Now that the final segment of “If It Was Your Husband” has been posted, I’d like to take a few moments to reflect on the saga and say thank you to some of the folks that got involved with the story. This was the first serial I’ve ever posted. The only reason I posted as a serial was because of the length. I generally write at about 20K words or less, this one topped 40K before the epilogue. The epilogue added an additional 1500 words.

First of all, I’d like to thank all the readers who stuck it out to the final posting. Secondly I’d like to thank my volunteer editor who did a great job of catching typos for me. The only compensation she got reading the whole story in advance. In all she went over the story three times. Once as a whole and then again twice for each segment posted. Thanks Gabi for all your work.

Another person I need to thank is Emma Ann Tate who was a sounding board for me as the story unfolded, helping me deal with the comments and then finally looking over the epilogue as a beta reader and making a good suggestion on how to improve what I was trying to say. Thanks Emma for being my friend and confidant for this story.

Lastly, I’ll throw in an apology to those who found the story upsetting. In a PM one reader disclosed that a particular chapter caused her to have trouble sleeping after reading it. Certainly not the kind of response I was hoping for. She said it was a testament to my skill as a writer that she got so wrapped up in the story… I saw it as a failure to properly develop the character that upset her. Up until this story I’ve written what I call fluff pieces. This was the first that touched on disapproval in anyway by any character in the story.

What follows is my ramblings about the story and how I felt about its reception. Unless you have a morbid curiosity about the inner workings of my mind, you might want to quit reading here.

The early chapters generated a great deal of comments. To my surprise, several readers saw things in the story that as the author, I didn’t. One of the things I insist on when I endeavor to write a story is that I have a firm mental grasp of the backstory; not only of the story itself, but of all the main characters in the story. This keeps the story grounded and minimizes the chance of it ending up with conflicting segments. When writing, I then struggle with just how much of that backstory needs to be revealed to the reader. Too much and I feel the story gets weighted down with facts and drags. I feel that if you don’t have a good hook in the first chapter or for sure by the second chapter then it’s likely that folks are going to opt out of reading. Yet, some of the backstory is a must for the reader understand the motivation of the characters.

It became apparent that I misjudged just how much of Alex and Carrie’s relationship needed to be revealed. It seems a prologue should have been in order to settle the question of what kind of relationship they had. If I’m lucky, maybe I’ll remember that for future writing.

The epilogue was an afterthought. An attempt to rectify that error in judgement regarding the backstory. This story being my first novel length story was a new experience for me as was posting as serial. One of the takeaways from this experience it that I don’t handle waiting too well. Limiting myself to posting weekly put a real strain on my patience. Another is that reading comments on the individual segments didn’t always set well with me because I knew where the story was going and I felt that a number of the readers saw and commented on paths in the future that wouldn’t get the story where it needed to go and weren’t there. They also read into the story elements of the backstory that weren’t in my mind as I wrote the story. I feel that if they had been privy to the whole story they would have been less troublesome for me read.

The final takeaway from this experience it that I’ll likely not post as a serial on longer works. Instead, I’ll post with an interactive Table of Contents that will allow readers to read a chapter or two, close the story and then come back later and using that interactive TOC to jump to the place where they left off to continue reading. I did this when I posted “One Dozen Roses.” I don’t know if readers use it or not, but the option was there.