So, this was a difficult chapter, for a slew of reasons. I had first written it months ago, and as my editor told me, it had a good start and a terrible resolution. Whenever I reread it, I was always disappointed because I wanted the part to have a certain feel to it, and it just seemed like it was super rushed at the end.
In the original version, it had the group (the same group, being comprised of Stephen, Kitty, Franklin, and Barbara) coming upon a group gathered around a dead body, then switched to Jack Holmes where you learned through his internal monologue that it was strange because nobody ever died in Nath. He then suspects Stephen, since he was at the scene with the group of people, and Jack could easily pick him out as being someone who isn't part of Nath and THEN INVITES HIM TO HIS FLAT LIKE THE SILLY IMPULSIVE PERSON HE IS (While he goes and does some other stuff, then they meet later).
It all ended when Stephen tries to portal them out of there (Including Jack) and they end up back on the street that they had first portaled into. Then they go fight a necromancer in a graveyard.
So while I had a good lead-up as far as characters and the mystery of how a man could die when he lived in a city where no one could die, I couldn't properly wrap it up at the end. But not only that, in the original there had been a lot of unanswered questions that I just couldn't seem to explain. So I rewrote the ENTIRE thing and told it all from Kittys' point of view.
After a few small rewrites of the new chapter, I had it ready (As it has been put up now), but my editor/husband still thought that it had too many unanswered questions. So right before it was supposed to go up, I tried my best to rewrite it in a way more information was given and tried to do so without either adding more questions or answering the current questions in a wooden info dump type way.
I did not succeed.
This part was supposed to go up on the 14th, but to make a very long story short, both my husband and I got the flu, and then I found that there was TONS of mold growing in my closet and had to clear out the entire thing and bleach it all down. Just yesterday I noticed the the mold was coming back, so we had to bleach it again. We'll have to wait and see if it comes back a third time to see if we have to take the walls out or not.
So there wasn't really much time to do anything, and whenever I did have some time, I just couldn't think of anything. When I finally did do something to change it, I wrote a chapter for Jack Holmes, and realized that it gave too much of the later part away (Specifically that Lady Eva was evil, to which nobody would be surprised when she turned evil at the party) (And that the party was a trap, so then nobody would be surprised when the party turned out to be a trap), and I felt that it sort of interrupted the flow of Kittys' POV that I had achieved.
Moving on to about the ACTUAL part.
I named the city Nath, and that's not just some made-up word (Well, it IS technically, yes), but I named it after the fictional city Sarnath in H.P. Lovecrafts' The Doom that came to Sarnath. I was inspired to write this part from that story, in that it was a city that was destroyed and was left with nothing but ruins. In Ghoulish Instincts I wanted it to be more about an 'Atlantis' type city that disappears from the Earth, and its' people are subjected to endlessness at the hands of a dark sorcerer who uses them to lengthen his own life.
As for Jack Holmes, I took inspiration for him primarily from Ronald Howards' portrayal of Sherlock in the 1954 TV Series. In it, he played a Sherlock that was much younger and still sort of learning and growing into the detective role, whereas portrayals of Sherlock before him had shown him as completely infallible.
"In my interpretation, Holmes is not an infallible, eagle-eyes, out-of-the-ordinary personality, but an exceptionally sincere young man trying to get ahead in his profession." -Ronald Howard [Source Link (Wikipedia)]
This, along with the fact that he has a lot to live up to considering his name and his lineage, is what ultimately shaped him for me, along with the fact that I just think that a supernatural detective who is actually one of the supernatural really just gets me.
One of the big things that I tried to do with the last minute rewrite was to add a chapter for Jack, as this will be the first time that a character that has been added to the Space Between hasn't had a chapter to themselves in the part that they were introduced in. (Don't worry, he's got a chapter coming up in the next part).
Now, he won't be part of the main roster of Space Between, that's not what I wanted for him. He's not really going to be going on jumps with them, and in fact he's going to be part of a side story that I'm currently (trying) to write, of which he'll be one of a few main characters. I don't want to give too much away from it.
I do also have another side-story coming out BEFORE then though, so you'll just have to wait a little bit for more information. :P
Back to Ghoulish Instincts - and this is probably going to be my last point on it - is Lady Eva. Originally I had a necromancer who fought them, but then it was changed. When I wrote her I had more in mind the Siren boss fight from BioShock Infinite.
