ARTICLE 37 FREE ZONE - WARNING ENTER HERE ONLY AFTER LISTENING TO EPI 30

[nlowell]

OK.

Have at it.

I'll have some words. I'll even throw out the offer to rewrite the book IF you can convince me there is a better story.

So far, the major bitch seems to be you feel manipulated (Jamming) or somehow let down by a dark and depressing ending.

A. No. You were not manipulated any more than any story teller uses plot, character, scene, and structure to hook an audience.

B. I'm seeing this as an upbeat ending. He's alive. He's got a mission. He's getting on with his life and not curled in a ball licking his wounds. The man is FINALLY free after nearly twenty years of being pushed from one thing to another. Somebody is going to have to explain to me what's dark and depressing there.

So. Rock on. Have at it. Article 37 is not in force in this forum.

[JaneAtPlay]

B. I'm seeing this as an upbeat ending. He's alive. He's got a mission. He's getting on with his life and not curled in a ball licking his wounds. The man is FINALLY free after nearly twenty years of being pushed from one thing to another. Somebody is going to have to explain to me what's dark and depressing there.

Very cool.  A much better use of my snow day than shovelling 

I'll leave it up to my better to crack the seal on the messy parts of  [article37].  Rebuttal is much more fun. 

The statement above?  I 'got it'.  I can find the hope in the ending chapters and I didn't think you were all that subtle about Ishmael's small successes towards shaking off the numbness. 

I love that Greta had a whelkie and how Ish takes it on as his own, but I think the strongest indicator of his healing (other than his final 'snap' at the end) is when the whelkie reminds him of the mementos from his Mother in that folder at the bottom of his truck.  He's able to relinquish Greta to where he keeps the other good memories of those he's lost.

You're a brave man, Nate.  Should be fun watching the fur fly. 

[mimccart]

Okay, I'll be first.

Nate, don't re-write the story--NO MATTER WHAT!  It was your story and I don't think you went the direction you did without a lot of thought about how it would be received.  And you still wrote it.  It's out there now.  I've said it before, I applaud your decision and I think that eventually the general consensus will be that the story is better for it.  You made the difficult choices instead of easy and obvious ones.

I don't think we were manipulated.  What if we took the whole assassination attempt/death of Greta and moved it to the beginning of the book?  I think people would feel differently about it and the general direction of the plot wouldn't be changed all that much.  Leave the villain reveal to the end and it's much the same story.  The difference is that there would be time for people to have moved on and healed.  I think that the end of the series, coupled with the fact that most people assumed that Ish and Greta would live happily ever after--and then we know what happened--feel shocked that things dramatically changed when they felt secure in guessing the ending.  If you added another 5-10 chapters and tied up loose ends, showed Ish going to Port Newmar to do Tai Chi, etc. there would be a different response.

My biggest problem with the ending isn't really a problem.  I don't really want it to be over and I was sort of pulling for the lotto win ending for Ish.  Didn't happen--at least not in this series.  I also wanted Ish to stand up for himself against Christine.  Instead of rolling over and getting bought out, how about negotiating with her about starting a separate luxury travel company as opposed to just rolling it up into DST?  How about Ish suggesting they partner up?  Anything except just accepting his fate as decided by someone else.  Guess what?  It wasn't written that way.  Nothing completely settled, not put away nice and neat, no answers to all the burning questions.  Sucks being a fan, right?  But, man, how many authors have the courage to do that to their characters and fan base?  So many would just cowtowto OUR requests and desires.  Maybe someday Nate will be known more for some series yet to be written, but I predict that this series will be his claim to great fame for a long time to come and I, for one, am glad he didn't compromise.  (Even if I still want more.)  And a compromise is what it would have been if things had been too neat.

[mimccart]

Damn, got beat to the "Post" button!

[surfsailor]

Hope has been a near constant through the series.  The 'trust Lois' bit persisted well after Ish had moved on.  The end seemed much the same to me though obviously not the end I, or anyone else expected.  A better story to be had by changing it?  No, just a different story.  I really liked Greta though more because of what she did to and for Ish than anything else.  

We can I think safely assume that the windfall from the auction and theoretical buy out has left Ishmael in a very good financial position.  Combined with having no obligations to any but himself and the canvas is fresh...and hopeful.  Again.

[Hade]

OK, let me have a stab at this.

