delayedreaction

I'm just a reader, but for me, I generally don't like uncompleted stories. I read a lot of books and stories, so I won't remember much about a story that gets dribbled out over a period of months. For example, over the time period that Adamagika, a story that I've enjoyed, has gone from Chapters 32 to 39, I've read 9 books (currently #10 on the Kindle: Gene Wolfe's Home Fires), four novel length fanfics, and several one shots. I realize that the characters and stories are much more intimately familiar to the author, but I just find it hard to keep track of any character's motivations if the last time I've read 10,000 words of a story was a month ago. Any sense of urgency or tension is pretty much shot for me if I can barely remember the beginning of the story. (It's probably not that surprising that I tend to watch TV shows in contiguous blocks from Netflix/Hulu/DVDs.) But for me, I can just not read it until it's complete, which is basically what I did with Second Shot.

Re: Pete and Jason Jr/Jr-ette: Hah, well since their arc is basically over that's one set up to get their future settled without needing to break them up, or Peter and Jason could be divorced and are raising the kids they adopted jointly. There's probably a number of other variants, like Pete mentoring a gay teen student coming out of the closet or something else that gives a snapshot into Peter & Jason "future" but with a new character and a new arc. At any rate, it will probably come to you eventually how these two end up. At any rate, I actually voted for Ethan. Jordan: I was more thinking a redemption arc in prison, sort of Oz meets Second Shot, but that might be a little too gritty.

Just a few things: 1) For a sequel, I would want to see what Pete and Jason's kids were up to when they hit their teenage years. For a companion story, the trial works just fine but hopefully this will either completely spin Jordan off into a redemption arc and actually fill in his motivation/story. Right now, Jordan's not nearly as interesting as Ethan. 2) In retrospect those meandering chapters would probably have been better spun into their own standalone stories, perhaps with completely peripheral characters to Second Shot. Instead of trying to make everything relate to Peter and Jason, it may have been better just focusing a story around, say, some guy who inherited a collection that was going through the process of discovering more about his distant dead relative and the antique car world. 3) That was not an epilogue. An epilogue more properly would have had brought real resolution to Peter and Jason's lives (e.g. x number of years in the future, together or married off to other guys) and may have possibly have hinted about the trial. In any case, it would be about closure. Chapter 50 works more like the prologue of the next book included in the back of the first book in the series.

Great ride, although it's always a bit sad when something good ends.

Good chapter, but please stop with the exclamation mark, italics, and capitalization abuse. I'm not trying to be harsh, but you're talented. Don't rely on punctuation and formatting to convey emotion. They are crutches and you don't need them.