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When the Round Robin Comes Bob-Bobbin' Along

Today's chapter in The Wandering Stars—"Kenandandra Comes to Oswego" —completes my latest commission. It was fun to write, but there's no denying that it was repetitive. I hope the variations, and the hints of what Will might look like with different ousiarchs, was at least diverting.

And what's up next?

Well, Masktrix has launched a new branch in Book of Masks.

Interactive: "A Night in the Basement" .
Public: "Making a Break for It"  -> "A Night in the Basement" 

You should definitely check it out, because this one is going to be interesting.

Awhile back, in a branch set at St. Xavier's, Masktrix and I wrote a storyline by batting alternate chapters back and forth between each other. We didn't have a plot in mind, nor did we have an end point. We just each wrote a chapter, sent it to the other, and waited for a new chapter to come back.

It was a lot of fun, so last week I organized a bigger version of the same thing, with more authors: Masktrix, Nostrum, rugal, WordSmitty, and myself. (I invited imaj and smitch to join, but they declined.) We've got nine chapters written so far, and it's been interesting. Unpredictable. A lot of fun both to write and read. And today we're launching it.

Background, so you'll know what's going on: Will Prescott has bought a book on making magical disguises, and he and his best friend, Caleb Johansson, have been playing around with it. They've made a mask of Will, and Caleb has put it on and gone back to Will's house to spend the night there while Will camps out in the basement of the old elementary school in his neighborhood. But Will was accidentally spotted by some friends of his kid brother. After running home to find Caleb, Will and Caleb are now returning to the school, and from a distance they see that the basement door is open ...

Oh, and how did we settle on this area to continue? Well, Masktrix chose "Keep investigating the book" at the end of "The Fake Book"; Nostrum chose "Show the book to Caleb" at the end of "Making a Mask"; rugal chose "Test the mask on yourself" at the end of "A Conspiracy of Two"; I chose "Go along with Caleb's plan" at the end of "You Yourself and Him"; and WordSmitty chose "Try to get home without being seen" at the end of "The Two of You." Masktrix then got to figure out how to get out of the hole that Kenny had dug at the end of "Making a Break for It," and we were off.