I’ve been working more on the piece I started a couple of days ago. I have the themes, the major plot arc, and most of the characters mapped out. I assure you that it’s not “chick lit” as would typically earn the title, that said I’d not object to that title by any stretch of the imagination. It’s also not a romance novel, though someone made that logical assumption as well. It does have two main protagonists, and they do fall in love (or at least whatever reasonable interpretation of that state they’re able to craft individually and collectively), but “romantic” is probably not the principle description one would use for the themes tackled and the resolutions found.

Someone else asked if it has a happy ending, and the answer is no, but it doesn’t have an unhappy ending either. As it’s a story about life, and life is a story that won’t end until the last of us succumbs to the Zombie Apocalypse (or comet impact or religious tribulation or what have you), it doesn’t end cleanly with anyone riding off into a sunset. Happily-ever-after is the province of fairy tales and fantasy novels. I love both of those things and aspire to write them, but this is not either of those kinds of stories.

Growing up, I spent years believing that if we loved enough bad things wouldn’t happen to us. I grew up and discovered that bad things happen no matter how much you love someone. This story is about bad things that happen and the fact that people can love each other in spite of (or even because of) the string of tragedies that make up a human life. If you live a life without ever experiencing a tragedy, then you never bothered to live at all. The people in this story live a lot of life and earn whatever love that comes on the other side.

In this post I’ll put up the rest of the raw and unedited first chapter, and in my next post I’ll post the same for chapter two. After that, I’ll post my editing process and you can all see how I trim sentences and change words and generally whack back the unruly beast that is a draft into something a little bit more tame and readable.

The rest of Chapter 1 after the cut…

In keeping with my new goal of writing more, I’m actively trying to invest time in writing fiction again. Yes, this will eat into my blogging, but to make up for it I’ll be posting as much of the fiction I do write on serial storyteller as is possible/reasonable/etc. As an example I started this tonight at 8:23 and three hours later this is my completely unpolished draft of the first two pages of something I have no idea if I’ll finish. I have the whole thing plotted out in my head, but the story arc is heavy on the bitter and light on the sweet.

Anyway, I’ll be posting the rest of the pieces on my fiction oriented site once I refresh that one and give it a face-lift and reboot. As I continue to post over there I’ll drop posts with links here just so no one has to follow both to keep up with the writing if they want to.

The first bit of fiction I wrote in 2012 after the cut…