Flashback City

in which our hero recounts why he can't put his behind in the past

Dear Readers,

For better or worse, flashbacks are a very important part of my work. My love affair with them stretches back to a week in the early part of 2007 when I finally got around to watching the DVD box sets of Lost Seasons 1 and 2 that my pal Jon had loaned me.

I was sick as a dog and didn’t move from the couch except to swap one disc for the next one. As I sat there watching the way the writers wove the story of one character’s past into the modern-day narrative of life on a remote island, I was hooked. Most of what I’ve written since has been influenced in some way by the story structure of that show.

The big challenge has always been how to work the flashbacks in—and whether to even keep them past the first draft, at all! If they’re just self-indulgent, they’ve got to go. If they actually serve a purpose in the story, they get to stay—but only if they can be fit naturally into the narrative.

In The Stains of Time, I wanted the characters to experience the past on a more visceral level and ended up using time travel to accomplish that. In The Blood of Seven Queens, the narrator relates stories of the titular seven queens to the story of the protagonist (our narrator’s mother) and how she grew from Little Red Riding Hood to become the Queen of Hearts.

It’s been a lot of fun so far, and as I work on the scripts for future issues I am getting more and more excited to share the full tapestry of stories I’ve been weaving together for the past few years.

Alright, that’s all for this week. Free subscribers, I’ll see you back next week with more. Paid subs, keep scrolling for your look at pages 9–12 of Blood of Seven Queens #1.

Yours,
Chris