After posting the season one finale of Vacancy at 11:30pm on a Monday, my scheduled release day, for the 15th time in a row, I’m sitting here feeling very fucking pleased with myself. After 6 months, 25 parts, and about 40,000 words, I actually, like, finished something. Well, sorta.
But first of all, for those of you who have read, toiling away on your screens, straining your eyes, trying to make sense of the typos I often find way after the fact and the plot holes that I really didn’t patch and the dropped story lines that you hope I’ll pick back up (and maybe I will! MAYBE) I just want to say, Dear Reader, thank you, and I love you. I usually cringe when I hear any creator telling their followers they love them, but I think I am kind of starting to get it.
If you’ve stuck through this with me or you’re just reading for the first time, I feel like you should know these things: Vacancy started out in my mind as a serialized story, specifically a television show I never thought I’d actually pitch. I thought about trying my hand at a script, but it never felt right. Then I tried the serialized novel thing way back in July of 2016. I posted the beginning of the story in four parts, but I’d been trying to write the story out as just a traditional novel way before then (like 2014). I had a vague idea of the over arching story, but I started republishing this past year without a super solid plan, I just wanted to get myself writing again. I used NaNo 2017 to roughly draft out what I wanted to accomplish this year, and lo and behold, it exists!
My plan for Vacancy is to have it run for three “seasons” and about 25 installments each season. I’m hoping I can post from August through December/January to complete season two, then February through July 2019 to finish the last season. It seems absolutely crazy to be planning this far ahead, and who knows what life will throw at me in the meantime, but having some kind of plan is the only way I’ll be able to move forward.
Although this is far from the end, the fact that I’ve been working with these characters in my head for well over four years and finally completed something with them feels pretty monumental. There are a lot of things I would change, but I love where they’ve taken themselves and where I see their potential going.
I also love what this project has done for me as a writer in general. I’m less afraid of sucking now because basically I barely edit before throwing these things out into the ether. My suckiness is on display every week, and I’m cool with that. Not that I think that’s how writing should be done, but it sure is a great way to get over yourself. It’s also great to have a deadline so you actually do something, and that has really shown me the value in a plan for your writing. Muses are fickle and cannot be relied upon to show up on Sunday evening to bestow me with the next installment. I gotta plot that shit out.
Oh, and there’s that whole podcast thing I’m doing. That’s pretty wild.
So here we are, Dear Reader, you and me and Lorelei on the brink of something cool. We should wish ourselves luck, we’re probably going to need it.
A.K. Caggiano 