Quest for Quest

I cheated. I posted-dated (timed) the advertisement so it sits atop this post. Kicking myself for forgetting to post it this morning. What ditz I am.

Hope I haven't p*ssed off my partners by coming up with silly IDs for them. I like to have fun, and sometimes (like this time) I forget to check with others to make sure they think it's funny, too.

Been working on my latest short story, Quest. It's moving along. I'm in the second scene, of what should probably amount to six to twelve scenes. The total word length is likely to remain under 7,000-words, like Apprentice, for which Quest is the sequel. They are Sister Stories.

I've introduced two new characters. One will certainly play a role in the story. Not sure about the other. Right now I'm thinking yes, he should.

This work follows Kiahva, a young girl of eighteen when Apprentice began. But she was a naive eighteen, having grown up in a simple rural community, surrounded by other simple, rural communities. Even so, many modern social concerns exist. They just are not prevalent, and so it is easy for a young girl/woman to be ignorant of them. Kiahva is about a year older when Quest begins.

In Apprentice, Kiahva learned about the joys and pains of falling in love. Mostly joys. In Quest, Kiahva will face some of the challenges to love. It can be scary and confusing when one is on her own.

I'm not moving nearly so fast with Quest as I did with Apprentice. It's not that I'm not inspired. It's just that now Kiahva is an establishled Character, and I have to make sure she - and any other character who has been established - remains herself. Character growth must take place, but at a believable pace. Also, I must be aware of the most dangerous thing sequel writers run into: writing the same story over again. What that means is, taking the element which was most popular with the first story, and making it the focus of the second. I've never seen it work in any genre, at any level, anywhere. I have seen sequels succeed. That's when the sequel continues the story presented by its predecessor instead of repeating it. That makes sequel writing a much more difficult - and slower - process. But it's moving along.

Take heart, Beta Reader. I'm getting there. Hopefully, I will do a good job with it.