In the original version, it had the group (the same group, being comprised of Stephen, Kitty, Franklin, and Barbara) coming upon a group gathered around a dead body, then switched to Jack Holmes where you learned through his internal monologue that it was strange because nobody ever died in Nath. He then suspects Stephen, since he was at the scene with the group of people, and Jack could easily pick him out as being someone who isn't part of Nath and THEN INVITES HIM TO HIS FLAT LIKE THE SILLY IMPULSIVE PERSON HE IS (While he goes and does some other stuff, then they meet later).
It all ended when Stephen tries to portal them out of there (Including Jack) and they end up back on the street that they had first portaled into. Then they go fight a necromancer in a graveyard.
So while I had a good lead-up as far as characters and the mystery of how a man could die when he lived in a city where no one could die, I couldn't properly wrap it up at the end. But not only that, in the original there had been a lot of unanswered questions that I just couldn't seem to explain. So I rewrote the ENTIRE thing and told it all from Kittys' point of view.
After a few small rewrites of the new chapter, I had it ready (As it has been put up now), but my editor/husband still thought that it had too many unanswered questions. So right before it was supposed to go up, I tried my best to rewrite it in a way more information was given and tried to do so without either adding more questions or answering the current questions in a wooden info dump type way.
I did not succeed.
This part was supposed to go up on the 14th, but to make a very long story short, both my husband and I got the flu, and then I found that there was TONS of mold growing in my closet and had to clear out the entire thing and bleach it all down. Just yesterday I noticed the the mold was coming back, so we had to bleach it again. We'll have to wait and see if it comes back a third time to see if we have to take the walls out or not.
So there wasn't really much time to do anything, and whenever I did have some time, I just couldn't think of anything. When I finally did do something to change it, I wrote a chapter for Jack Holmes, and realized that it gave too much of the later part away (Specifically that Lady Eva was evil, to which nobody would be surprised when she turned evil at the party) (And that the party was a trap, so then nobody would be surprised when the party turned out to be a trap), and I felt that it sort of interrupted the flow of Kittys' POV that I had achieved.
Moving on to about the ACTUAL part.
I named the city Nath, and that's not just some made-up word (Well, it IS technically, yes), but I named it after the fictional city Sarnath in H.P. Lovecrafts' The Doom that came to Sarnath. I was inspired to write this part from that story, in that it was a city that was destroyed and was left with nothing but ruins. In Ghoulish Instincts I wanted it to be more about an 'Atlantis' type city that disappears from the Earth, and its' people are subjected to endlessness at the hands of a dark sorcerer who uses them to lengthen his own life.
As for Jack Holmes, I took inspiration for him primarily from Ronald Howards' portrayal of Sherlock in the 1954 TV Series. In it, he played a Sherlock that was much younger and still sort of learning and growing into the detective role, whereas portrayals of Sherlock before him had shown him as completely infallible.
"In my interpretation, Holmes is not an infallible, eagle-eyes, out-of-the-ordinary personality, but an exceptionally sincere young man trying to get ahead in his profession." -Ronald Howard [Source Link (Wikipedia)]
This, along with the fact that he has a lot to live up to considering his name and his lineage, is what ultimately shaped him for me, along with the fact that I just think that a supernatural detective who is actually one of the supernatural really just gets me.
One of the big things that I tried to do with the last minute rewrite was to add a chapter for Jack, as this will be the first time that a character that has been added to the Space Between hasn't had a chapter to themselves in the part that they were introduced in. (Don't worry, he's got a chapter coming up in the next part).
Now, he won't be part of the main roster of Space Between, that's not what I wanted for him. He's not really going to be going on jumps with them, and in fact he's going to be part of a side story that I'm currently (trying) to write, of which he'll be one of a few main characters. I don't want to give too much away from it.
I do also have another side-story coming out BEFORE then though, so you'll just have to wait a little bit for more information. :P
Back to Ghoulish Instincts - and this is probably going to be my last point on it - is Lady Eva. Originally I had a necromancer who fought them, but then it was changed. When I wrote her I had more in mind the Siren boss fight from BioShock Infinite.
Obviously she wouldn't look EXACTLY like the Siren from BioShock Infinite, but I definitely drew inspiration from her and the boss fight (That I can remember, anyways. It's been awhile).
Also the ending, when I had originally wrote it, Stephen had transported all of Nath, including the citizens, over to the Space Between. It really brought up a lot of unnecessary things, like the fact that they just weren't quite ready for all of that, beside the fact that these people had lived for a few HUNDRED years on some sort of life-lengthening magic.
I changed it because I thought that it fit the story better that everyone who had been trapped there were sort of 'released' from the magics' hold. It made way more sense, and it was just a much better ending to the story.
-EDR
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