What's wrong with the unresolved issue? It leaves a delicate flavour of possibility of a future book.

It gives him more importance, though, too. Whiny villains don't do well in returns unless they're mad genius whiny villains. Tracy is whiny, didn't you say, Susan?

Well, in the nature of things in romance world, the most Jack and Anna can be is supporting characters in someone else's story, and the only way I can see it happening at all is if I get to write their children's stories someday, a quarter century later on the other side of the Atlantic. Not really seeing a place for Tracy there.

No, if I don't kill him, I feel like there needs to be some kind of resolution--or, at least, that I can't go through with my original plan of just using him as the impetus to get Anna to return to England and then getting him out of the way in an easy, no-consequences manner. Crit partner was right to call me on having created an implausibly stupid blackmailer. If he lives, he has to have some kind of continuing presence in the story.

Tracy is whiny, didn't you say, Susan?

Oh, hella whiny.

Could you make him die of complications from the wound she gives him, later on in the book? I'm all for anything that adds layering to characters, when it's possible to do it without compromising the story.

It's a possibility. Once I'm finished with the Lucy rewrite, I think I'm going to sketch out a rough outline/synopsis just to see how much plot I have, and whether I need to complicate or simplify to have the right balance for the length and feel I'm aiming for.

Question (rather urgent): streetlamps in a small town in Texas in 1895.

Gaslight? Naptha? Oil lamps?

Or would there be any at all? Would the only light have been from surrounding buildings? This is the Town Hall we're talking about.

I am so. damned. close. to finishing this fucking story. Stupid tiny details.

Deb, I could email a friend who would know (Texas historian), but I likely won't hear back until tomorrow or Sunday. Is that soon enough?

ETA: I emailed him your question. I will post when I get an answer. Hopefully, it will be soon enough.

Thanks, love.

Anyone want to beta? The denouement's a breath away, coming up at Placid Field; big the big revelations have been made.

Deb, odds are either kerosene or none at all. I found this in a history [link] of Liberal, Kansas, which is a little town just north of the Oklahoma panhandle. (It was the closest "big" town to Guymon, Oklahoma, where my parents lived for several years.):

In 1899 Liberal installed its first city lights. They consisted of coal-oil lamps placed on street corners on eight-foot poles and were the pride of the city. Local people bragged about being able to read their mail under the street lights. In 1908 a few electric street lights were added into the business district but homes continues to use coal-oil or kerosene lamps at that time.