Demosthenes: Blog

Now that I'm back with my original manuscript of Echo, the sequel to Resonance, I'm updating and filling it out for publication… which should hopefully start very soon. (Either before or after the publication of Longshot or another story remains unclear).

In anticipation of that, I've made the first story in the projected trilogy part of a series (series, rather than Universe, since the stories are intended to be read sequentially, and always involve the same central character). Appropriately enough, that series is called Talent.

Previous readers of my work may know that I gain the opportunity for extended writing just once a year, during the North American summer. That's when the stories I've written here so far - Resonance, A Mutual Understanding and World Cup - were all published.

I entered this summer with the intention of completing the sequel to Resonance, titled Echo, only to find that I'd left the manuscript offline, and off my hard drive, making it unavailable to me during my vacation.

The good news is that I came up with a completely new story, tentatively titled Longshot, about which I'm very excited. The current manuscript is at 20,000 words, and I think that the complete story, after editing, will be in the range of 60,000 ~ 80,000, making it near novel length.

The bad side of that is that I'm busier during my vacation than I expected to be, and the piece is still in a state of growth, so there's very little chance that I will publish it here this summer. With luck and diligence, I should start to turn in the first chapters here, at my usual rate of one a day, when the leaves being to fall.

If you were waiting or hoping to see new work from me about this time, I apoligize… but I intend to make up for the lack in the very near future.

D.

I would be remiss if I did not thank the many readers who have written me during the publication of Resonnance; I'm currently replying to the latest correspondence. I'd particularly like to thank RabbiRabbit for his assistance with Hebrew and his early review of the story, together with the review written by bill9900.

(Spoilers for Chapter 13 follow)

And here is where we leave our protagonist. Personally, I really enjoyed the struggles that Joshua experienced: the desire to be a good partner while doing good in the world, and the ways that those can conflict. I hope that you have enjoyed them too. The conclusion may be sad, but it is in keeping with the story's broad theme that great achievements aren't possible without tremendous costs.

Overall I've been very pleased with the reception to Resonance: it was consistently in the top 10 of the "ongoing serials" category on SOL, and broke into the top three several times. It's also my top-voted story, at least at this point. Several readers wrote to say that they felt it deserved to be rated higher, which is always very nice to hear.

Some readers objected to the ending. Part of the point of the story was to write against genre, including the tendency for "happy ever after". Folks, sometimes things just end. They don't always do so prettily or well. This may be challenging to read, but there's no rule that says things have to be otherwise.

That being said, I have deliberately limited the scope of this story: very aware of the temptation to keep adding to the text, I've left the final manuscript at approximately 40,000 words: novella length, essentially. As a result, I have some 20 pages left over that have become the outline and conclusion of a sequel, tentatively titled Echo, and the barest sketch of a third book, as yet untitled. If you're interested in those, please let me know: publication will be based on demand and available time.

This story was primarily written during five blistering weeks over summer vacation. As promised, I've also added a glossary and maps as an end-piece to the book, which I hope readers will find helpful. I'm particularly proud of the maps, as I convinced the SOL sitemaster to support SVG as a format: as far as I'm aware, they are the first SVG images on the site.

As always, your feedback, comments and corrections are very much welcomed.

(Potential spoilers for Chapter 13 ahead).

I've experienced threesomes a few times, but I feel increasingly aligned with Paige Hawthorne's statement that the MMF combination has the advantage of being "easier"… and therefore probably more straightforward to write. There's so many moving parts!

Apologies for the delay in posting the most recent chapter of Resonance: my travel, return to work, and the challenge in writing that threesome scene delayed delivery. However! The remaining chapters are complete, and you can expect to see them posted here over the next few days.