Kill your darlings, they say. That means you should cut the parts from your book that don’t move the plot forward, even if you love them. So, on the wise advice from my editor, I killed the final section of the novel Interference about some fippokats (well, they were going to die anyway) and write a different ending that was much more dire.
Here’s the original ending for your enjoyment: the alternate epilogue to Interference.
EPILOGUE—KELLY—LATER THAT DAY—IN ORBIT
Oh, this is the strangest place and the most wonderful. It frightened me at first, yes, although the Big Ones are happy, so we are happy, Moss and Emerald and Lime and I am Kelly. We have our sleeping box and we drink water from a tiny pipe next to strange food dishes and it is a game just to eat because the food floats. It all floats, the Big Ones and the food and the toys and us and everything.
But we do more than float, Moss and Emerald and Lime and I. We jump and hop and chase each other, leaping from wall to wall, from floor to ceiling, anyplace to anyplace, and look at this somersault, three in a row! We can fly!
We hop and we glide along the walls and ceilings and floors and tabletops, and it is easy, a twitch of the toes and now a somersault again. Here I come at a Big One, and I spread my legs to steer and slow, and the Big One catches me and says Kelly Kelly Kelly and pets me and we float to the window to look outside, but it is night, so I will stay where it is bright and warm and full of fun.
The Big One helps me spin, whee! and I come to a wall and jump off because Lime is down the hall and we can chase each other through the air. Lime sees me and launches herself at me and we meet in the air and bat at each other’s back feet and we connect and here we go! Back and forth and up and down, wall to floor to ceiling. It is the best game ever.
We can fly! We can fly!
Semiosis 