May Novel Essential Information

Novel Title: Seeded

Time Setting: 2022

Genre: Life

Minimum Word Goal: 90,000

Timespan: July–August

Locations: Brooks, Duchess, & Rosemary, Alberta

Main Characters: Brandt Remington & Lark Stanek

Background Information: 

Born the only son and youngest of three children to his parents, who operated a dairy and grain farm east of Duchess, Alberta, which had been established by his great-great grandfather in the early 1900s, Brandt was immediately his father’s favourite child.

For several generations the firstborn child of each man of the Remington line had been a son, with Brandt’s father, grandfather, and great-grandfather not being exceptions in the least, thus Brandt’s father had been expecting to have a son as his first child, and had been disappointed when he and his wife had, instead, birthed two daughters first.

Worse yet, Brandt’s mother hadn’t wanted to have three children, so Brandt’s father had needed to cajole her into one more pregnancy, which became urgent to him when Brandt’s youngest paternal uncle and his wife announced they were expecting their first child, who would be the first cousin to Brandt’s sisters.

Thankfully — as far as his father was concerned — Brandt’s uncle and his wife had a daughter just a few months before Brandt was born, the first grandson to his grandparents, who agreed with his father that he would be the fifth generation owner and operator of the farm.

Since the farm was a long-established place, Brandt’s upbringing was better off than some of his peers, but that didn’t mean it was happy.

Brandt’s parents had been in conflict regularly about many things before Brandt was born, and their marriage didn’t improve after his birth; instead, when he was four years old his father put his mother out and invited a new woman — with whom he’d been having an affair — into the house, divorcing Brandt’s mother in short order.

His father meant to marry his new partner, who had to secure a divorce from her own husband as well, but she was killed in a car accident scant weeks before the wedding, which Brandt didn’t necessarily find sad for himself, even if she and his father hadn’t argued as much as his father and mother had, but it took a couple years before his father found a new partner, with whom he had two more children, a son and a daughter.

By the time his little half-brother was born, Brandt was ten, so he didn’t really bond with his younger brother, nor was he all that close with his older sisters, as his oldest sister was fifteen, which made her too old to associate with little boys — although she was nevertheless nice about it — while his other sister was ill-tempered and childish.

When their little half-sister was born, the younger of Brandt’s older sisters seemed out to harm the baby, prompting Brandt’s father to send her to live full-time with Brandt’s mother, who’d return to her family near Olds and was living with a man who taught at the local agricultural college after having moved around a fair bit.

With his oldest sister graduated and attending college by then, and his father’s new partner breaking up with him because of disagreements regarding having further children, Brandt and his father found themselves living in a rather large house all by themselves.

Even though Brandt never had to ask twice for something he wanted from his father, and had heard his father constantly proclaim his good qualities, Brandt had never really felt all that loved by his father for who he was as a person, but for what he represented, as he was a son who would take over the farm.

It wasn’t that Brandt wasn’t interested in the farm either, but it was actually the oldest of his father’s two younger brothers who’d instilled that love in him, as his father had been too busy managing the farm to truly show him things or explain how they worked.

His father did try to bond with Brandt in the time they lived in the house together, but Brandt never got the sense it was sincere, which was what he wanted more than anything.

Indeed, Brandt didn’t really feel loved by anyone, even his friends, many of whom he felt liked him only because he was the richest kid in the area — although he also got plenty of bullying for being the rich kid too — and his mother and her partner were just as insincere in their bonding efforts with him.

He did have one friend who genuinely cared about him, though. Brandon was from west of Duchess, nearly exactly halfway between Duchess and the nearby town of Rosemary, and was actually a churchgoing kid who was serious about Christianity, but never tried to force it on Brandt.

Instead, Brandon would simply not participate in certain events or activities because he didn’t believe they were right, and would sometimes give Brandt moral advice — whether Brandt asked for it or not — which led to Brandt giving Brandon the nickname Conscience.

Only Brandon knew that Brandt struggled with anything, as Brandt confided in Brandon about feeling lonely and loved more as a means to an end than as a unique human being with his own personality and character; to everyone else, Brandt was confident, arrogant, self-assured, and something of a bully, notwithstanding Brandon’s efforts to curtail Brandt’s vengeful acts against those who upset him.

When Brandt graduated from high school he followed in his father’s footsteps by going to the same agricultural college as his father — the one at Olds, which was how his parents had met — but he took different courses than his father had, and was fascinated by some of the alternative agricultural practises propounded by people there.

During his time at college, however, his father found a new girlfriend who was only a little older than Brandt’s oldest sister, and seemed to Brandt the personification of everything he disliked in women, as well as being massively ignorant about anything related to agriculture.

His father has been tying to get him to like her when he’s home for the summers, but Brandt has stubbornly resisted, as the only thing he might consider mildly likeable about her is the fact that she’s a fitness instructor, thus she has a very good-looking figure.

Now that Brandt has graduated from college with his degree, however, his father has told him that this girlfriend is going to be moving in with them, and the couple are already in discussions about building a house together to replace the house that Brandt’s grandparents had built for his parents when they’d gotten married.