First of all, those who disagree should correct me if I'm wrong, but I think there are very few of us here who, now that we've had some time to think about it, consider the ending in itself unduly dark and depressing. What you say is true. In a sense, Ishmael is getting a chance to start over, this time on his own terms. I, for one, don't think of that as a bad thing -- on the contrary.

Still, it's not exactly a happy ending, either. Or to me it doesn't feel that way, precisely *because* it's a bit of a reboot. I realize there is no such thing as truly starting over in life, and I hope, with all of the seemingly valuable relationships we've seen Ishmael build over the years, that his past will work for him, not against him. But still. It seems to me he's finding himself alone in the universe once again, just like when his mother died, except that this time it's by choice. He's, maybe not running, but at least temporarily recusing himself from everyone who has been important to him since he first set foot on Diurnia. I find that idea at least a little bit depressing.  

The thing that really got me, though, to the point where I found myself calling you 'evil spawn' (will you accept my apology for that?), was Greta's death. It has been argued elsewhere that we didn't really know Greta very well, and I tend to agree with that. So then why, when she died, did I care enough to start insulting you over it?

There are a couple of reasons. Chief among them is the fact that I really thought Ishmael deserved something better than what he got. From a storytelling perspective, I know that doesn't make a whole lot of sense, especially if you were planning on more Ishmael Wang stories. Had Greta lived, they may have gotten their happy ending, but it would have been a really boring one. If it was your intention to throw the story wide open again at the end of the Share series, then I think you accomplished that very well.

That of course leaves your listeners with their emotional response to the fact that something really crappy happened to someone they had come to care about. It was the very definition of a pointless act of violence. Not that there are many violent acts that make sense in this world, but still. Greta didn't have to die. She was in the wrong place at the wrong time. She was never Simpson's target, and having her killed in no way helped him accomplish his ultimate goal.

And I think that's what ultimately 'destroyed' the story for some people. There have been random and not-so-random acts of violence throughout the series, but none of them have felt quite as pointless as this one. That's not because being raped or beaten by a superior, or robbed of all your money by a stranger, inherently makes more sense. It's because until Red attacked this crew, we've always had the benefit of seeing Ishmael do something constructive after something like this happened. This time, we mostly saw him be miserable, and it made us wonder why. Why did you have to do this to him?

It doesn't matter that we can answer that question by looking at it from a different angle -- that of telling a good story. What matters is that your stories have been a source of hope for many of us for as long as we've known about them. It's hard to find hope in the story of a man who looses the person he loves most to an utterly pointless act of violence.

[joshg]

I also wanted Ish to stand up for himself against Christine.  Instead of rolling over and getting bought out, how about negotiating with her about starting a separate luxury travel company as opposed to just rolling it up into DST?  How about Ish suggesting they partner up?  Anything except just accepting his fate as decided by someone else. 

I didn't feel like he was "accepting his fate decided by someone else" at all.  I felt like Christine gave him an out.  She offered him a different path if he wanted to escape.  A choice freely given, a path freely chosen.

That single act I think was the first major decision Ish had made in 20 years that was purely his own choice.  He wasn't manipulated.  He wasn't pressured.  He wasn't forced.  He was given the option to keep trudging on the path he had been thrust on or to start over.  He chose to wipe the slate clean.

[mimccart]

I also wanted Ish to stand up for himself against Christine.  Instead of rolling over and getting bought out, how about negotiating with her about starting a separate luxury travel company as opposed to just rolling it up into DST?  How about Ish suggesting they partner up?  Anything except just accepting his fate as decided by someone else. 

I didn't feel like he was "accepting his fate decided by someone else" at all.  I felt like Christine gave him an out.  She offered him a different path if he wanted to escape.  A choice freely given, a path freely chosen.

That single act I think was the first major decision Ish had made in 20 years that was purely his own choice.  He wasn't manipulated.  He wasn't pressured.  He wasn't forced.  He was given the option to keep trudging on the path he had been thrust on or to start over.  He chose to wipe the slate clean.

I actually agree.  But I wanted to see the "strong" Ish.  I wanted to see him assertively in control, but I was commenting on my happy ending, lotto win version--not on the ending as written.

[Tara_Li]

My problem is that Greta's return was so sudden, and I'm not sure it was in character for Ish to accept her back so easily.  It almost seemed like the *ONLY* reason she was brought back into the story was to turn around and die almost instantly.  Certainly this kind of stuff is somewhat realistic, but at the same time - it felt very formulaic to me.

