tendertouch: Blog

The final chapter of 'Protective Coloration' is queued to post Saturday morning. I realize that there are other stories that can continue on from here but I'm just a hack, not a real writer, and unless my muse gives me a hint I'm OK with ending it there.

The same holds true for 'Building a Better Past'. I've got ~30,000 words written for a sequel, but I've had that for ten years with just minor tweaks. Some of it I really like but a couple of parts just don't feel right so I'll probably try scrapping those and seeing if it will flow after that.

Speaking of 'Building a Better Past', a reader pointed out an error that has been there since 2009. Thanks again, I finally found the file and got a corrected version up.

Do you find yourself resubmitting chapters that you've already queued up? I'm pretty sure I've tweaked and twiddled, not just catching mistakes but smoothing out rough edges, every chapter after the first for "Protective Coloration" after I already had what I thought was the final version submitted. I did the same thing with "Building a Better Past", going so far as to almost rewrite one of the later chapters.

It doesn't feel like that's a great way to do things, shouldn't this all have been done before posting? It's not even like I'm reacting to reader feedback, things just slot into place now that weren't doing so before I started posting.

It wasn't a conscious decision but.... I was just rereading No One's "Ice and Fire" (which you really should read!) and realized that it was the inspiration for the opening scene of "Protective Coloration".

That wasn't the first part that I wrote for my story and they obviously go different places but I don't think I would have come up with it if I hadn't recently read the other story.

I fixed the previous formatting issue and queued the remaining eight chapters to post on Tuesdays and Saturdays until completed.

Please let me know what you think of it and if you find any mistakes.

I was hoping that saying I was almost ready what give me the kick in the pants that I needed. It worked. I also decided to go with it as is - the first three chapters are queued (later today, next Tuesday and next Saturday.) Once I see that those are working correctly (it has been a long time since I posted something!) I'll queue up the remaining six chapters.

Please feel free to contact me with corrections/suggestions. Note, though, that this is fiction so I've taken a few liberties to help me move the story along. So if you find yourself thinking, "That's not how a police investigation would work" or similar, you're probably right but I've made the choice to handle it this way. Still feel free to let me know but realize I'm unlikely to make changes of that scale to this story. Future stories might well benefit, however.

[Edit] Something went haywire with the submission - the submitted chapter has change tracking marks that I thought had been removed. I've reuploaded it as straight text pasted in to see how that works, but it won't show until maybe tomorrow morning.