Yesterdays Gone: SEASON TWO (THE POST-APOCALYPTIC SERIAL THRILLER) (Yesterday's Gone)
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Contents
YESTERDAY'S GONE: SEASON TWO
::EPISODE 7::
DEDICATION
AUTHOR’S NOTE
MARY OLSON PART 1
BRENT FOSTER PART 1
CHARLIE WILKENS
RYAN OLSON PART 1
LUCA HARDING PART 1
BORICIO WOLFE
RYAN OLSON PART 2
DESMOND ARMSTRONG
LUCA HARDING PART 2
BRENT FOSTER PART 2
CONVERSATION WITH THE AUTHORS
::EPISODE 8::
PROLOGUE
BRENT FOSTER: PART 1
RYAN OLSON: PART 1
MARY OLSON: PART 1
PAOLA OLSON
BORICIO WOLFE
DESMOND ARMSTRONG: PART 1
RYAN OLSON: PART 2
BRENT FOSTER: PART 2
::EPISODE 9::
REBECCA SNOW: PART 1
DESMOND ARMSTRONG: PART 1
EDWARD KEENAN: PART 1
RYAN OLSON: PART 1
CHARLIE WILKENS: PART 1
MARY OLSON: PART 1
DESMOND ARMSTRONG: Part 2
REBECCA SNOW: PART 2
DESMOND ARMSTRONG: PART 3
BRENT FOSTER: PART 2
REBECCA SNOW: PART 3
CHARLIE WILKENS: PART 2
RYAN OLSON: PART 2
::EPISODE 10::
CALLIE THOMPSON: PART 1
CHARLIE WILKENS: PART 1
MARY OLSON: PART 1
EDWARD KEENAN: PART 1
LUCA HARDING: PART 1
BORICIO WOLFE: PART 1
CHARLIE WILKENS: PART 2
EDWARD KEENAN: PART 2
MARY OLSON: PART 2
LUCA HARDING: PART 2
BORICIO WOLFE: PART 2
::EPISODE 11::
“JOHN”
WILL BISHOP: PART 1
WILL BISHOP: PART 2
CHARLIE WILKENS: PART 1
DESMOND ARMSTRONG: PART 1
WILL BISHOP: PART 3
LUCA HARDING: PART 1
CHARLIE WILKENS: PART 2
DESMOND ARMSTRONG: PART 2
BORICIO WOLFE: PART 1
WILL BISHOP: PART 4
::EPISODE 12::
BORICIO WOLFE: PART 1
LUCA HARDING: PART 1
LUCA HARDING: PART 2
RYAN OLSON: PART 1
MARY OLSON: PART 1
DESMOND ARMSTRONG: PART 1
BRENT FOSTER: PART 1
BORICIO WOLFE: PART 2
DESMOND ARMSTRONG: PART 2
MARY OLSON: PART 2
LUCA HARDING: PART 3
RYAN OLSON: PART 2
"JOHN"
DESMOND ARMSTRONG: PART 3
BRENT FOSTER: PART 2
LUCA HARDING: PART 4
DESMOND ARMSTRONG: PART 5
LUCA HARDING: PART 5
WILL BISHOP
THE MOST IMPORTANT THING YOU CAN DO…
JOIN THE GONERS
POST-SEASON INTERVIEW WITH THE AUTHORS
FORNEVERMORE - THE FIRST CHAPTER
SEE HOW IT ALL BEGAN
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
AVAILABLE DARKNESS
DARK CROSSINGS: Short stories. Killer Endings.
YESTERDAY’S GONE
SEASON TWO
(EPISODES 7-12)
Copyright © 2012 by Sean Platt & David Wright. All rights reserved
Cover copyright © 2012 by David W. Wright
Edited by Matt Gartland at Winning Edits.
http://winningedits.com/
This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, businesses, events, or locales is purely coincidental. The authors have taken great liberties with locales including the creation of fictional towns.
Reproduction in whole or part of this publication without express written consent is strictly prohibited.
The authors greatly appreciate you taking the time to read our work. Please consider leaving a review wherever you bought the book, or telling your friends or blog readers about Yesterday’s Gone, to help us spread the word.
Thank you for supporting our work.
Visit: http://SerializedFiction.com
eBook Edition - February 21, 2012
REVISED: March 25, 2012 to fix typos including instances of incorrect capitalized “Rs”
Layout and design by Collective Inkwell
CollectiveInkwell.Com
Published by Collective Inkwell
Printed in the United States of America.
* * * *
YESTERDAY’S GONE
EPISODE 7
(FIRST EPISODE OF SEASON TWO)
“SANCTUARY”
Copyright © 2012 by Sean Platt & David Wright. All rights reserved
Cover copyright © 2012 by David W. Wright
Edited by Matt Gartland at Winning Edits.
http://winningedits.com/
This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, businesses, events, or locales is purely coincidental. The authors have taken great liberties with locales including the creation of fictional towns.
