This was the most difficult cut of Que Sera Serees. It’s also one of my favorite chapters, if not my most favorite.

Why cut it? Because the information had to be rehashed elsewhere and I didn’t want to be repetitious. It also included elements that were for this one chapter only and thus were expendable.

The chapter immediately following this is “Crashdown”. Given that the final version has it as Chapter 2 and this one would put it at Chapter 5, you can extrapolate from this that I…uh…consolidated the first few chapters.

It’s been years since publication and I still debate whether I should have cut it or not. Several chapters were written during the early drafts of the novel, but, again, they didn’t really advance the larger plots of the tale. That said, I would like to revisit these characters in another story, series, or novel. I like Li and Ship together and wonder about their adventures.