SO, WHAT THE HELL IS THE BEATLES SUITE?

It’s a series. This isn’t to say a novel, or a serial, but a series. The stories relate to one another, but sometimes in the most tangental of ways.

Now, I have to clarify this—the story *arcs* only relate to one another loosely. Each story is going to be part of a story arc. Each arc will be between (I think, so far) 4 to 7 stories. You can think of these as chapters in a continuing story. And that’s on the story index page—you’ll see "Story Arc 1" etc. to see which stories go together.

It’s the links between the story arcs that are more tenuous.

There’s two, basically. One’s a general setting-and-characters, and one’s a theme.

The first is this—the series revolves around six women. They are juniors at Endicott College in Beverly, MA, and they share a house together. Not all the stories will involve these six women, but they’ll involve these women and their surrounding social circle. They’re the center of the thing.

Now, the characters and events of The Beatles Suite are FICTIONAL—however, Endicott College does exist, and a co-worker of mine is a junior at Endicott and does share a house with five other girls there. So, while this isn’t about S. or any of her roommates, she gave me the inspiration by chatting with me about her living arrangements. It’s a house owned by the school—she pays room and board to Endicott, just like she would if she were living in a dorm—but it’s technically "off campus" (but very close by). I thought it was an interesting "center" to have for a series of stories. So, thanks to S. for jogging my brain. <G>

That’s the first, the character-and-setting part. The second, the theme? Well, you might have guessed—every story in The Beatles Suite will be inspired by, and titled after, a Beatles song.

Now, how that’s going to work is going to be varied. Sometimes I might stick real close to the lyrics. Sometimes I won’t and it’ll be a more general thing. I reserve all rights to ignore gender—the Beatles were all men and were singing to girls, but that won’t necessarily be the case in the stories. In other words, I could write a story called "She Loves You" and it might not be a guy talking to another guy about his girl—it might be a girl talking to another girl about her guy. Since I’m basing this around a house with six women, that’s going to come up, most likely, so don’t let it throw you.

Since this isn’t a novel or serial, I’m going to write and add to it when I feel like it <G>. I’ll probably have a basic idea of the characters of the six occupants of the house, but anything else I’ll just make up when a Beatles tune inspires me to do so. And, though I will endeavor to complete ‘story arcs’ quickly, so you won’t be hanging—anything else is a spare-time-when-inspiration-hits thing. With the end of DoaL and the beginning of Naked High looming, this is a secondary priority. But that’ll be fine, because the links are tenuous enough that you won’t need to have read "story arc one" to get ‘story arc two’ and so on. And, as I said, I’ll complete the ‘arcs’ in a reasonable time. But there's going to be switching off between the arcs—as I write this, I have the first 5 stories done, and there from three of the arcs. It's 1-2, 1-2, 1. However, number 6 is going to be part three of story arc one. The stories—as opposed to the arcs—aren't completely in chronological order, but they're close.

The stories aren’t going to be lengthy. Then again, the Beatles were the masters of the two minute thirty pop song. Yeah, Hey Jude was seven minutes, but I have no ideas yet for Hey Jude, so there you go <G>. The ones I've done so far are between 800 and 1800 words. That'll probably be the norm, though I see one coming up that might be quite a bit longer. They're not quite flash, but they're short. I'm trying to weave a tapestry here—and a lot of the character development will come out over time, weave in and out, cross story arcs. You learn quite a bit about Cat Willet, one of my characters, before we ever get to Cat's 'story'.

I'm writing these from first person POV. Each story will have the same POV. However, not every story in a story arc will. The first three stories in Story Arc Three, for instance, I already know, are from three different POVs.

It’ll be fun. I hope you enjoy it.

--Frank