So the first act of Riley’s story is up, but maaaaaan. They call the first pass a vomit draft for a reason. For the past two weeks I’ve been a little quiet as I work through it and push the edits to the redesigned Aether category. Whee!

I got hung up on the chapter where Ethan confesses to Riley. It’s those pesky emotion things again. Making it right is important, and forces me to deal with intimate thoughts that I normally … don’t.

It’s been frustrating, so I needed a motivational boost. Back in 2015 I NaNo’d a tale set in the same world. It’s a short, goofy side story that I never intended to do anything with, but it felt like a revisiting it now would be just the medicine I needed to get past the editing blahs.

I sat down with my partner in crime last night, and after an hour we had the plotline swept up and a fun, general idea of the changes it needed to be public-readable. I don’t know about you, but my NaNos tend to be rough stream-of-consciousness things that don’t really worry about getting anything “right”. Bringing those in felt like a fun side gig.

That said, I hope you enjoy Jacqueline – or Jack, as she goes by in the story. She’s kind of detestable in the beginning, but she figures it out as the story develops. It’s kind of a Wizard of Oz type of thing, if Dorothy were in her forties and kind of depressed.

For my part, I’m excited to write something that features a character who isn’t young and beautiful. Jack is … okay. She starts out surly and the only pretty she is, is selfish. She’s the stereotypical professional mom with a thousand demands and limited time who has been summoned to a fantasy world to become its hero… because why shouldn’t that also be on her plate?

The goal will be to get a new chapter of hers up every day until it’s done but, you know. We’ll see how that goes. I’m not going to stress Jack’s story like I’m not stressing Riley’s.

Art takes as long as it takes. I’m not making a masterpiece here, but I’m also not a master artist… yet!

Hope you like it. If you feel up to it, leave me a comment to let me know what you think of her. Like every other character, she’s not written in stone. Just pixels. She might not be open to change, but I am.

Thanks!