A bit of random trivia is that Carol was actually the name of the main character from the first novel I ever finished … when I was 14.
I technically still have the file, but it’s encrypted so it can never come back to haunt me, lol.
As you’d expect from a novel written by a 14-year-old, the main character was a Mary-Sue. She had unlimited magical abilities, fell head over heels for a handsome prince, but was tragically the daughter of The Evil Antagonist. So. Epic.
But, because I’m a MAJOR weirdo, I didn’t name her anything AWESOME like Silver Raventhorn or whatever.
I named her Carol.
Yeah … I dunno.
I guess I had a pragmatic streak back then, too.
My current Carol, with The Scion Suit, is not in any way related to or inspired by the original. I recycled the name because it fit as normal and average.
In this post, I’ll be discussing spoilers for The Scion Suit. If you haven’t read it, I recommend you click the link and enjoy a free story.
The big reveal at the end of The Scion Suit is that the main character, Carol, is a “seed” for a bio-mechanical alien race, and she has a chip implanted in her brain stem that allows her to connect and interface with her mechanical body — aka the Suit. The idea behind her characterization is that she starts off as literally half of herself, and is consequently a fairly boring and one-dimensional individual. The more time she interfaces with the Suit, the more she develops into a full person.
With writing different story branches, I’ve had some time to emphasize that Carol doesn’t have much going on. She has no obvious hobbies or preferences, and can’t figure out how to occupy herself when she’s left to her own devices. Heck, she gets abruptly plucked out of her life and doesn’t miss anything about it.
I’m going to go ahead and confess something here:
I feel like I’m writing a normal, average real life person.
I want to believe that real people are more rounded than that, but unfortunately one of the poignant lessons of 2020 was that, when stuck at home with no where to go, a huge number of people will spend all day watching Netflix and not much else.
How disappointing.
But I guess that since this is my little fictional world, I can pretend that everyone is far more interesting than they are in the real one.
WordPress has informed me that today is my ten year anniversary.
I distinctly remember something different, but who knows. The whole 2011-12 era was an alternate world.
In June 2011 my husband and I were living in southern California, and hating every minute of it, lol.
I guess some people like cities, but I thought that the cost of living was ridiculously high, I couldn’t open any windows in the apartment because the smell of pot would instantly stink up everything, and there was absolutely nothing to do.
Not kidding on that last one, too. I asked one of the locals in my age group what they did for fun, and they answered, “Drinking at bars.” Wow. So stimulating. I think I’ll pass.
Other than that, everyone was a massive workaholic because the cost of living was so high. The only people we met who did anything remotely interesting were homeless hippies.
I just ain’t a city girl.
Heck, yesterday I took the kids on another mile-long bike ride, and the only person we saw during the whole time was a UPS driver. I waved, and he waved back. That’s how I like it.
The air conditioner broke. ‘Tis the season of dead appliances, apparently…
And the weather forecast is promising a heat wave for the next few days. This matters because we have to order the part in for repair. Ha ha.
It might be better for me to spend the afternoons out on the patio, where I can turn on the misters to cool down. I have terrible heat tolerance.
Anyway, that’s enough whining for now.
…
Actually, no, it isn’t!
I don’t have any sort of aptitude for marketing. In fact, it’s such a foreign way of thinking for me, that it leaves me so drained and cranky that I end up completely nonfunctional for the rest of the day, then lose all ability to “follow through” afterwards.
I made some queries about how to effectively advertise over the past couple of days, and currently I have e-mails sitting in my inbox that I just don’t have the energy to open. I badly want to retreat to the kitchen to bake something sugary, and forget about the whole subject.
So I’m going to pull back for now. I learned one important lesson about Kindle keywords (use phrases instead of words) that will henceforth be applied to everything I publish, but I’m not going to sacrifice my soul for this. Heck, part of my long term “marketing” strategy was to publish a novel every year, and that ain’t gonna happen if I kill my creative energy.
Not to mention, no one enjoys a cranky mama.
I’ll probably make no-bake cookies to avoid turning on the oven while the air conditioner is broken. Seems prudent.
Anyway, I haven’t finished polishing up Alice and the Warden for official publication yet, and I particularly wanted to fix up the final few chapters where I was *obviously* fatigued when I wrote them.
And I’m working on The Scion Suit MULTIVERSE edition, lol.
I need to stick with what works for me emotionally, since I’m kind of a finicky hyper-sensitive sort that burns out easily. Patience is a virtue, and all that.
By Autumn Rain 