I write this on the eve of submitting the final chapter of LIMITS to the editors. It has been a two-year-long journey and I wanted to reach out to the folks who stuck with me.
I know I lost readers along the way by the sheer number of characters who came and went. Some of the feedback I have received addressed this very thing. It was one reason I was motivated to write the third "book" of this story, CHAOS.
When I first starting filing chapters, I indicated that the story was finished. I thought it was. I had written the first two "books" and chapter 45 and thought they told the tale. But then I thought about how it seemed so simplistic that nothing happened beyond the control of my teenage protagonists. The stories starting coming to me in random order. It took as long to sequence the events correctly as it did to write the CHAOS chapters.
Since there was suddenly much more story to edit, I decided to go back and re-read Books 1 and 2. I was able to straighten out the names, clean up the discrepencies, changed one character in a big way (Marie) and eliminate two altogether (Meredith's father and second sister).
One disappointment was that one of my CHAOS chapters was rejected by the editors due to the age considerations of the site. I respect that, but it was a chapter not out of line with the story and one that I have found myself expanding. If any of you out there want to read the "lost" chapter, e-mail me -- but be warned that it "went young".
There might be a couple of stories left to tell moving forward -- I particularly like the backstory I have for Neely and I have a cousin of Meredith who (you'd learn) introduced her to self-gratification. And of course there's Kaitlyn Dove, Tanner and who knows who else.
But the odds are pretty good I've finished with these characters. I have another, non-fiction book to write under my real name that I have put off in order to finish this vanity project. I had to get this out of my head. So I put it in yours. Seems fair.
Rainmaker 5/26/12