Author notes

152 - Needles

El Cid

on Feb. 22, 2017

REFERENCES

* The security breach incident Jetta is referencing was detailed to her by Ozzy on page 90.





Just one page left and this chapter will be all wrapped up. So now is as good a time as any for a quick chapter retrospective and a look at what's ahead. Note: This is not a chapter recap; a recap page should go up before I start Chapter 3.



I knew going into this project that the first two chapters were going to be challenging, both for me as a writer and for readers to make it through as well. This was never going to be a story that just drops you into the action from page one, so it was going to take some time to establish itself. That being said, I feel like the opening chapters fell victim to slow pacing and poor sequencing. As I pointed out before, the beginning of this chapter should have gone at the end of Chapter 1, and the end of Chapter 1 should have been the beginning of this chapter. That REALLY would have made a big difference in terms of giving the story better momentum.

As far as snazzy sci fi concepts go, there really hasn't been much in the way of spacecraft or weird looking aliens or anything in the story up to this point, as it's remained more or less grounded on terra firma. The coming chapters will explore more exotic locales, as we'll meet the so-far only briefly referenced mooners, and find out what exactly Rahu is.

My biggest concern going forward is giving the story a faster pace, which I think is mostly a matter of condensing, but I have to be careful not to completely gut all the interesting stuff out of it in the process. Chapter 3 should be an improvement, and I'll be taking some time to make sure it's well put together before diving into it. I don't want to say too much about what's going to be in Chapter 3, in part because I'm still not 100 percent sure what will make the final cut. There are additional characters I may or may not find a way to squeeze in, and loose ends to deal with. So we'll just have to wait and see how it all turns out, I guess.

Stay tuned for the final page of Chapter 3! It should go up on Friday.