Forum: Story Discussion and Feedback

I assume that OP means how to approach a "book" that is longer than most series.

One page at a time. (sorry, couldn't resist) :)

This is very much an 'in my personal opinion' comment, obviously, but ...

Yes, in my opinion, Arlene and Jeff improves considerably from the first few chapters.

Note: spoilers below. I'm trying to minimize them, but they're there. But you won't really understand without them, and it's a nuanced answer, not just 'it's better.'

Expanding on that, because it's probably useless on its own: The story that emerges after a while, particularly after things get rolling once they've moved to Colorado and major characters aside from Jeff, Arlene, and Diana have entered the story (which is only maybe 10 chapters in), is enormously different from the first few chapters. The first few chapters are an odd blackmail-sex-revenge thing. It does its job in that it creates a reason for Jeff's marriage to be 'on the rocks', him to be extremely upset with Diana and Arlene, and the rest, and there is (much later) a (somewhat) viable reason given for why things happened the way they did.

Still, the first few chapters - everything until Jeff stops being a morose, grumpy pain in the ass - are painful and probably turn a lot of readers off.

Once things get going, the story shifts almost entirely into a blend of 'slice of life', 'science fiction', and 'action/adventure'. The core is science fiction, but how close the core is to the surface varies.

It has plenty of flaws, but they're nothing like the flaws in the first few chapters. If it stayed like the first few chapters, I doubt many people would have read all that long, or that scores would be high.

Switching gears: the writing quality also likely goes up, though that's harder to judge.

Side observation: Cainneach McEinri's Sarah's Saga follows a somewhat similar arc, oddly, where much of the first book is very dissimilar to later books, and what starts out as a rather off-putting (in my opinion) sex story pivots into a science fiction adventure story.

In both stories, there's a later justification for all of the strange and off-putting things in the beginning, but anyone who likes the first parts of Arlene and Jeff or Sarah's Saga may well not like the rest, while many people who like the bulk of each story may dislike the opening parts.

A&J is not finished.

Am I the only reader who thinks the author is probably regretting the choice of title? Arlene is certainly a major character but Diana is the 'Queen' and far more influential.

AJ

A&J is not finished.

Officially, the story ended as of 9/30/2022. Roustwriter added "for now" at the end of the final chapter.

In his final blog post, Roustwriter stated:

Regretfully, I am going to have to postpone writing Times 7. My wife has been extremely ill for some time, and my health has also deteriorated. I never missed posting each week starting in November of 2006, but I must do so now. When and if our health improves, I will continue Times 7.

Shortly after that post, Roustwriter's wife passed away. He does not respond to emails or other means of communication and no one acquainted with him has heard from him since his wife's death. His email is active, so there is a possibility he will communicate with someone in the future.

Agree about the repetition. I'm not sure if 80% is the right number, but there's definitely a lot of 'fluff'. There's a stretch where each chapter starts with an 'in the last chapter' header and/or a character list.

There's an odd 'wait and hurry up' dynamic, too, where some events are incredibly slow, and then other events are nearly 'time went by and stuff happened, and now: ...'

I would suspect Roust decided to 'wrap things up', except there are a few long semi-tangential plotlines that happen after the fast-forward.

It practically begs for a sequel - but, like many stories, it would probably be better to write a similar (in very broad terms) but different (in most or all specifics) story.

It practically begs for a sequel - but, like many stories, it would probably be better to write a similar (in very broad terms) but different (in most or all specifics) story.

The overriding arc for the putative continuation is the search for Ship's builders. I think that's so specific that it poisons the possibility of writing something similar to 'Arlene and Jeff' as the first segment of a not-an-exact continuation story.

AJ

This deserves a spoiler comment, since I know there are readers in this thread who don't even know who Ship is, and I'm tossing in some more specifics.

My point was more along the lines of: if one is going to write a 'search for Ship's builders' story at this point, one is probably better off creating new characters and events to make this happen than trying to pick up with Roust's characters. I suspect, no matter what you do, many people will feel you 'got the character wrong' for all of the characters. Presumably a number of key characters would continue to evolve during said search, introducing plenty of room to 'get them wrong.'

Sure, there are plenty of 'background' characters who many people don't care about, but one could take Arlene in a number of directions. Any of those directions might upset a segment of people, and it would likely be out of proportion to a new, original character.

So, new story with new path to 'spaceship that's kinda like Ship' etc, and without the baggage.

The other 'continuations' that make sense would be picking up an interesting secondary character (the Denver SAC, for instance) and (if you start there) concentrating on a different group of alphas fighting the global slaver trade. That would, most likely, be far more effective since there are a limited number of continuing characters and they're generally secondary, plus there's an enormous space to add new characters.

564 in this browser.

80ish in my primary 'writing' browser. 30ish in my secondary 'writing' browser.

I know where most of the ones I want are. Some of them are happy discoveries when I find them again, but if I'd closed them I would never have found them again. I'm horrible at using bookmarks. Out of sight, out of mind!