Little Secrets, Little Lies

Introduction to The Original On-Line Version

The First Draft...

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Keith Morrisette

This net version of Little Secrets, Little Lies was first serialized at the Nifty Archive and at Archerland from February, 2002 until March, 2003, under the name And the Other Friends (lousy title, long story, and I’m not gonna bore you with it), and was fairly popular while it played out. Think of this version as a first draft — something I consider most post-as-you-write net stories to be. It’s loaded with what my editor called “Those damned travelogues and history lessons you write” that I insisted on keeping... and should have dropped. I’m working on a newer version for possible release as another POD novel which will be more streamlined, since this original has some nice but now superfluous scenes that were originally developed as groundwork for a story line that switched on me as the story progressed. There were some redundancies too, I’m afraid, but that can happen over a thirteen month period (hey, I write slow).

Why did the story change once it was in progress? Well, when I sat down to write LSLL, I had a different story in mind. LSLL was supposed to parallel two different relationships — Marc Wildon and Drew McKinnon, Alan Curran and David Sciuoto. But the deeper I got into it, Marc and Drew got stronger and stronger and started taking over. Not only that, but other characters started getting pushy and were constantly nudging me. Martin Seduko was the worst: “Hey, what about me?” For a guy who started off as a one-shot walk-on who didn’t even have a name, he kept on turning up every time I got busy at the keyboard, jabbing me in the shoulder begging for more pages. On the other hand, Chris St. Jacques was too tired (or lazy) to take a big part after being at the center of The Boyfriend to work through a second book. David Sciuoto’s story had been in the back of mind since I first stumbled across him, but there was no way to bring it in since Boyfriend was a first person narrative told by Chris — unless I suddenly decided to have two narrators, and that’s something I refused to do. I promised David back in November 2001 he’d have more of a presence in this second story, but as Drew and Marc became more assertive it just didn’t work out.

David’s a gentleman, however. After a brief conference, he and I agreed to wait until The Wednesday Boy to get into his life. David did insist that more of Alan Curran should come to light. “He deserves it,” David told me earnestly. “If anyone needs to have his story told, it’s that guy. My secrets can wait... take care of Toto.”