storymonger

Once the statue of limitations runs out, Rachel and Dirk can't be charged with anything for fraud/conspiracy. Thus, I don't think anyone could legally overturn the Death in Absentia ruling that nullified their marriage. As long as Rachel didn't remarry until after that ruling, Australia has no basis to recognize her US marriage. We're also assuming she has legally remarried in Australia, which may not be true.

As someone heading to Australia in less than a week, this shit is scary.

Since I made the serial publication remark (), one suggestion is that are you willing to trust some editors to know the plot? If not, have you sat down to outline the remaining plot and use that to guide your chapters to help prevent you from bogging on one plot element? If you find you are bogging based on the outline, then it's time to reach out to the editors. Easy. Don't reinvent the wheel. You're writing and publishing for free. If you're happy with what's already written, people will get over it. There's no need to throw the baby out with the bathwater. People want to see the plot move forward, but a lot of that is based around how bogged down the plot became when trying to build Shane/Trevor's relationship. If it were me I'd probably try to focus on any "relationship building" scenes and see if they can be cut, but I don't think you need to worry about overexposure to other characters at this point. This is where I think you'd do best to lean on your beta readers and editors in a given situation. Let them know you want to condense your writing, and make the assumption that you have an Intelligent Audience to avoid spoon feeding. Ask them, "Does Kline come across as a prick or are his motivations clear?" Also, do you need him to not be a heartless prick? You want complex characters, but anyone that isn't a central character doesn't really need to be all that complex. (FWIW, I've always felt like Kline was self-serving, but not heartless. I could always forgive his actions specifically because he didn't know all the backstory.) Have you ever written film or play? I ask because, as the medium is so short, you write with a "once and done" mentality. You tell the audience something in a scene (Trevor thinks Shane is hot, for example) and you don't waste time saying it again. The Intelligent Audience Knows. And when elapsing time or relationship building, you do montages, which you could consider. To be brutally honest, I think this would have cut down a lot of the Shane/Trevor scenes. Sometimes it felt a bit... "Trevor has a nightmare. Shane makes breakfast. Trevor drinks coffee. The boys swim. Trevor is aroused. The boys run on the beach. Trevor is aroused. The boys play a rescue game. Trevor is aroused. Trevor has tremors. Shane is concerned. The boys get a little drunk and go to bed." Then we read it again with slight changes the next day. It would have been faster (but perhaps not better) if you had broken down one day, then wrote a paragraph or three about how they fell into a familiar pattern for the next week, but Trevor still had nightmares and tremors. And about how Trevor was falling for Shane. The audience would have understood and it would have moved the timeline forward faster (allowing, say, a week to pass), because sometimes from the outside it felt like you were passing time just to make it believable that Trevor and Shane were "in love." Out of curiosity, is this in preparation for publishing in other formats or just a learning exercise. ALL that said, one thing to remember is that you have probably hundreds of readers eagerly awaiting your next chapter release. You've had thousands of views. Obviously you've done something very, very right. And I'm pretty sure all of us will stick around until the story ends. That in itself is a feat. I've never written anything longer than a short story, so it's pretty damn impressive. You're doing an amazing job, and I'd be perfectly happy if you stayed the present course.

I'm not really sure 20 chapters was totally necessary, but serial publication means that you can't have an editor go back and point out that you dragged through the mire in places. Plus we had about 20 chapters of Joel/Trevor in the Mediterranean, so I think a likely explanation is that C James probably enjoys writing the boat scenes with the boys. Plus there's a lot of storylines spread across a lot of geophysical locations, so it's a lot of writing just to move people from place to place. By the time the story is done, I think the word count will be something like three times Moby Dick!

And the chess pieces move.

Definitely seems like food is the key to unlocking Rachel's current identity.

I agree with you. The sun certainly went down on the Indian Ocean. I also think some of the stuff written from Ali's perspective was pretty gruesome compared with the overall story. I'd imagine we're going to see an even darker side of Sanchez as well, since he's now taken a personal interest in ending Trevor's life and has far more resources to expend. He could abandon it after Bridget is taken care of, but somehow I don't see him willing to stop there. If there's consequences, it will be from Sanchez's endgame. Bridget may be cold-hearted, but Sanchez and the Cartel will be heartless. There are no cliffhangers if you read the story all at once! It's your own fault for reading it as a serial publication! I will head over there.

I mean no disrespect. I do stand by my words that overall the tone is fairly light. While there is a backdrop of danger and there have been some psychological consequences for Trevor, none of the main teen protagonists have died and if I were a betting man would say it's overall unlikely to happen. Tone is relative, and this story would rate higher on the "real danger" scale compared to the Hardy Boys, but I can also name lots of mystery stories that go much darker. Which, given the teen characters this series is focused on, I would say isn't, nor should be, the intent. All that said, the comment was largely a contextual throw away around the role of Shelly/Rachel in the overall story arc anyway, which I think's more interesting than debating tone.

I'm sure it's been talked to death, but what's the working theory on Fowler's wife, Shelly? I mean, she just happens to make Key Lime Pie? She seems very involved in the case. Furthermore, in Chapter 81 Trevor mentions that he's always loved the name Shelly. Why does he love that name? Shelly also refers to it as fate that brought Trevor to her "doorstep." Is the belief that it's his mother or that they know one another/are related? Maybe it's all just a Red Herring? Personally, it feels a little too "neat" but this story is fairly lighthearted, generally speaking, so my assumption would be the tendency to wrap up with a bow, which leads me to think everyone is connected. Sorry to dredge it up, but I'm new to this story and throwing out thoughts.

I really, really like this story. Very excited about it. Can't wait to read more of it.

Go easy on the accents. They're hard to maintain and easy to mess up. The reader can usually do a better job with subtle reminders than you'll ever managed. And it seems like the most emulated accent in American literature is a "Southern" accent. Every writer manages to f**k it up, blending a bunch of different dialects into some bastardized version that doesn't exist anywhere in the South. It annoys the crap out of the people who actually reside in that region...