared into the deck with a grinding of gears. Overfull backpacks thrust up into the spots vacated by the bunks.

Beside them arched glistening metal handles at the end of long metal rods that looked nothing so much as the steering handles of a child’s scooter.

“All right, gentlemen. Put on the backpacks and grab those handles tight. We’re about to put on a real show for the invasion fleet.”

“A show?” frowned our resident doubter, Stew Taylor.

“Oh, yeah,” I smiled. “Daredevil acts, music, and fireworks. The whole shebang.”

Theo grumbled, “General Marshall will court martial your ass for a stunt like this.”

I shrugged, “Better to be hung for a wolf than a sheep.”

Amos shook his head. “I’d rather not be hung at all.”

If I was being honest, that was my thinking as well.

HOW TO MAKE YOUR BOOK A PAGE TURNER

 

A book is a journey we do not have to take.  

We must be persuaded to do it.

Usually it is the set-up that does that for us: a unique or intriguing situation.

But once the book is picked up, 

it will be the characters who will tug us along to find out what they will do and say next. 

Do they make us laugh?  Do they make us root for them?

As humans, we are driven to seek an understanding of others,

for in understanding them, we come close to understanding ourselves ... 

and perhaps we will not feel quite so isolated, alone.

HOW TO ENGAGE THE READER

1.) EACH STEP MUST TAKE YOU SOMEWHERE 

As I've said: each book is a journey.  Characters, descriptions, or dialogue ... must move that journey along ...

or you are making the reader simply jog in place!

2.) TONY STARK ON A ROAD TRIP

Wouldn't he be a hoot on a road trip to anywhere?  

Your characters must entertain in some form or fashion

or your reader will opt for more enjoyable companions.

3.)  WHERE IS THE DARTH VADER OF YOUR TRIP?

Success conceals; adversity reveals.

Is he looming like a storm cloud on the horizon?

Or is she sitting, smiling like the false friend she is, right beside your hero?

Does his motivation make sense to the reader or does he exist merely to be the Big Bad of your story?

Your reader should see that he/she is just one bad day away from becoming that person.

4.) WHERE IS THE TICKING BOMB?

Imagine a tense company board meeting: 

the founder is being betrayed by his best friend in a hostile take-over.

He is bravely, intelligently fighting for his dream while the Judas is smugly smiling.

Unknown to them both, but known to the reader, a terrorist bomb is ticking beneath the table ...

right in plain sight should someone just bend down to pick up a fallen pen.

Tick ... Tick ... Tick.

Can you see all the various ways that could play out?

Your hero staggers out of the board room, having lost it all as his wife rushes into his arms ...

just as the bomb goes off, killing all those within the office.

The Judas in betraying his best friend ends up saving his life.

5.) WHERE IS THE WONDER, THE MAGIC?

It does not have to be literal magic but the wonder has to be there to draw your readers in and keep them.

SAME OLD, SAME OLD plots can become riveting if you spin them.

Robin Hood is the villain; 

the sheriff is the valiant, misunderstood man of honor 

trying to keep peace in order to prevent the King from ordering mass executions of the peasants.

A simple view out of a stagecoach window can become magical if your protagonist describes it so that the reader views it with new eyes.

My tagline to the front page of 

THE NOT-SO-INNOCENTS AT LARGE is

“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new lands but in acquiring new eyes.”

– Samuel McCord

Hope this has helped in some small way, Roland

STEPHEN KING'S WRITING TIPS

 

The darkness was alive, pressing in around my table at Meilori's.  

These shadows knew my secrets: 

when Kathryn, my fiancée, died in the surgery that removed both her tumor ... and her life;

when I was all alone as a frightened six year old abandoned on Skid Row in Detroit;

when my mother died holding my hand.

These shadows knew what abandonment, fear, and loss felt like.  I tapped into them as I wrote.

On my laptop screen were the paragraphs that detailed how Sam McCord cheated death by dragon 

and sowed the seeds for the great 1906 earthquake in San Francisco.

Funny.  No matter how hard we humans try to be smart, we end up only out-smarting ourselves.

I jumped in my chair in what felt like a whole foot as Stephen King sat down opposite me at the table.  

"Shit!" we both exclaimed ... but for different reasons.

King shivered.  "I hope you're writing a horror novel because this is sure the place to get in the mood!"

He pointed at the table to far left of us.  "Is that Hemingway?  The man is stabbing himself in the left arm and then writing in his journal."

"Ghost.  It is his ghost, and he always said there was nothing to writing -- you just opened up a vein and bled the words on the page."

King shook his head.  "You know I only come here for the 'free' whiskey.  What will it cost me tonight?"

"A few tips for my friends on how to write well.  One tip, two fingers of whiskey."

King shook his head.  "After my walk to your table, I'll need at least five shots to make it back out of here half-way sane."

Alice Wentworth, the Victorian ghoul, flowed like mist to the table with five shot glasses held steady on a silver tray.

As she gracefully placed them in front of him, he raised an eyebrow that could pierce steel.  "You trust me, Miss?"

Alice smiled demurely, but still showing him her pointed teeth.  "I, too, like fingers, Mr. King ... finger sandwiches."

He cleared his throat and tugged at his collar. "Ah, yeah.  Well, the first tip is this:

 "Description -- it begins in the writer's imagination, but it should end in the reader's.  Give the reader just enough to give the wheels of his imagination a push."

Looking after the departing Alice who moved like a specter through the shadows, King downed the first drink in one gulp.