Brandt isn’t necessarily against his childhood home being razed and replaced, but he has little confidence that he would possibly be inclined to like the planned house, even though he’s not yet seen any renderings of it.

Furthermore, their building a house together has Brandt suspecting that their relationship isn’t going to be over anytime soon, contrary to his hopes, with the worst part of it all being the fact that he’s going to have to stay living with them until whatever time he decides to get married, at which time his father has assured him he’ll get a custom-built house of his own.

So far Brandt hasn’t been able to stand one day under the same roof as his father’s girlfriend, leaving him confident that sharing a house with her is going to be the closest thing he has ever experienced to cruel and unusual punishment.

Born the youngest of three daughters to her parents, who operated a grain farm with a few beef and dairy cattle with her grandparents west of Rosemary, Lark was just three and a half years old when her mother was killed in a devastating car accident.

Her mother had been at fault for the accident because she didn’t like having to wait behind slow-moving farm equipment that couldn’t reach the posted speed limits because they weren’t manufactured to go that fast, and so had pulled out to pass without checking for oncoming traffic, thus the oncoming semi-tractor unit didn’t have time to slow down or take evasive action before obliterating her car almost beyond identification.

Lark and her sisters were thus raised by their father alone, as he didn’t have the heart to remarry, although her paternal grandparents, who still lived on the farm as well, were also active in her upbringing.

She and her sisters were loved dearly by their father, who did his best to make time for them in the midst of all the demands of the farm, which was helped by the fact that his parents were around to do some of the farm work when he wanted or needed to spend time with Lark and her sisters, whether they simply went out to ride on the horses, or went to the nearby lake, museums, or even, on occasion, more significant trips to Calgary.

When Lark was nearly thirteen her grandparents moved off the farm and her oldest uncle, who was a year younger than her father, and his family moved into the house her grandparents had vacated.

Her uncle and aunt had lived and farmed near Olds, where they’d met, with her aunt’s family until disagreements between her uncle and her aunt’s brother-in-law, who were running the farm together prompted her uncle to decide that he couldn’t keep being nice to his in-laws if he lived and worked so closely with them, thus they’d moved to Rosemary and made a short commute to the farm, but her grandparents arranged a house swap with them.

As a result, Lark had cousins to play with who were around her age, a couple of whom were boys, although the house swap didn’t mean she saw all that much less of her grandparents, as they were still at the farm many times a week just simply to hang out and help where they could, as they were too old to be involved full-time, but they were still young and vigorous enough to help out on occasion.

Lark’s father and uncle had always been close and worked well together, with her uncle growing the beef side of the farm, as he’d worked with beef with his wife’s family, while Lark’s father concentrated on the dairy part and they worked together on the grain that they both needed for the cattle.

Outside of the farm, the church was another important place in the life of Lark’s family. They attended church every Sunday, and participated in many church-run events as well. Lark’s oldest sister was most interested in being involved at church, while her middle sister was interested in singing and making music.

Being involved in helping others and music were both things Lark liked as well, but she also liked animals and nature, and thus was the one who had the closest relationship with the dogs and cats on the farm — whose deaths she mourned no matter their ages — as well as the horses kept for pleasure riding, the calves, and even the cows and bulls.

Lark was also interested in agriculture otherwise. Not necessarily the operation of the farm and all the legal and financial parts, but in the goal of feeding people the best-quality food possible, whether it was beef, milk, cheese, grain, or many more things, and to that end she enjoyed cooking, especially when she was cooking with food products grown on the farm, whether in the extensive garden her aunt and grandma planted every year, or the big fields full of crops, and even the meat of pasture-raised beef.

As she got older, however, Lark didn’t really know what she wanted to do in the future. Her oldest sister went to Bible school, where she met a young man who was training to become a pastor, and the two of them got married once they’d graduated, settling in Saskatchewan, where he’d gotten a job pastoring a church, while her middle sister went to a music school in Calgary and had plans once she graduated to settle in Strathmore where some of their paternal grandma’s family lived.

Even when Lark graduated she still couldn’t decide what she wanted to do, although the idea of becoming a veterinarian, which she had considered, had diminished, as even if she wasn’t so queasy as some at the sight of blood and wounds, she was pretty sure she still lacked the physical fortitude to see the worst of the worst, and she was too quick to cry when any animal died to be willing to euthanise any who needed it herself.

Her desire for farm management hadn’t grown either, she was content to let her uncle’s oldest son take over the farm instead, as he was more interested in those sorts of things, which left her somewhat adrift when it came to a plan for her future.

Thankfully she’s not twenty yet, so there is time for her to still decide what she wants to do with her life while still being young enough to not be looked at oddly if she were to go to college, but the fact that she’s lacking even for some ideas of what she might consider doing isn’t really giving her comfort that she’ll be able to come up with something before too long, which may not be a bad thing if whatever she wants to do doesn’t need a college degree, but she does feel like secondary education would help, and it’s not like she doesn’t have promises from her father and maternal grandfather of significant financial contributions to such an education either.

Pronunciation:

Brandt: brahnt