Today is a day that I've dreaded for some time.
From 2010 until his death in April 2016, BlackIrish culled through close to 850 chapters that I had written. My standard chapters are normally 10 Word pages. That's 8,500 pages (give or take) of shitty prose, missing words, misnamed characters and forgotten plot points.
He helped me take these pages that sometimes seemed more like a random jumble of words than a coherent train of thought and turn them into stories that I have posted on this site.
BlackIrish kept a running tally of where the plot had moved so he could ensure that I didn't leave too many threads dangling. He kept a list of character traits and personalities to make certain that I kept the players consistent. He would ask questions about the character actions and interactions so I would think about why one of my creations would say or do something - instead of just writing what was expedient at the moment.
He managed to do this while helping out others on the site - including working with G Younger on the starting portions of his Stupid Boy series.
Today's post marks the last of the chapters from my stories that were edited by the late BlackIrish.
The others he worked with seem to have done a better job of keeping current with their postings. I somehow developed a two-and-a-half year backlog.
So I suspect that today might be the last time a chapter edited by BlackIrish will appear on SOL.
If that is true, the site will be a little worse off tomorrow.
Thanks, Bill. You are missed.
Jay C.