THE EGG DANCE - DJay (Lindsay's arpeggio)
In 2011, in the middle of writing Jordan Eats, I made a spin-off (born of a yearning to Tell a Story) where teen Jordan blogged as the Rapture happened. He already had a blog, of course, and he used the blog format to speak of happenings in rather general terms-- he only updates a blog when he sits down by the computer-- whereas this new story called for a more microscopic focus. So I gave Jordan a journal to carry in his hands, allowing him to write more often, about more things. And for the question of how to convince our teenage blunderbuss to frantically write as much as possible, what better cause than Harold Camping's "Rapture will come on May 21st?" The day came. And our fictional world had something happen, alright.
This started as a Facebook Note, a loose self-expression to show my old friends. Positive feedback encouraged me to keep it going, and I found I could do something with that apocalyptic setting. Friend Danny then informed me that Harold Camping had changed his tune, saying "yes, nothing happened on May 21st, but that's only because that's when the Rapture started. It will truly arrive on October 21st." This gave me a clear scope, an end-goal. This turned my story into something that promised to be Long.
Long, it was. OH GOD THE RAPTURE IS BURNING quickly outgrew its "spin-off" origin and became my longest and primary story. I finished the first draft in 2013, arriving at the climactic October 21 entry. I started what was to be a sequel (A Book of Names, more focused on traditional prose as other characters explore the world post-apocalypse-- mainly discovering the mechanics of the Gods), and that continued loosely for some years, but in 2016 I decided to consolidate these pieces into the original itself to make one Even Longer work, and so I began self-publishing the final draft of Rapture as physical books on Amazon. Book 1 (lovingly called "Disc 1") released in August '16. Book 2 has been under works, mainly on the backburner, for several years since then. I might be able to release it this year, 2023.
I'm still.. talking around Rapture, aren't I? It is a monster, it is Internet Lit, it traces the boundaries of genre and sensibility to find out what is actually a Limit and what is just an Assumption. It is hard for me to not be defensive about the story's limits, and it is equally hard for me not to boast about its heights. Instead, for now I'll just work at this webpage until I have something that feels right as a central Landing Page for all things Rapture.
OH GOD THE RAPTURE IS BURNING
Disc 1: The Cockroach Metamorphosis
Disc 1 takes place from May 21st at midnight all the way through September 15th. We follow Jordan northward through England (then southward over to Spain through France, then all the way back again), then survive with him a trip westward-- across the Atlantic Ocean on a strange little boat ride-- into America, where, yep, we still go westward allll the way to San Francisco. And then begin a fragmented trip back east, ending up-- somehow-- in Cairo by way-- somehow-- of Australia. He joins with friends new and old, very few of whom he has met in person before, and it doesn't take long before he has the attention of the horror gods. There's a whole cast of them, and they're only minor antagonists really. Some of them are even protagonists. Not because all the gods are friends with the author, but because I'm making controversial statements about humanity: we're not actually that repulsive, we are capable of receiving help from cool monsters.
The winding road across Earth, see, is in pursuit of answers about the red-sky apocalypse. A man-sized cockroach with White Jesus's head is going around saying "Rapture is coming," but what is Rapture? What is the nature of this world-changing chaos? And Jordan ain't accepting any of your cynical "it's meaningless, there are no answers, we are born to die" nonsense, he was 12 once too and actually grew up past that ideology. There are answers. There are always answers. There are the four Rakes, then there's the seven Ciphers, and then come the seven Knights...
Then Disc 1 ends, because Amazon only lets me print so many pages in a book.
Disc 2: PUT THE SUN DOWN
Disc 2 is a journey where the characters now know how to teleport. Like the latter half of Earthbound. Their path zips and zags in dots and lines across the Earth desperately searching for last-ditch measures to rally against the terminal coming of Rapture. Because by now, they know what Rapture is. They find out at the end of Disc 1, it's a whole thing. I won't spoil it here. But it's, uh, a big deal, and it has to be stoppable. But in the meantime, they still have to deal with some of the edgier horror gods... like the Beast, who's just come home from several months of being digested by the god of gods, and he is pissed!
Alright I'm bored now.
Final Rapture
After the Rapture, a Nobody going by the name of Jordan keeps a journal as arrives a new apocalypse. I've been writing this one for the internet, making mediocre art to illustrate it, and it's... on hiatus right now, very early on, until I've got the Book ready. The contents of Final Rapture will not be in The Book. Unless I decide to make a third book. But if I do, it won't be a Disc, it will just be called Final Rapture.