Niagara Rainbow 63: Blog

I won't leave you in suspense; that is for stories, and not for blog posts. It is my intention to finish the story Eagle In The Sunset. There is a reason I am doing the rewrite as a separate story.

I am probably a lot younger than most of my readers think I am. I'm not bragging about the quality of my (somewhat sub-par) writing skills; I just know I have cultural reference points in my life that tend to make me seem older than I am. The reason for me mentioning that is that the transitioning almost 11 years between when I started the story Eagle In the Sunset, and now have been extremely transformative to me.

I am nowhere near as naive and romantic as I had been back then; I have been effectively married to my wife for 12 years now, I have experienced real life a lot more thoroughly than I had then- or really ever wanted to. I also used to be a flaming railfan; as time got on I transitioned into being a transit advocate (which is a very different thing) and then I burned out on the whole subject as a result of politics I am not going to go into because this is my story blog, not my political soapbox.

I still like trains, but I can read it with the eye of a reader who looks at paragraphs and pages of car histories, equipment details, rail operational narratives, and the like and have their eyes roll clear into the back of their head. I am still including some; I think it gives the story color, but I am trying to trim out George's nerdgasmic monologues down to a reasonable level. Feel free to comment on how you feel I'm doing on that; I've gotten it on both sides (don't trim it, I enjoy it! and Dear God STOP!) and I would love to reach a level that pleases everyone. Yes, I know thats never going to happen.

Some of the subject matter I was writing about back then was more comfortable to me then than I am with it now. I know that the site rules are supposed to grandfather older stories. Personally I think the site rules are a bit silly; these are stories that hurt nobody in their creation, I hope, and what they contain is clearly marked; I'm sure they had good reasons for doing it, even if I don't know what they are, though.

Either way, I'm just not comfortable expressing it on a personal level, so I am going to change it into a story that really does not contain those elements, partially because I feel more comfortable sharing it that way with people that I know personally. I think that the basic story that I had wrote back then is fundamentally solid, even if my writing skill would have benefitted from substantial improvement. So I want to leave that original story in its original format for people who want to read it.

The fundamental backbone of the story has not changed; so the completion of 2019 is de facto the completion of the original story, although a couple of threads in it will be changing a bit.

I am hoping to maintain a daily chapter posting of the story until I am done with chapter 15; that is to say, what has already been largely written. Once I actually have to craft the entire story line from scratch, that pace will likely fall back a bit. I hope I can maintain the pace I had with I've Been Everywhere. I mean besides the fundamental 10 year hiatus.

It is my intention to write a part two to I've Been Everywher; which will work in elements of chapter 25 and beyond, but not everything. After I have done that, I may continue this universe. I have to see how well I can play with the characters. This universe is very different than IBE, because many of the characters in the ROTR series are based strongly on real people I knew ten years ago, and I know practically none of them now; IBE was created almost whole cloth from scratch.

IBE's characters exist as real people with distinct personalities inside my mind, and only inside my mind. Anyway, please keep enjoying my stories.

I've Been Everywhere is going to change. In a few weeks time I am going to ask the SOL board to delete all chapters after Padilla Bay, and consider the story I've Been Everywhere finished. It will also be retitled: I've Been Everywhere: The Days of Wandering. I've noticed that readership has been dropping off, and someone emailed me and told me what I was sort of thinking myself: that the story had ended, and was now just dragging on. Its true.

I will probably, at some point in the future, using portions of what has been written, write another story as a sexual to this, working on a similar premise to "Part 2". But I have bolloxed up this part. It needs to be breached as an entirely different story in the life of the same man, not a continuation of the previous story.

Ten and a half years ago, I came up with the idea for IBE premised on the idea that there was a hobo telling stories to a truck driver of all the places he had been in his life, corresponding to the cities in the Hank Snow/Johnny Cash song of the same title, with little personal development between chapters. That got old real fast- roughly by Chapter 8. As you might see, my pace slowed down, to the point where I skipped a year between Sarasota and Wichita. And another year plus for Tulsa. And almost 2 for Ottawa.

