The Ties That Bind

Author's Note

   This story contains BxB/MxM, so if that isn't your thing, you should probably not read any further. I won't mind. For those of you looking for smut, I apologize now, and for those of you concerned about there being smut, don't worry, there won't be any in this book; I want this story to be accessible to everybody - that doesn't mean it won't be implied once or twice - we'll see.

     I had an idea for a story that I wanted to write, so I drew up an outline, laid out a plot, and created (some of) my characters, and then I began writing.

     Sadly, this isn't that story; it should have been, but it isn't. Maybe another time, in another life I can get the story to follow the outline as I'd originally intended - that may not be so easy, this story used up my whole cast, and then some.

     As I was writing, the more I wrote, the more difficult it was to force the story into the path that I'd intended for it to go. It simply didn't want to go there. This story had a mind of its own and will I, nil I, it was going to follow its own path.

     My plot was in danger, what was I going to do?

     Well, I lost that struggle, and the story won; as I wrote, try though I did, the story slowly began to morph into something different, and what I'd intended to be a minor sub-plot actually took over (survival of the fittest?) because that's where the story kept wanting to go. The original plot became a minor sub-plot - thankfully, I was able to convince the story that the original plot was still essential, even if only as a minor sub-plot. Thankfully, it let me keep a little bit of it in there (phew!).

     I started out by writing a few of the chapters that I thought were the most important - the prologue, chapter 1, maybe 2, then skip forward to 7 or 8, then 20, and so on (you get the idea). I do not recommend doing that - it made it so much more difficult to go back and write the chapters in between! Ugh, probably because I became too focused on those key chapters (okay, okay, it was just me being lazy - don't hold it against me, please).

     One of the problems I encountered by jumping around and writing everything out of order was maintaining timelines in the story - what a pain that turned out to be. I kept having to go back and rewrite things - I finally started keeping better track, and in that way, I was able to keep things more or less consistent (if you notice blips, please let me know). When I had something that needed to be added in an earlier timeline, if there wasn't space, I called it 'chapter 5.1 or chapter 5.1.1' depending on what numbering was already in use. That did help out a lot, though it did necessitate a regular chapter re-numbering regimen (sigh).

     I also ended up adding characters as the story progressed; some of them only appear briefly here and there, others became regular cast members. Thankfully, it was easy enough to add them to my 'Cast of Characters' if I thought they would appear more than just once or twice (a bit advice: add them anyway, you never know when you'll have to call on them again - and its hell to go digging through past chapters looking for them so you get their names, and details right).

     I even created a genealogy chart for my main characters, because dates, ages, and once again, timelines - there's nothing worse than writing an entire section, only to find out that if so-and-so had this-and-that child at such-and-such a point in time, that child might not fall into an age bracket that made sense; and then you have to go back and fix all the previous chapters that didn't fit the timelines. Ugh x2!

     I can't begin to tell how many times I edited each chapter, and each time I found things that I needed to fix; I added, deleted, tweaked and then did it all over again, and yet again. Honestly, as I publish each chapter, I do the same thing yet one more time. I read a chapter, modify (I always end up changing something, even if it's only replacing certain words or phrases), and then publish -and then there's no going back... or is there?

     Eventually the story began to take shape and became the story I called 'The Ties that Bind' (I struggled coming up with the title too as my original title didn't make sense anymore) which I will be publishing here. This may not be the story I intended to write, but in the end, struggle though it may have been, I enjoyed writing it. I hope that everyone who reads this story will find it enjoyable. If you like it, please share it with your friends, vote and/or comment (I love reading all the comments).

     One last thing, the story starts out a bit slow, I hope readers will give it a chance anyway.  Enjoy!