Dinner Break Chapter Four has been posted, and with that, the story has come to a close. A reader has intrigued me by suggesting there be some kind of epilogue, and I’m not ruling out that idea, although I also feel like I’m satisfied with the ending the story does have, at least for now.

This particular story has been rattling around in my head since 2017, and it makes me realize how difficult it will be to get all of the stories I have in my head onto the page. There is a comforting inevitability to having ideas for stories, as if I’m shelving them and going, “Someday you’ll be a fully written story.” Again I say, Consequences was basically planned since I was a few chapters into Being More Social. I knew the whole story then, and carried it with me for years. This story was no different.

Along the way, details change – I’m happy to say every chapter of Dinner Break was different when I planned it versus when I wrote it down. Every chapter (especially Paul’s chapter) benefitted from this. It’s another reason why I take a grey stance on planning versus spontaneity. Some days I feel more strongly about one end of the scale or the other, but on a whole I think it’s healthy to keep both in mind. Even so, the story coming to life felt inevitable, and that inevitability for some reason never faded. It was like it was always with me, and now gets to be the world’s property. There’s a strange comfort to that.

Follow the Leader may well be the next story I complete. I don’t know how long it will be. I think I mused about that on a previous blog post, but perhaps I didn’t. I’ll say it now – I foresee it being around 10 chapters, total. That might change, and it might not. However long it takes to finish, I guess. As I said, grey areas between planning and being spontaneous. And who knows? Maybe my supporters on Patreon might vote for another story entirely to begin. All I know is, the curtain has been called for Dinner Break. We’ll see if there’s an encore, but I’m not making promises either way. I’ll talk to you all next week.