By Natasha Hayden
September 27, 2013
It seems like forever since I last wrote a blog for Children of the Wells. Come to think of it, I hardly wrote a blog for my own site, natashasshelf.blogspot.com, all summer. Besides being busy with life, I was scrambling to edit some of the story posts mere days before they appeared online. I was grammar editing for Laura Fischer, our usual grammar editor, but since she wrote The Doctor’s Assistant, I was her backup eye. I also recently finished content editing the sequel to The Fall of the House of Kyzer, which you should be seeing toward the end of October.
Change is in the air once again as the seasons turn, and you’ve probably already noticed a change on CotW. After a crazy summer behind the scenes here, we are returning to our schedule of serializing only one story at a time. We simply don’t have the manpower and hours (after all, we have to work elsewhere to get paid!) to keep two stories going at once. Deadlines have been in flux (hence the editing only days before publishing), and we realized that in order to continue to provide high quality stories to you, we were going to have to cut down on quantity.
What does this mean for you on the most basic of level? It means you now have to wait, much like you do for new TV seasons, for the next “season” of each storyline. Right now, Bron and Calea’s latest adventure is wrapping up and won’t return until the next quarter sometime in January. This quarter, October through December, will feature the continuation of Jaysynn’s story.
One thing we’ve learned firsthand with website serialization: deadlines aren’t just suggestions; they matter! So, with a bit of extra time on my hands, I was promptly recruited to organize deadlines for the next six months. And the bare bones of it look something like this: Get a new author writing the sequel to The Doctor’s Assistant by the end of September (Check!). Get a new author for the sequel to The Rules Change (Jaysynn’s continued story, scheduled for serialization within the next month) by the end of October (Possible check!). That gives us serialized stories through June of next year, but we have to plan pretty far in advance, so… Get a new author lined up by the end of January (To do!). And, of course, there are all the in-between deadlines for drafts, content edits, grammar edits, and little extras here and there. Did you know, we give ourselves about four to five months to put a story like The Select’s Bodyguard together from beginning to end? Somehow, the time still slips away too fast, and that’s partly what I’m here for, to keep us on track and keep the story running smoothly season to season.
As one season flows into another, and one season of shows (or perhaps CotW storylines) gives way to another, we hope you will continue to make us a part of your weekly schedule.
Happy autumn and happy reading!
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