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.