The Beam: Season Three (84 page)

(Fun side note: The first “Shit From Brains” I wrote under that title was for a book called
Dead City
. That book won’t come out until after this book and a few others, but I wrote the author’s note first. Anyway,
Dead City
is a zombie thriller — we think of it as
The Walking Dead
meets
All the President’s Men
— so the whole “brains” thing felt right on. But hey, look! It works for
The Beam
too.)

So, right. About the third season of
The Beam
.
 

You should be reading this after finishing the book, so I won’t be careful about spoilers. Let’s just come out and say it:
The Beam
is a complicated world. It was our job in this season to … well … not simplify it at all, but to at least tie up some of the mystery so readers weren’t being strung along forever. It’s been three full seasons now and we’ve given you a lot to wonder about, but three is a nice neat number and it made sense to both of us to sweep the floors a bit … giving some sense of closure (though God, not all of it by far) to this first threesome.
 

In Sean’s words, we wanted to “close ten boxes and open three new ones.” So we had some questions to answer.
 

Questions like, Who is SerenityBlue?

Where is Noah West, if he’s anywhere, and what’s become of him?

What
happened
to Noah?

And, what will happen at Shift?

So we tried to answer a lot of those questions for you, at least part way. This season we learned a lot. We learned about the truth behind Respero. We learned how Leo began the Organa movement and how his people got addicted. We saw what happened when they went fully off Lunis, and how Leo tried (he did try!) to solve the problem … by “fixing methadone withdrawal by going back to heroin.” And more and more and more.
 

And of course, we wanted to slash the Gordian knot. The Beam has sprawled, so some of these plot lines needed to be trimmed. We have so much we still want to explore (ramifications of Project Mindbender, anyone?) and characters we want to introduce, but we knew you’d get lost if we didn’t trim the tribe (and associated open storylines) first, while hopefully also giving you satisfying resolution to the first three seasons as a “quasi unit,” with many more seasons of this series to come. And what’s more, we wanted to do all of this in a way that hopefully felt harmonious. Meaning: we didn’t just want to slap answers onto these questions; we wanted to delve back through the first two seasons, find unanswered questions, and braid them all together.
 

For instance, we didn’t just want to figure out what the reappearance of Project Mindbender meant for our characters and the NAU. We wanted to answer that question by calling back to things you’ve seen before: Respero, the strangeness of The Beam once an adept dips below the surface, and the disturbances someone like Serenity sees … yet doesn’t understand herself.
 

We have big ideas for Season Four (due out in 2016 if you’re not reading this in 2017 or later … or, for that matter, in 2097), but I’d be lying if we knew more about Season Four now than we did going into Season Three. The truth of all our Realm & Sands stories is that we as authors learn about them right there in the pages, not do different from you.
 

Integer7’s real identity? Hell, we found that out ONE DAY before I wrote that scene. But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t always true. It IS always true.
Remember
, we’re not really creating these stories, so much as acting as their caretakers, here to find what we can and make it all coherent.

Sean and I hope you enjoyed this third season. We both agree it’s the single most complicated thing we’ve written to date — though we sure hope (and think) it’ll be sensible for you as the reader in the end. But it was really gratifying to pull a project like this off. Because shit, we had our doubts in the middle.
 

If you like what we do, you really have no excuse not to be on our mailing list. I know, I know:
mailing lists
. But that’s just like calling these end thingies “author’s notes.” Nobody’s excited about mailing lists, but ours is awesome. And I guess you can call it something cooler if you want.

If you join our list, you’ll get Invasion books 1+2 for FREE.
So that’s reason #1 right there to sign up: FREE MOTHERFUCKING BOOKS. But there’s another, and that’s deals on books, which are sometimes discounted at release, etc. Not enough for you? Okay, we do contests, too. We give stuff away. And if
that’s
not enough, we also write stunning and charming prose in our emails. All the cool kids are on the Realm & Sands email list. You know it’s true.
 

We also have a Facebook page. I’m kind of shit at updating it and Sean ignores it entirely because he’s a bastard, but I do sometimes post insightful stuff there, project updates, contests and giveaways, and other stuff that generally lets you waste your time or laugh. So definitely like our Facebook page too. That way you’ll be in the know and we can all be friendly and stuff. You can do that here:

http://facebook.com/realmandsands/

As far as the sequel to this book? Well, like I said, that’s a 2016 project,
maaaybe
squeaking into 2017 depending on how things go. If you can’t wait that long, go to your favorite bookseller and search for either one of our names. We have approximately one thousand books each (slight exaggeration) across many genres, and you’re sure to find something that tickles your fancy.
 

(You know another way to know for sure when the fourth season of The Beam comes out, by the way? THAT’S RIGHT; JOIN OUR MAILING LIST. Told you that was a good idea. :) )

You can do that here:

http://sterlingandstone.net/rsfb/

Thanks for reading!

Johnny (and Sean)

September 2015

Learn the Story Behind the Beam

Want to know how this book was written?
Back Story
is our podcast where we talk about the creation and writing of all our books. Follow the link below to hear how we took
The Beam: The Complete Third Season
from concept to completed work. It’s like DVD extras, but for books.

SterlingAndStone.net/podcast/beam-season-3-extras/

THANKS FOR READING

Did you enjoy reading The Beam? Indie authors survive by the strength of their reviews. If you enjoyed The Beam, please leave a review where you got this book and let us and other readers know!
 

THANK YOU!

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Johnny B. Truant
is an author, blogger, and podcaster who, like the Ramones, was long denied induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame despite having a large cult following. He makes his online home at
JohnnyBTruant.com
and is the author of the
Fat Vampire
series and many, many other books.

You can connect with Johnny on Twitter at
@JohnnyBTruant
, and you should totally send him an email at
[email protected]
if the mood strikes you.
 

Sean Platt
is speaker, author, and co-founder of the
Collective Inkwell
, home to breakout indie hits like
Yesterday’s Gone
,
WhiteSpace
, and the traditionally published titles,
 
Z 2134
and
Monstrous
co-authored with David W. Wright. Sean is also co-founder of genre hopping, reader loved Realm & Sands, with the spiritual epic
Unicorn Western
, future history of
The Beam
, and the revenge thriller,
Namaste
.
 

You can find Sean at
SeanMPlatt.Com
, Follow him on Twitter at
@SeanPlatt
, or email him at
[email protected]
.
 

Johnny and Sean, along with David Wright (the guy whose curmudgeony stance on western research inspired the Unicorn Western series) host two podcasts: the horror/comedy show
Better Off Undead
and the
Self Publishing Podcast
. Both podcasts are available on iTunes and the other podcast directories, as well as on Stitcher Radio, and both are for mature audiences only.