The Outsider: Blog

Jeff leaves the only home he's ever known and steps into the great, wide open. How many more lives will he touch along his journey?

Thus endeth the high school portion of our program, and part one of the story. Thanks to all of you who have been following along, and to those who have bookmarked the story. In re-counting the future chapters, and deeming some not ready for prime time, we have about 60 chapters left to go. The story has been chopped up from the original single file and I've already tagged to about Chapter 25, so the working cushion I spoke of earlier is still intact.

The copied-over section of the chapter has been restored. Thanks to those of you who emailed me...

Amid the dark, uncomfortable atmosphere which had settled over the Knox household after Jeff's revelation, a new light helps him (partially) emerge from that gloom.

I've already submitted a repost for this chapter (I think the mods are gonna hate me by the time this story's finished) due to a section of it being copied over by another during processing.

After seeing how short Chapter 8 was and posting Chapter 9 basically along with it, I will post more than one chapter when one is as short as Chapter 8 was. It only makes sense to me, especially when my own reaction to 8's length was "that's it?"

Jeff drops a bomb on his parents, and a family secret is revealed. Big changes are in store for our hero soon...

After reading the chapter and reposting because I've already nitpicked some errors, I've changed the request to post Chapter 9 from two days from now to immediate, as 8's length seems like a bit of a cheat...

Our intrepid hero experiences the first heartbreak of his young life; how will he handle it?

As the story's stats continue to roll in, I continue to be humbled by the reception the story is receiving. I had hoped it would be well received, but this has beyond anything I had dreamed of.

I noted that Chapter 7 was about 9-10 kilobytes, and looking at the file sizes of upcoming chapters, Chapter 8 will be about half of what Chapter 7 was, about 5 kilobytes. Chapter 9 will, however be 22 KB, and Chapter 10 about 8 KB. I'm aiming for about 15 KB to be consistent, but not all chapters are created equal.