Sage Mullins: Blog

I sure dropped a cliffhanger on you at the end of Chapter 37, didn't I? :)

You won't have to wait much longer to find out what happens next, though. I have Chapter 38 in the queue to be posted on Monday.

I need to give a belated shout-out to a reader, Arch, for a very valuable suggestion. Believe it or not, Lightning in a Bottle, although it's the title of the story, was not my original choice for the name of the band in the current timeline. I had intended for it to be Activation Energy, again, just like it was in the other life.

The title "Lightning in a Bottle", of course, refers to the means by which Pat was sent back in time. I'm still a little surprised that it never occurred to me to give the band that moniker. It's just too appropriate. The suggestion came to me just in the nick of time, too; I think it was less than a week before I posted the chapter where the characters agreed on a name for the band. That's how close you came to having to read about Activation Energy 2.0. :)

Just a quick update on the progress of LIAB. Chapter 36 will be posted on Monday, 1/28. Chapter 37 is finished, and will probably go up about a week later. At the moment, I'm writing Chapter 38.

My goal is to maintain that schedule of putting up one new chapter a week, but I won't make any promises. I'll do the best I can. It depends on how well I can juggle writing with real life.

The recently posted Chapter 33 seemed to generate extreme reactions from those readers who were kind enough to offer feedback. They either loved it or hated it. The comments were nowhere near as overwhelmingly negative as the ones I got in response to Pat's dark period after his big blowup. But the negative remarks were every bit as vehement.

Many felt that Julia's dumping of Pat was unrealistically abrupt and out of character. I guess I can understand that, to a degree. There was one extenuating factor, though, that you don't yet know about. You'll find it out in the next chapter. Hint: I foreshadowed it when I first introduced Julia, way back in chapter 25. :)

Reading between the lines a little, I think there may be a worry out there that another dark period for Pat lies ahead. But you already have a clue about that. Look at Pat's reaction when Julia dropped the bomb on him. Did he blow up? No. In fact, his response was quite cool and measured. So, maybe there's hope for him yet. You'll have to wait till the next chapter goes up to find out how he reacted in the longer term.

I enjoyed writing that chapter; a lot of cool things happened. Inez's parents survived the accident this time. Pat made up with Evie. And Pat made a decision to tell his time-travel secrets to someone else.

Chapter 34 is in the queue to go up on Monday, 1/14. Chapter 35 is complete and ready to go, too; I have it scheduled to go up on Monday, 1/21. Right now, I'm putting the finishing touches on Chapter 36. You can see that my backlog is down to almost nothing, which explains why I'm taking longer and longer to post each new chapter.

Chapter 30 of LIAB is up. No, I didn't deliberately set out to put this chapter up two days before Christmas, but it just happened to work out that way. You'll see that a large part of this chapter deals with Christmas for Pat and friends.

I have Chapter 31 scheduled to go up on Friday, 12/28.

Happy Holidays to all!

The title says it all. Chapter 27 was just posted. Chapter 28 will go up on Monday 12/17, 29 on 12/20, and 30 on 12/23.

After that, I might have to cut back on the frequency of posting new chapters, because I can't come close to producing a new chapter every three days. So, we've almost reached that point I warned you about way back when.

So, where am I now with regard to writing? Chapter 33 is now finished and in the hands of my editors. I've begun to write chapter 34.