And so, I just published chapter 42 of Pets, which makes it my longest serial so far, surpassing Suzy and Jill with went on hiatus with 41 chapters.

But what’s the most important, is the content…

It’s the merger of 2 important elements from my planning: Ellie asking for time alone with Candy/Amber, and the ticket.

If you ever read my story introduction for Pets you would have heard that most of the first 27 chapters were planned or written in a single month (August 2008), but there were missing chapters and one (#17) got completely rewritten,

But one of the things that got dropped was Chapter 6. I had never written it, but its outline remained and 10 years later, it still haunted me

The ticket scene from chapter 42 is what was the bulk of the unwritten chapter 6. It was to show that Richard was a good security agent and that Ellie was good with rules. Granted, the mood would have been different, but I felt then that the scene would have been great to let the characters get to know each other.

But since both Ellie and Richard have a car, why would they be in the same car before they began dating? That’s why I never wrote it…

When I was planning the discussion between Ellie and Richard, I felt it was missing something, until I decided to plug the ticket scene.

I do feel it still out of place. It’s too late in the story so it doesn’t add much, but this was the first time I was writing a chapter 42 online, so I thought: “Why not?”

My non-erotic stories usually have fewer chapters. The one with the most chapters has 39… in 52,000 words or so, but I have a longer book with only 34 chapters!

All in all, I am happy with Pets. I re-read the chapters when copying them and I think they hold up to time, unlike Suzy and Jill which I cringed a little while re-reading it to see if it could fit here.

Tomorrow is the last day of my vacation, but if it only allowed for me to have Pets surpass Suzy and Jill in the number of chapters, I think it was worth it.

But even better…  I am back to an Ellie chapter! Since I resumed writing, I only had a Candy and a Richard one, and from my memory, my favorites to write were Ellie’s! I hope I’ll get her tone right.