Really, the problem I think most people are seeing - that I'm seeing - is that Ish just didn't feel like Ish a lot of the time, especially with respect to Greta.  That's probably fix-able in the edit for publication, I think.

I have to wonder if you felt pressured by the anticipation of your readers to cut the editing on this short - perhaps if you'd managed to pull more from the later sections, you might have been able to put things back in at the front end that would have made it feel better...

[nlowell]

now the I've got a minute, lemme see if I can clear up some things.

I gave almost no thought to how the story would be received. That's not my job as story teller. My job is to tell a good story. If it's a good story, people will respond. If it's a bad story, people won't care. From that perspective, I've succeeded beyond my wildest dreams. I'd have preferred that people like it, but the truth is? Out of 15,000 people? Whatever story I ended this series with, it would piss off some of them. Heck, a lot of people HATE Quarter Share because Ishmael's too good, always wins in the end, and never makes a mistake (also wrong but that's what they think).

Now, nitty gritty. Here's a blast of backstory. The stuff that went into the book. If you've gotten here after ignoring the warning about listening to all of it first, you're about to get spoilered.

Ishmael being off-balance and Greta coming back into his life "suddenly."  I set that up back in Captain's Share. This is one of the plot points that everybody has overlooked. You've seen the symptom and ignored the root. Perhaps I didn't do it blatantly enough, but many of you have commented on how he's making bad decisions -- doing things the old Ishmael wouldn't do. Who was his center in Captain's Share? Who worked into his conscience? Greta. She talked to him when others couldn't or wouldn't and when he didn't know he needed talking to. She was gone. The opening scene set up the whole thing by pulling them physically apart before they could patch it back up. After he was yanked away, they both had problems but we only saw Ishmael's and we only saw the evidence because that's the limit of first person POV. He *couldn't* see it. He's blind to that as somebody pointed out in one of the other threads. You saw him make bad decisions. You saw him missing her smiles. You saw him wishing he had the support he used to have back on the Agamemnon. He did everything except admit to himself that he needed her with him and damn the rules. When he walked aboard and found her waiting, it was water to a drowning man. Of course he took her back.

Using the corporate skullduggery as sub plot to give him a reason for being pushed into the owner's seat seemed less deus ex than the alternatives. It serves the purpose of pushing him up the ladder. Each book he has to deal with the challenges of that level. Financials, contracts, back stabber, and mega money makes this level much riskier than anything he's ever faced and he is in over his head. The first time he signs the contract without getting it vetted should have tipped you off that he was in trouble. Most of you focused on the terms of the contract and completely blew off the "wtf is he doing?!" moment. There were others and some of you picked up on them. They were not accidents. They were not artificial. Dealing with being captain was NEVER his main problem here. It was being OWNER. And he failed. He failed big because he got pushed out of his comfort zone without his support structure (see paragraph above). He failed because he's only half there and because of the Peter Principle.

Ames Jarvis was the real red herring. Everybody thought he was important because he stood to gain so much from the deal. And he did, but as somebody tossed out and then ignored -- Geoff Maloney would not have a second in command who'd do that. Kirsten and Ames actually tried to get Maloney to back off the codicil. He *did* freeze her assets and that was to keep her from using her financial influence and he got it thru the Board because it was part of the will that Christine was not privy to. He was on Breakall to survey the salvage claim and to put a bid on the ship. He was posted there as the acting station chief to manage that effort. When Maloney died, he had to come home fast. The board decided not to pursue a bid with so much up in the air. You focused on the red herring nicely.

Jezelbel/Iris was named for Maloney's cheating wife. He bought it to pursue some half baked idea and to keep the money out of his ex-wife's hands. It was a revenge purchase and never had any purpose in the fleet. The clues were there. Nobody put them together. it's a minor point but it explains why the ship was there and why it never got used. After buying it in pique, he never really looked at what it could do. He was bad about that. Too much money, too little time, and too busy playing the game to really deal with things. He realized it shortly before he died and started the process to get rid of it. He saw it as an albatross - a reminder of his past he didn't need.

Geoff Maloney died of natural causes. His heart just gave out and by the time, they found him, it was too late to revive him. Only very wealthy people can afford to be that alone. There was a temptation to make him be the victim of some corporate plot. It would have been gratuitous and added nothing to the story except unnecessary complications.  The codicil was his way of giving Christine an opportunity to gain some cred with the fleet. He didn't have anything in mind, but he knew his daughter would never let the challenge go and also knew she'd win in the end. It also allowed him to save a little face.

