The first book of The Mirror is done.
Basic Training came in at just over 26,000 words across fifteen chapters, and getting there took a lot more than adding pages. It started as part of a single, much shorter story — one book that ran through all five doors and out the other side. Somewhere in the middle of writing it, I realized the hallway was bigger than one book, and that the interesting part wasn’t the doors at all.
It was the kids behind them.
That’s the change that turned one story into six. In the original, Jr and Dakota went through five video game worlds alone. Now every door has somebody waiting in it — someone who came through the mirror before them, ran out of chances, and has been there ever since. Marcus has been behind the first door for two years. He can tell the boys everything about how the place works, and he cannot come with them.
Once that existed, the whole series had a spine. Five doors, five keys, five kids nobody is looking for.
Most of the work these past weeks has been giving Book One the room it needed. The hallway got a whole chapter, because two kids standing in front of six doors they can’t explain should get to be scared for more than a paragraph. The boys’ first real failure got a chapter of its own, because that’s the moment the story stops being an adventure and starts having a cost. And Marcus got a real introduction instead of walking up and explaining things — a kid who has been alone that long does not just start talking to strangers.
The book ends where Book Two begins: at the second door, with a voice on the other side of it that has been talking to nobody for eight months.
I’m starting that one next.
More Soon.