As has oft' been said, “The best laid plans of mice and men . . .”

Well, I had plans for Chapters 11, 12, and 13, but things went awry. As often happens with my writing, the characters generally lead the story. So, in this case, Chapters 11, 12, and 13 cover the same characters over a four day period and, since they totaled over 20,000 words, there was only one thing to do, break it into three pieces.

As I had it planned two protagonists meet on the first day at a university when they were moving into their dorm. Friendship blossoms, but from that point forward everything went south. This university is unlike any place I’ve ever heard about. And, one of the protagonists has a troubled, dark past that carries its own nightmares. The other is only looking for love and quite unremarkably finds it. Another mishmash of a sexual/psychological drama, but this time around it progresses from sexual horror to where two straight kids are thrown into a gay living situation. Unfortunately, for one of them past horrors rise up and nearly destroy him.

Where the book goes from here I really have no idea. There is an unresolved issue with the protagonist from the first chapter whose life has changed dramatically and will change further. The two protagonists from Chapter 10 have a major life event coming up, but the protagonists from 11, 12, 13 may eclipsed them. Even though they are younger, they have an age advantage due to the way laws work on Hercules III.

That’s one of the problems with this story. Characters move through time in such large spans that I have to keep track of who’s how old now and how old they’ll be when the I start a new chapter. That’s the problem with the protagonist in Chapter 1, he is now 16, but his dramatic event cannot occur until he’s 18, and that won’t occur for another 126 years, but in the meantime the protagonists in 11, 12, 13 will have their major event in 52 years and, to make matters worse, one of the protagonists in 11, 12, 13 is a close friend of the one from Chapter 1, their event will come in an earlier chapter. Sometimes it takes me a couple hours to sort out all the characters and their ages when they appear in a new chapter, mainly because not all characters from one chapter move forward to another. Check, confused, check, confused, check, confused.

So, all of that works out to at least four chapters. I could still add a new protagonist, but I just might end the story at 17 chapters. I just don’t know right now. I’ll have to think it over and see what comes up.

Life is kind of crappy right now. My son’s Expedition is on the fritz with the chronic problem with the 5.4L engines. Now, he’s using the car he gave me to use and I have to go back to using my old broken car. Monday I go in for my annual visit with my PC provider and was hoping to be able to go over to Guitar Center and get my electric fixed, but my son threw that out the window because he has to get to work. Now, I have to wait until the 28^th when he’s off work and I have a dental appointment in South Seattle. The only problem I foresee is my dental appt is at 0730 and Guitar Center doesn’t open until 1000. On top of everything else, it’s raining and where I live we have severe down slope winds off the Cascades whenever a low in coming onshore from the Pacific. And, since I stopped drinking, I can’t go to the bottle for solace. Want some crackers with all that whine?

Sometimes life can just be a pile of shit.