But at that point I had another plan for the story; There would be character development; Johnny would transform over the course of the story. That gave the main story a plot, and therefore a timeline. I wrote with a renewed vigor, but then life got in the way; my business grew to the point where it took all my time, my then-fiance and I got married, and shortly thereafter, my store burned to the ground.

That last event effectively destroyed me, and took whatever sanity I ever had and removed it. If it wasn't for my sainted wife, her patience, and her love, and frankly her willingness to work really hard while I was practically just a sack of potatoes driving her from job to job, I probably would not have made it through it. But three months ago my lawyer and friend, who knew that I liked writing for various trade publications years before, suggested that I try my hand at finishing IBE, sort of as therapy.

In that capacity, it has worked. I feel a lot better than I have in many years, not the least because of the feedback and encouragement from you, my readers. For which I am eternally grateful. I pursued the plot that emerged in that story, however, to its logical conclusion; Johnny gets married, and now has to become part of ordinary society.

I think that is a story worth pursuing, but not the way I have been doing it. I need to write it as a separate story, which stands on its own. I need to re-introduce Johnny as a new person. I do intend for that story to move back and forth into time, including times from back when he wandered. I also need to think on it a lot. The truth is that the chapters Panama through Padilla Bay, while physically written this year, had been fermenting and writing themselves in my mind over the 6 and a half years since I stopped writing it.

I don't intend to step away from Stories Online at this point. I want to rewrite some of my earlier work, particularly first three stories in "The Love Express" into a better and more comfortably integrated story, and with some changes to bring it into line with current site rules. I also intend, as a bunch of people have asked me, to re-write and then continue "Eagle In The Sunset".

I also have a few stories in mind branching from some of the characters in I've Been Everywhere.

If there is enough feedback to this effect, I will leave the existing chapters of part II with a "false" type of label, but either way, I don't like the way the story is developing. I'm writing paying too much attention to the "City/Verse/Song" format, the constraints of the original story design, and filling in space with details that are not only not interesting, but also unimportant.

I will be leaving the original first three stories of The Love Express up even as I create a new book, to be entitled "The Love Express", since I intend to change quite a lot about it.

I am currently working on Chapter 27; if you haven't liked the past two chapters, please let me know. I'm still trying to work my own mind around the change in Johnny's circumstances, and figuring out where to go with it.

I am going on a vacation for the next few days; this vacation involves a couple of overnight trains (Yes, I really do ride overnight trains when traveling!) which might means if I can find a comfortable place to work on my story onboard, I may still be working for some of the vacation. But I am not going to work on it during my hard-earned time at a beach resort, so it will be dropped off a bit- and if I can't get comfortable working on the train, it won't happen there, either.

Things are continuing, and I hope you will like the next chapter. I am not sure that "vacation" chapters really are something you people are looking for. Please give me your opinion on that, I'd really appreciate it.

The first part of I've Been Everywhere is done. The story is going to change for the second part, and the present will now be ten years in the future- or essentially the current present.

I am going to write the first chapter of the second part in short order, as a sort of preview, but the rest after that will be taking a while. I need to think about exactly where I want to proceed from here. I may take a look at and work on Eagle In The Sunset.

It would probably need some substantial reworking to make the rest of the story go along with the new posting guidelines that have gone into effect since that story went inactive. If you want me to do that, or post it as a "reduex" seperate story to keep the original, or to just leave it as it is, please tell me.

The major rewrites of all the chapters are done and have been done since I posted chapter 16 and 17. Chapter 18 is about halfway done; I hope to finish it this weekend. I have decided on a potential strategy for going forward from the end of the first verse; thats why there is a section title on it now.

I am about to repost chapters 1-12. If you have read the story already there is no reason to go over it. It is just a grammatical and punctuation update from my editor. I have a bit of interest in finding a different editor; my current editor is awesome- which is why I married her- but I would like someone who is willing to discuss my creative process, and the nature of my writing with me.

I am surprised at the lack of comments I have been getting. I don't bite, I promise. I might even answer questions. Feel free to tell me what you think.