Reproduction in whole or part of this publication without express written consent is strictly prohibited.
The authors greatly appreciate you taking the time to read our work. Please consider leaving a review wherever you bought the book, or telling your friends or blog readers about Yesterday’s Gone, to help us spread the word.
Thank you for supporting our work.
Visit: http://SerializedFiction.com
eBook Edition - January 9, 2012
REVISED: March 25, 2012 to fix typos including instances of incorrect capitalized “Rs”
Layout and design by Collective Inkwell
CollectiveInkwell.Com
Published by Collective Inkwell
Printed in the United States of America.
* * * *
Dedication
To YOU, the reader.
Thank you for taking a chance on us.
Thank you for your support.
Thank you for the emails.
Thank you for the reviews.
Thank you for reading and joining us on this road.
* * * *
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Dear Reader,
Welcome back!
I’ve gotta admit, I was afraid this serialized fiction experiment wouldn’t work.
I’d read countless people posting stuff on the web how serialized fiction wouldn’t sell, people don’t want their books in chunks, and there’s just no market for it. And as we pushed the publish button on Season One, I was afraid they might be right. That nobody would read our book.
Thank God I was wrong. Actually, Thank You, for proving me wrong.
That’ll teach me to put faith in what people predict on the internet!
Yesterday’s Gone was a huge success for us!
We had the Number One Free Horror eBook for the first week of November with Episode One, and sales of Season One are still going strong. And most importantly, reader response has been great! People are digging the story and the format. Which is cool, because we’ve got more serialized stories to tell!
SEASON TWO
We’re kicking off this season with Yesterday’s Gone: Episode Seven.
Season Two will consist of Episodes 7 − 13, with a new episode every Tuesday starting on January 10, 2012. After Episode Thirteen, we’ll do another compilation, offering Season Two as one eBook, just as we
did with Season One, for those who prefer to buy the story in one download.
LEARNING THE ROPES
If last season was an experiment, we took careful notes and hope to make this season even better.
We learned a few lessons last time around, which I’ll share here in case you like peeking behind the curtain (you pervert!)
The first thing we learned is that people don’t like to wait a whole month between episodes. I should’ve considered that before we launched Episode One last summer. People don’t want to wait, as evidenced by early reviews, and it was one of our only early criticisms.
So this time we’re going to go with a weekly release schedule, so you don’t have to wait nearly as long.
Then there’s the issue of pricing episodes.
Originally, we released single episodes at .99, far too low for us to make a profit unless we sold a bunch! Amazon’s pricing works as such — if you sell your books below $2.99, you only get a 35 percent cut of the sales. So books at one dollar work out to about .35 per book . . . split between Sean and I. You can’t survive very long as a writer on that kind of money. We would have to raise prices.
We were hesitant to sell the single episodes at the $2.99 necessary to get a 70 percent cut, though, because we didn’t want to charge almost $18 to experience the book.
We were in sort of a catch-22. We want people to experience the book as it’s meant, episodically. However, we’d be unable to pay our bills doing that. And we need to keep the lights on in order to write more. So we had to come up with a compromise.
And this is it what we came up with:
Episodes are .99 UNTIL we come out with the compilation of all the Season Two episodes in one book. That way, if you want to experience the book episode-by-episode, you can do so during its six-week run for just .99 per episode.
After that, we’re raising the single episode prices to $2.99. This rewards you, the regular reader and early adopter who ran out and got the book right away, without penalizing anyone else, as you can still buy the full Season Two compilation on the cheap, without having to fork over $18 for the whole season.
It’s all about choice, and we believe in giving you a choice in how you want to experience Yesterday’s Gone.
THE CHALLENGE OF COMING BACK
Aside from the logistics of selling books, we also had to think of a way to approach the Season Two opener. Do we pick up right after events of the cliffhangers? Doing that would mean dragging out parts of the story that we wanted to move from point A to point B. We also wanted to open with a cool scene that puts you right into the action.
Season Two picks up five months after the events of Season One.
Things have changed, and part of the fun (I think) is the mystery of what has happened in the months after the cliffhangers. Writing it this way ratcheted up the suspense in a way that wouldn’t of been possible had we simply picked up from the second we left off.
Additionally, it allows us to move the story along so we can deliver answers sooner. Because something else we learned last season is that YOU HAVE QUESTIONS!
“WHAT THE HELL IS HAPPENING?”
Nothing was more fun than opening my email over the past few months from readers asking, “What the hell is happening?” or some variation of that question. Some have made guesses as to what happened, but nobody’s come close to the truth yet.
There were a few critics that took issue with the lack of answers in Season One, though I think most people understood that this is similar to a TV series, and we want to let the mystery play out slowly. One of my favorite TV shows, HBO’s Carnivale, unrolled at such a leisurely pace, it felt like The Best Book Ever! Even though the show failed to find an audience, I believe it did pacing right, keeping the mystery alive and introducing new ones as the story unfolded. As I watched it, I felt like I was in the hands of master storytellers. While we’re not masters (yet), we aim for the same sort of magical experience with Yesterday’s Gone.
