By PATRICK CABELLO HANSEL
Author”™s note: this story picks up years after the saga of Searching, serialized in 34 issues of the Alley in the early 2010”™s. In that story, we met Luz and Angel, two 19 year olds running from their past and searching for their future, along with a score of beautiful and strange neighbors.
Patrick Cabello Hansel, is a Phillips Community resident, poet, pastor, and the author of the serial novel “Searching” that has appeared with a new chapter each month the last three years. What does Patrick have in common with Charles Dickens, Henry James, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Herman Melville, and Rudyard Kipling. Gustave Falubert, Leo Tolstoy, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Wilkie Collins, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Boleslaw Prus, Tom Wolfe, Michael Chabon, Stephen King, Michel Faber, Orson Scott Card, Laura Hickman, and Lawrence Watt-Evans? See more about serial stories below.
Alley Communications has been honored and pleased to have been able to publish this novel by Patrick Cabello Hansel in The Alley Newspaper, chapter by chapter, each month for nearly three years. It has been a first for The Alley and for any local community paper as far as we know.
We have been reminded by Jane Thomson, one of our most avid readers, writers, and active Alley Allies, that many noteworthy writers published novels in a serial format in newspapers or other periodicals. For example Jane points out that Charles Dickens published some of his works through serials in newspapers. He would publish chapters at regular intervals and if they were popular he would publish it as a book.
Some writers sought and even depended upon reader comments and suggestions as they developed their novels. Readers are encouraged to send or call with responses to “Searching.” Did you enjoy it? Would you have changed any part? Would you like to see this story continued or another one sometime soon?
