4/5 Finished, More or Less

Okay! Once again, I can’t quite decide whether this particular Black Dog novella is quite finished. Does it need another paragraph? Another scene? Two scenes? Three? (Surely not more than three?)

This is Thaddeus’ story. It’s run a little longer than I expected, which in fact does not ALWAYS happen, although it’s certainly not a shock. It’s eighty pages at the moment. I’m not sure whether it will end up about eighty-two pages or ninety or what.

This gives me four stories basically (but not entirely) finished. In the order they’ll appear in the collection, not the order I wrote them, they are:

1. Keziah’s story, which deals with the skull that used to have the demon in it; you probably remember that from Copper Mountain. Takes place shortly after Copper Mountain, in the winter. Sets up something I’ll use in Silver Circle.
2. Thaddeus’ story, which takes place in spring and also sets up something I’ll use in Silver Circle. You know what, just assume that every story in this collection plays at least a minor role in setting up events for Silver Circle. I think they all do, or will unless I change my mind about what’s going to happen in that novel.
3. Tommy’s story, which takes place in summer, directly after his previous story. I’m sorry that his first story wound up out of order, but I thought there would be more time between Shadow Twin and Copper Mountain. Then I changed my mind about that and here we are, with stories that are out of chronological order. That does bug me, but there’s nothing to do about it now.
4. Ethan’s story, which takes place in late summer. This is my favorite, at the moment.
5. If I can make it work when I go back to it, Grayson’s story. It might switch pov. We’ll see. I kind of need it, although I could make certain events happen off stage if I truly can’t get this story to work.

At the moment, (1) and (2) are probably mostly finished, (3) is for sure mostly finished, (4) is definitely finished, and (5), of course, is the one where I got stuck and went on to other stories. I will pull that one out again shortly.

The four I have are all on the novella side for length rather than the short story side. That’s not why I haven’t finished this collection yet, but it’s a contributing factor.