Please read Part 20 before reading this.
I just wanted to pass on my thoughts about the story so far.
Back last September when I wrote the first few chapters I had three storylines in mind. You readers made it impossible to use two of them.
The first was based on this being an ill-fated love affair. It would have ended with Part 19 and a short epilogue where a distraught Christina returns to San Francisco.
The second also had Tony dying but being consoled by the cop who tasered him. He would be shocked to learn about Christina but surprising Christina loves her anyway. This possibility would have given the story two love affairs.
Obviously those options were dead in the water based on the response of you readers. I honestly never expected the reaction the story got right from Part 1. So Tony thanks you for saving his life.
Comments
And we thank you.....
Not only for a wonderful story - but for listening to all of us!
Tony was too good of a man to die. I have known too many good men who died long before they should have, while I am still here. Sometimes I wonder if Billy Joel was right - maybe the good do die young. Maybe the fact that they care too much, the fact that they are willing to put themselves in harms way for others, maybe that is why they die too early. Or maybe they are simply so good that life burns them up too soon.
I can only say that I truly owe more than I can ever repay to those wonderful young men, and that I will spend the rest of my time on this earth trying to be worthy of them. For I have miles to go before I sleep, and much penance to do before my eyes close for the last time.
Absent comrades.
D. Eden
Dum Vivimus, Vivamus
Thanks For Listening to Your Readers
I much prefer happy endings. From my view it's never a good idea to kill a first person likeable protagonist. I just stop reading when that happens, and usually don't read anything but completed stories from that author in the future if I read anything further from them at all. If I want tragedy all I have to do is watch the news or read a newspaper.
Thanks for sharing.
Only George R R Martin
can get away with killing off all the main characters and keep the story going. I just hope no one offers you a made-for-TV deal and you keep putting out actual words for us to read. I'm truly enjoying the story.
With the way you have chosen to tell the story, you MUST
carry on.
Having two protagonists, each recounting their own view of the same events, killing either of them violates general standards of story telling. This is a story of a tangled situation whose realism would be ruined by ghostly viewpoints. You have dug your own trap, you seem to be a good enough story teller to devise a way out of it. You would be letting down yourself as well as the readers if you killed either of your two characters. (and I would miss reading something I am more and more looking forward to!)
May you continue to be inspired
Dave