The Never Ending Interview: Day Ten

One question a day will be addressed, for as long as it remains interesting to me, and the questions keep coming.

Today’s question was asked by Tyler Walpole @TylerWapole.

Tyler: Whatever happened to “Just Another Ranker”? I’m still dying to know how that turned out.

Bill: Just Another Ranker is a hot mess, but one I still intend (or at least hope) to fix and finish someday.

Tyler has asked about a novel I was writing in serial form, which was basically placed online, posting however much I finished on any given day. This was during our Clockwork Storybook days, when we were throwing a ton of free material online, including 30 Day Stories, which were long form short stories (not entirely a contradiction) written and posted in daily bits. Those were successful enough to inspire serialized novels, done in the same format, but not limited to 30 Days duration.

Ranker got up to at least (we’re not sure) 55 daily installments, before it petered out, a victim of my getting paying work that took precedence, and a gradual realization that the story needed some serious restructuring. It stopped just short of

the big climactic final battle, in the multi-day military engagement, in a fantasy scenario whose similarities to the famous Battle of Rorke’s Drift were intentional.

It was written and posted half a dozen different computers ago, and posted on the ancient Clockwork Storybook website, which no longer exists, and hasn’t for some time.

So, herein is the trouble. I don’t have the entire story. I have most of it, recovered through my own efforts, along with those of various colleagues, friends and helpful strangers, but I’m missing at least three (and perhaps five) critical installments, which various adventure archeologists of things that were once online have not been able to recover.

I’m half willing to take another run at the material I do have, hoping that I can recreate the missing chapters from memory, but I’m loathe to do so, knowing (as all writers do) that nothing I’ve ever written is so perfect and flawless as material I no longer have access to. I want those missing chapters. I demand the indifferent universe find some way to magically spit them back at me.

And sooner would be better than later, please.

Failing that, I suppose I’m going to find a time someday to take another run at the story, clean it up, restructure some truly horrible bits, change some things to account for new things I’ve learned about military strategy, tactics and logistics since way back then, and finish it.

Someday.

But right now, I’m a bit too busy and the novel, as it currently exists, is a real hot mess.