I have a MySQL database that I use to organize a collection of fiction for
a website with PHP. I'm trying to provide a way to not display stories
that are part of long series, meaning that the displayed stories are
not part of any series or they are part of a series with fewer than six
books in it. The relevant tables in the database are set up like this:

CREATE TABLE seriesorder (
storyid int not null,
seriesid int not null,
position int not null,
primary key (storyid, seriesid)
)

CREATE TABLE story (
storyid int not null auto_increment,
title varchar(50),
// and other information, none of which concerns series
primary key storyid
)

Each story is associated with zero or more series. Each seriesid is
associated with at least two storyid's.

I need to end up with a temporary table that contains a list of storyids
that are not part of long series so that I can use this temporary table
in the query that does the work of displaying stories on the website.
I've come up with a workable solution (below), but the fact that it's in
three steps makes me suspect that there's a better way to do things. Is
there some way to combine these queries into something more efficient?

CREATE TEMPORARY TABLE longseries SELECT DISTINCT seriesid FROM
seriesorder GROUP BY seriesid HAVING count(*)>5;

CREATE TEMPORARY TABLE wrongids SELECT story.storyid FROM story,
seriesorder, longseries WHERE story.storyid=seriesorder.storyid AND
seriesorder.seriesid=longseries.seriesid;

CREATE TEMPORARY TABLE rightids SELECT story.storyid FROM story LEFT
JOIN wrongids ON story.storyid=wrongids.storyid WHERE wrongids.storyid
IS NULL;

Thanks for any help or advice,

-- Caitrin