Sage Mullins: Blog

The next chapter of LiaB is coming, but this one is taking me a little longer than usual. Obviously, 68 is a very special chapter, and I want to make sure I get it just right. One bonus is that it's shaping up to be a very long one.

With a little luck, it should be up within a week.

I have several orders of business to mention. First off, Chapter 67 of LiaB is complete, and will be posted shortly, as soon as it comes back from my editor.

Just a heads-up here. I mentioned earlier that I'd reach a point in the story where I would begin to move through time at a greatly increased rate. We're almost there; I plan to do just that after chapter 68. You'll see that it's a perfectly logical place to hit the fast-forward button. To give a feel for what will happen, I expect to be saying goodbye to the 1980's at the end of chapter 69. The final number of chapters in the story should come in at around 80, give or take a couple, plus an epilogue. So there's lots of story left, and fret not, some interesting times still lie ahead for Pat and the crew.

With Pat, Inez and the other characters having reached full adulthood, I'm finding myself in a situation where I'll need to write about subject matters that I'm not too familiar with. I'll do what other authors have done in this situation: reach out to you, the readers, to give me some guidance here.

Question #1: Is there anyone out there familiar with the process and challenges of becoming a PhD-level psychologist? What are the academic and residency requirements, and what is the time frame? (Yes, it's pretty obvious which character this pertains to.)

Question #2: Is anyone familiar with the television/media industry? What is a typical career path leading to a position as an on-air reporter? (Pretty obvious who I'm talking about here, as well.)

Thanks in advance for your help, and I'll probably be asking more questions like this in the not too distant future.

Finally, I want to do something I probably should have done a while ago: publicly acknowledge a few individuals who have contributed invaluable assistance, and without whose input I would never have been able to craft a story of this length. As I mentioned in LiaB's prologue, I wrote chapters 1 through 5 way back in 2007. Although I didn't post any part of the story back then, I did enlist the help of editors at that point. Tendertouch and Bandit IRA, both of whom have stories posted on SOL, provided vital editing assistance for those early chapters, helping to get the story off to a good start.

I began to write chapter 6 in June 2012, and started posting chapters in October of that year. From that point on, Seattle22 has served as primary editor. Even though he's told me on more than one occasion that I don't give him nearly enough work to do (LOL), his assistance is greatly appreciated. He unfailingly gets the chapters back to me well-edited and in a timely fashion, which has allowed me to maintain a consistent posting schedule. He even managed to stay on course during the Seahawks' recent run through the NFL playoffs.

LastCallAgain has also provided some top-notch editing assistance on a periodic basis. There was another editor who helped me out earlier in the story, but I fell out of touch with him around chapter 33. Unfortunately, I never knew his site username, so I can't acknowledge him publicly. If he's still out there and reads this, drop me a line and I'll add you to this post.

And last but not least, I would be remiss if I didn't give a special nod to mcguy101, who has served as a constant behind-the-scenes collaborator going back to about Chapter 28. As the story has progressed, he has gotten to know the LiaB characters almost better than I know them myself. There are many individual scenes in the story, too numerous to mention, that have originated from his suggestions. Those scenes were refined and enhanced through a constant exchange of emails, and it's safe to say that LiaB would be much the poorer without mcguy101's help. If you get a chance, check out his latest serial, "Mike and Malok"; it's an excellent read.

As always, thanks for reading!

This will be a rather long entry, as I have several things to mention.

As I predicted earlier, real life has indeed intervened and kept me from writing as much as I'd like. However, over the past three or four days, I've been able to jump headlong into chapter 65 of LiaB, and I've taken a good chunk out of it. With a little luck, I hope to have the chapter posted sometime next week. I'm likely to remain busy for the remainder of January, so don't expect too much just yet. I should be back up to speed (writing-wise) in three or four weeks.

One thing I've noticed when writing a story of this length is how important -- and challenging -- it is to remain focused. Here's an example of what I'm talking about. If you track the dates on which I've posted each chapter of LiaB, you'll notice that I've maintained a pretty steady rate throughout, with the exception of a noticeable slowdown that lasted from mid-April through July of last year. During that period, I decided to jump ahead in the story and work on the section that would become chapters 61, 62 and 63 -- the "Victor section." That section crystallized from a series of emails with a behind-the-scenes collaborator (to whom I am eternally grateful), and before too long, I felt compelled to jump ahead and actually write that section, while at the same time putting on hold the posting of new chapters. The interesting question is: as an author, should you follow strong creative urges like this, and strike while the iron is hot? That's what I did, and the thing is, when the scene was finished, I had a devil of a time finding the motivation to jump back to the "active" point in the story. I wanted to keep writing the newer material. It actually took me a couple of weeks to get back in the mood, but eventually I went back and started to fill in the gap (it was about 12 chapters at the time) until I finally hooked up with the newer material. On the whole, I'm happy that I did that ... I'm very pleased with the way that Victor storyline turned out.