"The second tip," I asked softly.

King traced his forefinger along the edge of the second shot glass.  

"Quality -- the best stories always end up being about the people rather than the events in which they find themselves -- in essence, the best stories are character-driven."

King slowed a bit, taking two gulps to finish his second shot.

"Style -- the road to Hell is paved with adverbs.  A thing is what it is.  Pumping it up with prose steroids only makes it seem less natural not more."

King blinked his eyes.  "Whoa!  That girl served me the good stuff.  My head is spinning.  I better get on with the remaining tips while my tongue is still working.

"Meaning -- a story is like a house.  Words are the lumber.  With sufficient, quality lumber you build a sturdy paragraph.  With carefully laid paragraphs, you create a chapter.  Enough of those gives you a house or a story to be proud of."

Despite his earlier words, King took a sip from his third drink.  The fine whiskey was beginning to hit him, and he began to wax eloquent.

"Happiness -- 

Writing isn't about making money, getting famous, getting dates, getting laid, or making friends. 

In the end, it's about enriching the lives of those who will read your work, and enriching your own life, as well. 

It's about getting up, getting well, and getting over. Getting happy, okay? Getting happy.”

King stared at his empty glass as if not remembering drinking it. He pointed an unsteady forefinger at me.

"Getting ideas --

Let's get one thing clear right now, shall we, Roland? 

There is no Idea Dump, no Story Central, no Island of the Buried Bestsellers."

He sipped his fourth drink and continued, 

"Good story ideas, old chum, seem to come quite literally from nowhere, sailing at you right out of the empty sky: 

two previously unrelated ideas come together and make something new under the sun. 

Your job isn't to find these ideas but to recognize them when they show up.”

He pushed away the fifth drink.  

"I think I best decline to stay vertical and avoid horizonal.  But I'll give you the fifth tip any way."

"Sir, you've already given me ...."

King shook a forefinger at me.  "A friend has to keep his word to a friend ... makes him different than a politician.

Hard Work --"

King smiled fatherly at me.

 “There is a muse, but he’s not going to come fluttering down into your writing room and scatter creative fairy-dust all over your laptop. 

No, siree.  He lives in the ground. He’s a basement kind of guy. 

You have to descend to his level, and once you get down there you have to furnish an apartment for him to live in. 

You have to do all the grunt labor, 

in other words, while the muse sits and smokes cigars and admires his bowling trophies and pretends to ignore you. 

Do you think it’s fair? I think it’s fair. 

He may not be much to look at, that muse-guy, and he may not be much of a conversationalist, 

but he’s got inspiration. 

It’s right that you should do all the work and burn all the mid-night oil, 

because the guy with the cigar and the little wings has got a bag of magic. 

There’s stuff in there that can change your life." 

King smiled benignly.  Believe me, I know.”

Samuel McCord walked up to my table, looked down at King sleeping happily on his forearms, 

and raised his own eyebrow under his Stetson.

"The ghost of Mark Twain has been a bad influence on you, son." 

HOW TO WRITE A GREAT 1ST CHAPTER

 

We all know how important first impressions are ...

Well, first chapters are our first impressions with readers, editors, and agents.

Take the LOOK INSIDE feature to your book on its Amazon page.  The prospective buyer will probably give you 30 seconds ...

which is the first paragraph at the most.  

If it teases them to read the whole first chapter, then that chapter better be Oscar Worthy.


1.) TENSE AREN'T YOU?

First person, past tense tends to draw the reader into the mind of your character, 

but write in the tense in which you think your novel's action in your head.  

It will feel most natural to you and in the end, to the reader.



2.) IN THE BEGINNING ...

The first chapter must ensnare the reader.  

I still remember that iconic scene in ROGUE NATION with Rebecca Fergeson in the opera house high back-stage ...

arching her long leg in the slit skirt to rest her elbow of the arm holding the rifle to kill Tom Cruise.

Scenes teasing sex and action always rivet.

But the first scene of that movie was Tom Cruise hanging on for his life on a plane's wing as it took off, yelling for Simon Pegg to open that damn door!

Start where your story hits the ground running.


3.) BOND.  JAMES BOND

Introduce a strong character right away.  "Call me Ishmael."

When designing your Chapter One, establish your characters’ situation(s). 

What do they know at the beginning? 


 What will they learn going forward? 


What does their world mean to them?



4.) IT WAS A DARK AND STORMY NIGHT

As with movie monsters, less is more with a novel's setting right at the beginning.

Your reader will fill in the blanks for you if you but deftly sketch in a few striking details.

"It was the sort of alley where a wino would hole up in to die." 


5.) THE DEVIL IS IN THE DETAILS

Despite what I wrote above, details are important.  

But you must be laser-accurate with as few of them as you can manage.

The plastic restraints hurt.  But they did not hurt as much as that scalpel would.  It hovered over his right eye.

His nose wrinkled at the whisky on the breath of the surgeon as she slurred, "I know you are wondering why I am doing this to you."


6.) MAKE YOUR 1ST CHAPTER A MINI-ME

It’s no accident that many great novels have first chapters 

that were excerpted in magazines, where they essentially stood as short stories.

 Every chapter should have its own plot, none more important than Chapter One.

 Focus on action.

 Be decisive. 

A good way to do that is to make a character take decisive action.

The first chapter should have an arc and closure 

that promises more of the same or that the victory was really a hollow one unrealized by the protagonist.

Here's wishing you a best-seller that will make you rich and famous!