This season, though, you’re going to get answers. And more importantly, you’ll have a clearer understanding of exactly what’s at stake as the survivors are forced to choose sides.
THANK YOU
Lastly, we’d like to thank you for reading Yesterday’s Gone.
We’re thrilled that you have taken a chance on the books and the serialized format! That you’re reading this far means the world to us. We appreciate your investment of your most valuable possession — time. And we promise to never take that for granted.
So thank you for coming back. Though the first season only ended in November, I couldn’t wait to return to the world of Brent, Boricio, Mary, Charlie, and Luca, and explore the shadows with you, Dear Reader.
Thank you for making this dream come true. Thank you for the kind words. Thank you for the reviews.
Thank you for reading.
David Wright
& Sean Platt
P.S. There’s a special Conversation With The Authors at the end of this book, where you can read a conversation between Sean and I based on reader questions.
P.P.S. If you know someone who would enjoy this book, please tell them about Yesterday’s Gone, or buy them a copy. Whatever you can do to help spread the world helps us to keep writing for you. NOTHING helps spread the word better than reviews wherever you bought the book. If you enjoyed this book, please consider leaving a review today.
* * * *
MARY OLSON: 1
Billings, Alabama
March 20
Mary woke up sticky. Another dream about Ryan.
Though he was little more than an echo of the past during her waking hours, there wasn’t a thing Mary could do to keep him from haunting her sleeping ones. Odd how the past forgot its place in dreams, where old friends, lovers, and ex-husbands held court on equal footing with the present.
A flash of sudden sorrow, then a current of guilt flooded Mary’s guts. She turned over, adjusting her eyes to the early morning that spilled through the thin opening in the thick dark curtains. A shaft of light fell on what she assumed to be Desmond’s sleeping form, but when her eyes met his, she saw that he was wide awake. Watching her again.
“Morning, sleepyhead,” he said.
“What time is it?”
Desmond turned and picked up his watch from the nightstand. “Quarter after six.”
“You realize we don’t actually have to rise before the roosters anymore, right?”
“Old habits,” he said, “Besides, when else can I get a peep show?”
“I can’t imagine there’s anything interesting about watching a log.”
“You have no imagination,” he smiled. “Or any idea how dirty I can make mine.”
Mary blushed, like she did several times a day beneath the glow of Desmond’s compliments, though he didn’t usually start so early.
She had no idea what the last five months would have been like without him. Desmond was a godsend – smart and a natural leader — but more than that; he had a way of untangling the knots of their hardships, no matter how thick the gnarls. Without Desmond, they never would have left the Drury alive and never would have found sanctuary in their new Alabama home.
“You’re doing it again.” Desmond rubbed his hand on the ball of her knee.
“Sorry,” she met his eyes, “I was just thinking about the last few months.”
Mary was getting lost in thought a lot more often lately. Too often. She’d been known to go deep, and had her whole life. It’s what made her a good, if not great, artist. She had a way of pulling whimsy from nowhere, then displaying it in a way no one had ever seen before. But that took time and space. And now, with all the time and space in the world, it seemed as if Mary’s mind was always being pulled off to plunge deeper into her thoughts – deep enough to drown the outside world. Desmond said she could stare into the nothing for hours if he let her. If Mary didn’t trust him as much as she did, she’d swear he was lying. It never felt like more than a few minutes. She would simply start thin
king about something trivial, until her mind started chasing memories down the rabbit hole, taking her in different directions each time: worrying about Paola, conflicting thoughts about Desmond, odd ideas about Luca and Will and everyone they’d met in Alabama. These thoughts had less shape and left her far from understanding, especially the thoughts about Will.
John was there sometimes, too. Like a shadow.
“What about the last three months?” Desmond kept rubbing Mary’s knee, his fingers drifting higher.
“Everything,” she said, “and all at once. But most of all I guess I’m wondering if it’s really over. Is this it? Is this our life now now? Is this what it’s going to be like forever?”
“Maybe,” Desmond smiled. “But it’s not so bad, right? I’ll never have to go to another boring cocktail party. You’ll never have to worry about shipping in time for the holiday rush. And it looks like the universe finally took care of Facebook once and for all.”
Desmond’s hand had crawled all the way up Mary’s inner thigh, his fingers grazing the edge of her gummy middle. Desmond smiled again, this time more like a wolf.
“Jesus,” Mary said. “You’re like a teenager. Wasn’t last night enough?”
“You have something better to do?” He rolled on top of her. Her knees lifted in the air as she pulled her legs back toward the bed.
“Never,” she said.
His teeth touched the edge of her ear. Mary moaned slightly, then whispered, “You don’t need to warm me up, Tiger. Just go.”