An Author’s Guide to Simultaneously Reading BYSTANDER and UPSTANDER

After writing Upstander, a stand-alone prequel/sequel to Bystander, I had a vision. Wouldn’t it be cool, I thought, if my publisher printed them up as one book? Kind of shuffled them together into one big fat novel.

Would it even work?

I thought to myself, yeah, it just might. Both are in 3rd person, and the shifting perspectives should be familiar to any experienced reader.

But why wait on the vagaries of publishing? They’ll never do it anyway. But we can. Here’s one method for reading the books simultaneously (not that you have to). There’s some scene overlap, from different perspectives, which might be interesting or redundant, I don’t know.

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So if you are nutty enough to do this — and I hope that some of you are — here’s how I think it could work. Please let me know, Dear Nutty Reader, if you do it. Both books are also available on Audible, for you reading-with-my-ears people.

 

THE SIMULTANEOUS APPROACH

To Reading These Two Books Together

Upstander: Chapters 1-20

Bystander: Chapters 1-2

Upstander: 21

Bystander: 3-4

Upstander: 22-24

Bystander: 5-6

Upstander: 25

Bystander: 7-11

Upstander: 26-27

Bystander: 12-15

Upstander: 29-30

Bystander: 16

Upstander: 31

Bystander: 17-20

Upstander: 32

Bystander: 21

Upstander: 33

Bystander: 22

Upstander: 34

Bystander: 23-24

Upstander: 35-36

Bystander: 25-32

Upstander: 37

Bystander: 33-34

Upstander: 38

 

THE END!

 

Do you think there should be a 3rd book that focuses on Griffin? I guess that depends on if anyone reads Upstander. I promise it won’t take me 10 more years to write. 

Visual learners might be impressed by my fancy chart. I paid a design company 500 balloons for this bad boy. Worth it, right?

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