Vanishing: Unfinished Music (Publish Notes)

[valyssia]

A bit of weirdness here tonight for you folks that are following along with Vanishing. Sorry about that. I had a chapter swell to unreasonable proportions. That always makes me nervous. I feel like the reason it happens is because I’ve managed to hit a bout of not-so-much verbal diarrhea. My beta and pre-reader have both assured me that that isn’t the case. They claim I’m adding ‘depth’ to the story.

Yay! Go me!

So the sitch is this: The interactions between Buffy, Willow, Xander and Giles interleaved with Kennedy and her latest drama worked well. I could’ve cut them down to one chapter of Kennedy and one chapter of Buffy and it would’ve been okay, but I liked the interleaving. The two scenarios were playing out at the same time. The thing is that working through the two scenarios led to a chapter north of ten-thousand words. That’s just too large by real world standards.

I know. I know. I’ve done that in the past. You can’t blame a girl for trying to get better, can you?

So anyway, I didn’t want to publish one piece without the other. It would’ve felt like I’d left you hanging. Telling a story in incomplete snips is just bad. But the thing is, I’m not done with part two. I have about 1200 words of the final scene written. It’s not something that leaves any of the other interactions incomplete, so I went ahead and posted all of chapter 8 except for that scene. Feel free to read it as it sits. It’ll all feel happily finished. I should be able to drop the final scene in by early in the week and you can come back and read it all by its little lonesome. It kind of belongs all by its little lonesome anyway.

I’ll make another post with a link to a second cut when the whole thing’s complete. You’ll be able to click and go right to the part you want to read.

The Taming the Muse prompt that I’ve claimed will be in that final scene. The rest of the prompts I’ve claimed are present in the published material. But because of the incompleteness, I’m holding off on making those posts. I’m also holding off on publishing this to AO3 and Near Her Always. I can’t really drop a scene into a chapter and say, “Hey! Come back! There’s another scene,” so waiting really is the better option. I had to post tonight because of TtM. Sometimes timing just sucks, but I’m faking my way through it.

Anyway, enjoy.

Oh, and footnote: the chapter title is a funny. I asked Howard what comes after Yoko and he replied, “Imagine.” It was a great little quip that made me laugh. Thing is, we’re both too geeky not to Google. The two albums that John Lennon released after he left The Beatles were called Unfinished Music No.1: Two Virgins and Unfinished Music No.2: Life with the Lions. And I thought what a marvelous name for a chapter. Go figure, it overflowed and split.