BoM/TWS Message Forum

Well, that wraps that storyline. It could have sprouted off in a lot of alternate directions and dragged on for several other chapters, but Will being a passenger to events felt like too odd a change of pace for me, and I needed to bring closure to something that had been gnawing me. The Nolan saga (not the Batman one) has been a strange diversion. It started on a very sunny day in a very strange place, when I started to ask: what happened if someone even less responsible than Will got the book? I had no intention of inventing new characters, only using existing ones, and I had no intention of expanding beyond Westside.

And now, some 100,000 words later, it sprawled into creating into first a new (or at least unexplored) teacher; then a new group; then a new school; then everything that goes with that new school... and even a group of teen delinquents associated with another school!

For my own sanity, it needed tying off. The story went in very unexpected directions (I genuinely had no intention of Will being fucked over by Vee Macklin, a character who was invented almost as a sidekick but proved so much more) that led to some of the most exciting writing collaboration I've ever been part of. The to-and-fro with Seuzz was exactly the kind of creative cycle I enjoy in writing interactive genre fiction. And the hide-and-seek was ridiculously fun from a puzzle-solving standpoint.

And while one thread has reached a non-conclusion (with Will triumphant and an entire new school at his mercy), I wanted to bring closure to the girl that started it all. Shelly Nolan, who played with magic she didn't fully understand and petrified herself. It's a fact that haunted Will through this strand, and the only way he was ever going to resolve it was with the Stellae. As I'd already set Niamh up for going to Cambridge and potentially getting involved with Fane, it seemed the neatest solution was to set them on collision course. And the idea of Will being duped into helping the bad guys was irresistible.

There are paths where that could continue: where Paige Knotts continues to trick Will and maybe even manages to manipulate him into defeating Niamh and the Stellae. There are, of course, paths where no one wins, either. But I wanted to have at least one ending where Shelly Nolan doesn't stay a statue. I felt I freakin' owed her.