BoM/TWS Message Forum

Arc begins here: "A Trip Past the Supermarket" 

This was written for a commission: Will gets put in the body of one of the conspirators in the teachers' arc. The initial idea also included Will dealing with an infirmity, but the commissioner was not really wedded to the idea that Will suffer from dementia or anything like that. The idea, tbh, didn't thrill me, but I saw an easy way of at least getting into the story, using Garson Dow and his terminal condition as an entry point, so I accepted.

As I wrote it, I did get more involved with it. Given the circumstances, Will would not be stuck as Heather Dow for very long -- the conspirators would quickly notice that something had gone wrong with the masks -- so I had to hustle him out of town. That gave me plenty of scope both for some TG play, and for back story. The best part for me, frankly, was getting inside the psychology of the two thieves: what would it be like for them to be so sorely tempted, and to give in to it.

It also helped that the commission was for only 5 chapters, which turned out to be just the right length for what interested me. James Lamont showed up at just the moment I had run out of invention.

Also: I was writing these chapters while publishing the previous arc (Will-as-Melody meets the Brotherhood), so the history of Saratoga Falls gets dragged into in the last chapter, and Doris Grissom gets a little more texture so that she's not just a sweet little old lady. Rachel Burton didn't mean anything to me, I'll confess. I think she was canonically a victim in the teachers' arc, and that's the reason I picked her for Heather. And because Heather needed a motive to pick Rachel, I made up some family history for both her and Rachel to explain it. But I made up something that I *think* could have possibilities.