Jemma-Verse III: Flensing

I'm sure my one reader who cannot attend the flensings is dying to know how it went. It went well! Overall people enjoyed the story, the larger universe, the characters, the runic art, and some little turns of phrase and description I threw in. The criticisms were helpful: further develop the Miqo/Kinarre relationship (perhaps with a scene at the bar), make clearer what's causing all hell to break loose, tie the larger story together somehow, bring the characters together to make these short stories mean something larger, re-visit some specific passages, end section with some sort of closure.

I'm thinking right now that I'll have the two agents of Jemma-Verse II be the thread that ties these together; I also like the idea of news articles and things floating through the story, seen by characters in different stories. My biggest problem is figuring out where the larger story goes (and for that matter, where exactly it begins - with Jemma or even earlier?).

Another big challenge will be bringing the characters back to continue their stories; as I've been thinking about it, Jemma and Elorna were killed. But that's actually not necessary to the over-arching plot, so I can mess with that. I was thinking I could either have the agents continue to be the Good Guys fighting the Bad Guys who have abducted (but not [yet] killed!) our heroines OR I could have the agents be unwitting pawns of the Bad Guys, and then they could have their own story, interspersed through the other stories, of finding out what they're doing. In that case, the Good Guys have abducted Jemma and Elorna to keep them safe. Maybe it's because I've been watching Alias lately, but I really like this second idea. The agents should get their own story beyond just the police investigation, after all! I was recently talking with one of my loyal readers about digging further into the agents' characters, and this would be a really fun way to do it.

I'm not wedded to anything, and this semester I'm not sure how much work I'll be able to do. But dang, I can almost see this turning into a Real Novel! It really helps that I can work on this in short bursts with these sections, so it doesn't feel like I have a gigantic stretch of Tens of Thousands of Words staring at me.