I was sitting at my desk the other night trying to think of things I could use as subject matter for my blog entries here. In the last few weeks I’ve considered things like science, science fiction and commercial advances, etc. That was what the flying car article was about. But that night, in my easy chair, I settled on something that I figured would be a blast for me to write and hopefully as much fun for the reader to read.

In Time Vandal 1 (my pet name for the book First Epiphany of the Time Vandal) I went into detail about a few of the historical events Dr. Snow visited and his interactions there. But there were many I only mentioned in passing, in sort of a summation at the end.

One example of this would be the Battle of Austerlitz, where Napoleon defeated the combined armies of Russia and Austria outside of what today is the city of Brno, Czech Republic. This battle has always intrigued me, and I’ve read voraciously on the subject over the years.

Living in Prague, I’ve even managed to take a visit to the site and stand at the very spot where Napoleons’s command tent stood, the spot where Bonaparte looked out over the rolling fields and concocted his battle strategy.

So I thought to myself, why not expand on that one line in the book as a subject for one of my posts?  Why not publish a series of short stories detailing the travels of Dr. Snow as they happened in Time Vandal 1‘s timeline?

I immediately saw the pro’s and the con’s of such an endeavor.

On the pro side, I get to add a few facts to the canon (heh) and maybe get a chance to set up some more storylines for Time Vandal 2 (as yet untitled…who knows, maybe it’ll be named Time Vandal 2?  nahhh).  I get to have a little fun while simultaneously deepening some of the characters that the readers got acquainted with in the earlier book.  And I get articles for my site, which I won’t let you folks read unless you register and log in.

On the con side, I will have to be very careful to not tip my hand on the plot of the second book.  This might be harder than it sounds, as I am absolutely ITCHING to spill the beans on what Dr. Snow, Fuzzy.  and Mole get up to in the sequel.

Oops, did I just say Mole?  Dangit!

See, I’m already slinging spoilers.

Anyway, the stories are there, just waiting to be told.  Why not tell them?  So that’s what I’m going to do.

My next blog post will be a short story detailing one of the Time Vandal Visits from book one.  (I’ve even created a hashtag, of all things, for my tweets on the matter.  #timevandalvisits.)  Will it be Austerlitz?  The eruption of Vesuvius?  The defeat of the Spanish Armada?  To be honest, I haven’t a clue yet.