William Simpson was the spider at the center of the web. Money and profit was his be-all and end-all. He was sleeping with Vernoica Dalmati to be close to the biggest shipping company in the quadrant. He owned Umbra, the security company, and convinced generations of executives that they needed protection. Almost every one of his bodyguards was engaged in the kind of "job security" operation that Montgomery Bailey was. It allowed him to keep a tag on all the key players in all the industries in the quadrant. He was focused, ruthless, and completely devoid of scruples. You knew that. You thought he'd go at Ishmael through the contracts. He didn't need to. The contracts were all perfectly straightforward and highly lucrative. More misdirection on my part, but useful for letting Simpson know that Ishmael was an easy target.

David Patterson aka Percival Herring was a psychotic. He was Simpson's private enforcer. His job was whatever Simpson asked for and he did his job with ruthless efficiency. He spent his early days aboard doing as little as possible, laying down his cover as "dumb spacer" as thoroughly as he could. When Ishmael finally got his act together and fired Bailey, he had a problem and had to stay close to the ship. He didn't suddenly become more useful. He needed to stay where he could keep an eye on them because with Chief Bailey gone, Simpson lost his eyes aboard.

His mission was to wound Ishmael and take Christine Maloney out of space. He had to do it away from Diurnia to keep her out of her support base and to make it as difficult as possible for Jarvis and the Board to figure out what was happening. When DuBois offered the excuse and the perfect bait, Simpson jumped on it. Everybody assumed it was Jarvis behind it. Jarvis didn't know anything about it and didn't need to. Christine fingered Jarvis on the basis of the process server and her distrust of a man she doesn't know. The process server worked for Umbra.

The plan was going very nicely except for two things. The TIC had been a little too nosey after Mirafiori (the last little bit of corporate chicanery) and Simpson feared that Patterson was too much of a loose cannon. So when Bailey showed up as fired, Simpson sent him back to Greenfields to act as his spotter on the ground there. When Patterson missed his target, killing Greta inadvertantly while trying to disable Christine, he had no time to form a new plan. With everybody down, Christine Maloney uninjured but the entired crew disabled, he had to cover his tracks and run. He killed the chief to cut down on the number of knowledgeable witnesses and bolted. The ship that the TIC chased was not the ship he was on. That was a decoy. He laid low and left the orbital three weeks later. If it had been stopped and boarded, there would be nothing to find.

I *think* those are the big pieces. Structurally within the frame work of the six book series, the story needed to accomplish some stuff. It needed to tie off some of the loose ends - like Ishmael's Father. (The fact that they spent so little time "on stage" together was a simple artifact of "they didn't get time." They both had responsibilities.) It had to address the trials and tribulations of being an owner instead of just a captain. It had to deal with his problems in having relationships. The don't screw with crew thing became a meaningless absolute. It blocked him from exploring the deeper relationships that he'd already seen evidenced in the past stories. It had to end the Shares by breaking him out of the cycle and putting him back ashore. Failing to do that, keeping him IN the cycle, means I can't tell the future stories that I want to tell with him and keeps him from completing the journey he began when his mother died in a senseless accident. He has to break out of this cycle and the impetus for moving him out of it has to be at least as powerful as the force that put him into it. Since the death of his mother put him there, something simple like having Greta tell him to piss off ain't gonna make it.

Most of the alternatives and suggestions are variations on "and they lived happily ever after" and ignore the reality that in order to end the Shares, Ishmael has to go back to NOT being a spacer. He's not running away, as some of you have suggested. He's not selling out. He's completing a part of his journey. It's part of life. Every so often, if you're very lucky, you get to gather yourself, assess your circumstances, and find a new trajectory. From that standpoint, this book is right in line with the other stories. These are real things that happen to real people in an imaginary universe. If you didn't think so, you wouldn't be upset. Life is upsetting. It's messy. it's complicated. But it's also simple.

Follow your heart.

And THAT was Ishmael's flaw.

[mimccart]

Damn.  I feel like I'm sitting in Nero Wolfe's office at the end of an investigation.  I needed this--perhaps as an epilogue?

