Murder By The Book - Ender's Game

At the point where it was just "some slightly conditional wincons related to lovers, plus lover-searching, plus maybe some lover-protective powers" it wasn't .... /that/ nuts.

(also, I mean, I knew that if he was lying he was scum, and if he was scum I could deal with it Later.)

The ridiculous part was when he claimed he died if you did when you were already a lover.

There was a possibility of three deaths at once if Agent targeted one of you, yes. But that was just an outside chance. Whereas the role Pala initially claimed would have had no point to it other than making three deaths-for-the-price-of-one possible. That's why everyone found it ridiculous.

This game.

This game.

The only truly amazing part was after the fact how I found out what a mess I had made of everything. I had fun but I kind of felt like we didn't have a chance from about day four. The redirecting lovers and 'screw you scum' power play were almost as painful as writing my fakeclaims (especially the last one)

The one thing I thought of later was that I could have tried to force a no lynch and shot Schazer or Sotek myself and I do regret not trying to pull that.

Epilogue

A year has passed. The surviving authors have gone their separate ways.

At first, they tried to submit to other publishers, but their association with Iconoclast and its demise hurt their chances. Kellerman worked out only a 14 percent chance of acceptance by another publisher.

And so they turned to other fields, hoping to build new reputations, and perhaps return to writing once more.

Kinsey Kellerman went to work as a poll analyst. He was able to precisely calculate the negligible effects of a badly-worded gaffe or a strong debate performance on a candidate's chances, and soon found his services in high demand.

Joel Braddock went to Hollywood, trying to persuade a studio to make a Vin Incible movie. He was successful, and Vin Incible and the Straightforward Set-up will be opening in another six months.

Susan D. Nimm and Stella Rheasdottir kept a lower profile. They stayed local and decided to work as relationship counselors. Most of their clients were satisfied, though they tended to be a bit baffled by the large amount of unusually specific advice about how to keep a strong relationship even if you were locked in a publishing office with a gang of bloodthirsty murderers.

None of the four did a lot of reading in that time; they found it too traumatic in light of their experiences.

But then, even if they had kept it up, they likely wouldn't have noticed the release of Jimmy the Guinea Pig and the Nefarious Novelists, written by promising new children's author Phillip Heavensby. It wasn't widely distributed, after all.

If they had, they might have noticed more than a few interesting characters among the cast. The delightful woman who created delicious cakes, the eccentric who told fortunes, the critic who couldn't keep his hands off everyone's books. And the guinea pig who would have foiled the whole scheme if only the silly authors would listen to him.

But they would no doubt only find it an amusing coincidence and then return to their lives, all while hoping to return to writing one day.

As it turned out, it wouldn't be long before the four of them received an offer from a new publisher - a less reputable one than they had worked for before.

That, however is a story for another time.