Why am I mentioning this now? Because over the holidays, real life caused me to go nearly two weeks with no time to work on LiaB. However, during quiet moments, my creative writing mind was still at work. Strangely enough, the ideas for not one but two new stories dawned on me during that time. In the first few days of January, I felt an urge to write the beginnings of both stories. After writing an entire prologue of one story, and about half of chapter 1 in the other -- striking while the iron was hot, in a sense -- I stopped myself. It was time to re-establish my priorities.

Yes, fans of LiaB -- fear not. I've re-focused on LiaB, and put the other two stories on the back burner where they belong. LiaB is a very special story for me, and bringing it to a conclusion which does it justice (i.e. not a "rush to completion" job) is first and foremost in my mind. I do have the remainder of the story mapped out mentally, and though we're about to enter the homestretch, there's still a ways to go yet.

Of course, this also means that when LiaB is finished, I have a couple of other things in the works, and will be able to jump into them quickly.

On another note, I've noticed that some other authors occasionally solicit feedback from readers who might have relevant expertise in certain fields. With the LiaB characters moving into their adult lives, I'm about to encounter situations where I'll have to write about subject areas where I have limited knowledge. Therefore, it's very likely that I'll be soliciting help of this nature in the very near future.

Finally, I have a confession to make, and with it, I'll give you a little teaser. :) It's been assumed by most of you that I'm a new author, and that LiaB is my first attempt at erotic writing. That's not entirely true -- it's actually my second attempt. I do have another story, a fairly long one that's been incomplete and inactive for a while, up on SOL under another pen name. I'm not going to reveal which story it is (at this time), but I will tell you this. I intend to give three or four characters from that story brief cameos in LiaB. Let me say this -- it hasn't happened yet, and it definitely won't happen until after chapter 70. But let's see if anyone out there is sharp-eyed enough to catch it. :)

Chapters 61 through 63 of LiaB, as I knew they would, generated quite a strong response from you, the readers. Certainly, there's nothing like a little conflict to liven up a story. It was more than that, however.

The aim of that Victor sequence was simply to create a challenge for Pat and Inez. Up to that point, their relationship had been smooth sailing, although they had faced a few external challenges. As Narrator Pat told you, it was kind of a "perfect storm" situation. Put another way, it was rather contrived. But this is fiction, after all, where "contrived" is often a normal state of affairs.

All of the characters in this story have flaws. The Inez in the current timeline is beautiful, intelligent and sweet ... BUT she is also very insecure, way too trusting, and is loyal to a fault to her family members. You might expect that those qualities caused the Inez in the other timeline to self-destruct. Pat, meanwhile, tends to dwell so much on minutiae that he ignores the big picture. (That, of course, is the main reason why many of you readers find him so frustrating.) And along comes Victor, who is both smart enough to figure out the weak points of both of them, and ruthless enough to take full advantage of them.

It's important to note that Pat and Inez's relationship was never in danger. I might have given that impression when I dropped that big cliff-hanger on you at the end of chapter 62, with Pat's explosion. (I admit it: I have a thing for cliff-hangers.) However, I was quite happy to see that the reaction to chapter 63 was every bit as positive as the reaction to chapter 62 was negative.

On another note, I posted not too long ago that I planned to take a six-week hiatus from writing at the end of the year. I'll now back off from that, but only by a minute amount. What I'm trying to say is that if indeed there are any updates to LiaB over the next six to eight weeks, they'll be few and far between. I can't promise anything. In early February, I expect to resume posting new chapters at the same pace I've (more or less) maintained up till now. The story has roughly 20 chapters to go, so we're about to enter the homestretch.

Happy Holidays!

With chapter 60 having been posted, I've now reached the point in the story I mentioned earlier. Not the fast-forward point - that's still several chapters away. I'm talking about the point where I have pre-written chapters available and ready to go. It's challenging to segue smoothly into material you've written ahead of time; hopefully, I pulled it off.

Here's a very rough posting schedule. Look for chapter 61 over the weekend. 62 should go up around the middle of next week, and you'll hopefully have 63 the following weekend.

Looking past chapter 63, I'll surely revert back to the pace I've maintained for the past few months - a chapter every week or 10 days. I do have one heads-up, though. I'll very likely be taking a break from writing of about six weeks in duration, from Christmas through the beginning of February. I've got some real-time things to attend to. After that, I'll come back and attack the rest of the story. I should have about fifteen chapters left at that point.