Here are a couple of questions and comments I posed in a PM:

I'm not fond of the ending because I didn't want it to end.  <But I really do like the way it ended, if it had to end.>  I REALLY enjoyed the majority of the story, especially the tech stuff pertaining to the Iris.  In the movie "Stand By Me" there is a conversation where they are talking about the TV show "Wagon Train."  One of the boys says, "Do you ever notice that they never get anywhere on Wagon Train?  They just keep wagon-training..."  I think I wanted Ish to keep wagon-training (especially in the Iris) some more before there was an end to it.

There are still a lot of questions left unanswered.  There was never any indication at the end of Christine's year aboard if Ish had received his auction payout yet and how much it was.  I'd like to know more about how Ish and Frank got along.

If Ish was going to take the buyout from Christine at the end, I would have liked to see him negotiate for the Iris as part of it.  Let him have his personal yacht to travel around on and do a little trading, too.

If the intention was to get Ish away from being a spacer, then bravo and well done!  It was an excellent execution of that.

[nlowell]

Christine Maloney claimed her inheritance and took over as majority stock holder in DST. She gave Ishmael twenty million per for his shares of Icarus and the company was folded into DST but maintained the imprint as the luxury travel line. In a year she'll have the Higbee Yard revive the 9500 Starlighter hull with some upgrades as an exclusive design for Icarus.

She will hire Ames Jarvis to be CEO and return to being chef on the Iris for three more stanyers.

Ishmael can't stay aboard the Iris. He sells it with the company.

The Chernyakova has still not been settled.

[mimccart]

In a year she'll have the Higbee Yard revive the 9500 Starlighter hull with some upgrades as an exclusive design for Icarus.

She needs to tell Higbee to put a hydraulic control at the top of the ladder to the first deck, not just on the cargo level.  ;-)

20 million per?  Damn!  So Ish gets away with 100 mil, DST owes the investors and he STILL has another 10-12 mil coming from the auction?  Maybe I got my lotto winning ending after all. 

Once again, I stand applauding!!

"...and after spending almost three months in advanced training with Master Newmar at the Academy, Ish is offered a teaching position by the Commandant, Alys Giggone." --from the draft manuscript of Nate's new novel.  (Working title, "Professor's Share."  To be renamed later.)

[mogrith]

My issue is it's not until book 6 that a such a pivotal character dies.  I actually like stories where this can happen. No character is safe. George RR Martin does this in many of his stories, TV and Text.

But when all the other violence that happens in 5 other books doesn't kill anyone it seemed out of place. Not wrong or impossible just crossing a line that had been gone up to but not crossed before. Even the psycho sex freaks on the 'Billy' did not succeed in killing anyone ish knew.

Now just because Pall, Hill, Pip and others were injured but not killed maybe I'm in the wrong for thinking that should happen one more time.

[JaneAtPlay]

Thank you Nate!  While I was off trying to formulate my question - you went and posted the answer! (but I've still got a picky one).

I was trying to figure out the Perc/Bailey/Simpson dynamic.  Somebody was out of control.  I had 3 choices - (or 2 really, if   Kurt's info that the plan was just to rough up Christine was reliable, it must have come from Simpson during the trial).
    
Was it Perc, or was he just Simpson's new, more violent thug and part of his job was to take out the old thug (Bailey).  
Was it Bailey and his bruised ego send him over the edge, or  
Was it Simpson, progressing to greater and greater violence as Christine continued to succeed, jeopardizing his prize.
  
I thought the story could have used just a few more crumbs of that back story.  Maybe Kurt suggesting that Perc was actually suspected in the other deaths or something.  If that was implied - I didn't get it. I only got the implication of Simpson and the question was nagging at me.

The picky question.  

Kirsten characterizes Christine in such a poor light when first meeting Ishmael with her plan.  She's a spoiled rich kid who can't be trusted to carry out the requirements of the codicil in good faith?   Yet at the end, Christine introduces Kirsten as one of her oldest and dearest friends.  

Was Kirsten trying to set up a bigger challenge for Ishmael?  Make sure he felt he had something to teach her?  I'm not sure I can see how things would have played out much differently, if Christine was presented as a level headed person who knew nothing about the business.   If Ish notices the disconnect between the description and his experience with Christine (we never see one), what did that accomplish?

I've already picked apart Greta out here, so I'm not going down that lane.  Suffice to say - I was a fan.

This one will be interesting to read in print, after all the polishing and editing.