"A Little Night Music" will end with Chapter 22. Sorry if you read this before that clarification and thought 21 might be the end. One more, coming this weekend.
I think this worked out a lot better than my original idea, which was going to be to make it a "crossover event" deal. Troy & Julie and Susan would have gotten their own stories of getting the news about Helen, and what they did afterwards, which would then lead to their showing up in San Finzione.
Somewhere along the way, I realized that I'm often lucky to get out a chapter a week, and I'm not proud enough to think I can pull that off. Pride is my least-favorite of the Seven Deadly Sins. They're all bastards, they'll all kill you, but with all the others, you get a "maybe I shouldn't do so much of this" vibe now and then. Pride's the one that'll kill you and have you thanking it as you go. Fuck Pride. I decided instead to incorporate those ideas into the main story. Susan would have written the story about her Girls' Weekend and confronting the Ultimados, and the monologue she gives while putting on her shoes was a summary of what would have been "An Interruption Amongst Equals."
It would all wrap up in the next story, and when I named the "Troy & Julie Go To San Finzione" story "As Day Follows Night," I decided that the inevitable "Helen Comes To Seattle" story had to be called "So Night Follows Day.
But that's how this became Helen and Susan's story, and why I have to pay Susan's agent a WHOLE lotta money for her not having title billing in these stories. It seems that if I have a "breakout character," it's Helen; however, in my head, it's Susan.
The "creepy word = story arc" experiment ends with "So Night Follows Day." I'm not gonna Moffat you: I reveal what Springheel is in Chapter 4, and I hope it's not a letdown.