Comments on Right Behind: L.B. in Newport 1: School's Out

Oh, well it's a good thing I read Rhoadan's post a...

2007-11-19T13:04:21.487-08:00

Oh, well it's a good thing I read Rhoadan's post after answering Rhoadan's question in that new thread...

Well, unless the characters in "3,000 Miles from G...

2007-11-19T11:25:57.358-08:00

Well, unless the characters in "3,000 Miles from Graceland" are in Alaska or Hawaii (seems unlikely), I'd say the stories aren't tracking the book chronology that closely.

Since there doesn't seem to be a consensus, and si...

2007-11-19T10:02:18.767-08:00

Since there doesn't seem to be a consensus, and since I'd have to do major revisions of the posts if the Event were moved back in time to the small hours of the morning, then for purposes of this story I'll keep the time of the Event at 10:32 AM Eastern Time. The time of year, btw, is late April.

This comment from an earlier Left Behind post sugg...

2007-11-18T08:55:23.625-08:00

This comment from an earlier Left Behind post suggests that it would have been about midnight EST. Dunno how definitive that is.

The opening of the book takes place in the middle of the night in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. IIRC, almost the only people awake initially are the flight crew.

Heck, your character, do as you see best. It just ...

2007-11-17T13:16:29.364-08:00

Heck, your character, do as you see best. It just jarred out at me a bit.

Not sure if wintermute is right. The lead characters were on a plane at the time, and didn't seem to be asleep, but who knows where that plane was.

Oh, and I recall that the book describes some parking lot jammed up with cars, where they had to unload them with a crane. Had to be lots of people driving the cars, or they'd all be stashed out the way, and you wouldn't need a crane to get them out (just a brick through the window so you could get them into neutral and push... heck you could do that anyway).

In short, don't worry about it.

Well, the narrator is a sci-fi geek (as will becom...

2007-11-17T01:14:25.439-08:00

Well, the narrator is a sci-fi geek (as will become clear in subsequent posts), so naturally he uses sci-fi language.

I disdain L&J's use of Mary-Sue characters; I'm going for full-bore author insertion here. This is me and my wife in the Left Behind verse. Think of these as Johnny Pez blog posts from Left Behind.

Btw, is wintermute right? Has a consensus been established about when the Event took place, or am I free to speculate? Or does it matter?

I love the writing style. It's plain yet engaging....

2007-11-16T18:18:11.154-08:00

I love the writing style. It's plain yet engaging. I can hear this as a real person talking about a real thing. I think I would sit and listen to that person.

The only quibble I have, and it's a quibble, is the bit about the child shaped pockets of air collapsing. It's a good description as far as it goes, but the tone doesn't fit with the rest of it. It sounds like a little bubble of omniscient narrator voice jumping out the mouth of a real person who's otherwise talking about real events. It's too sci-fi clever. I feel like if this narrator tried to figure it out at all, he'd say something more like. "My thinking is that wind was all the air filling in where those kids left from." Or something like that (you know the voice of the guy better than I, obviously).

Anyway, good to see someone really living up to the "real true people" part of right behind.

I thought it was established that The Event happen...

2007-11-16T14:21:00.119-08:00

I thought it was established that The Event happened at 1 or 2 in the morning, EST?

A very thoughtful look at some of the "less" affec...

2007-11-16T08:59:54.734-08:00

A very thoughtful look at some of the "less" affected sections of the United States (one of the only countries that seems to exist in the LBverse). What impact WOULD the Event have on devout Catholics, assuming they even exist here? Or would they be but unthinking recepients of Nicholas Mount St. Helen's scientific explaining away? What happens when these people find out Pope John-Paul-Tyler Tippicanoe has also disappeared?