I just read through the original solo write, it was really good! I'm very excited for the sequel!

Name: Ollie Swift

Age: 19

Gender/Pronouns: Male, he/him

Appearance: Light skin, lots of freckles, light brown eyes, short and thin. He has fluffy and curly light brown hair, round gold-rimmed glasses, and he usually wears khaki pants and button-ups in fun patterns.

Personality: Goofy, bouncy, and very friendly. He talks a mile a minute and is quick to make friends. He can be a little shy around people who intimidate him, but once he warms up to them he’s very comfortable. He has ADHD, so he can never sit still and his mind bounces from idea to idea.

Background/history: One of his moms is a librarian, so Ollie grew up surrounded by books. Authors has been his favorite since the first time he read it, and Allen Underwood inspired him to start writing poetry, though he has no intentions of publishing it. He’s going to college to be an English teacher.

Luggage: Clothes and essentials, his laptop, some textbooks, earbuds, assorted books, a notebook for poetry, and his special copy of Authors.

What color/pattern are the endpapers of your book?: Beige with blue and purple leaf designs.

Shipping: Yes!

Other: Nothing 

TOPTOPTOPTOPTOP!!!!

(Also @Allen U., would it be ok if I made another character for this to (maybe) ship with Lazerbat's character? I already have an idea for one... but if you say no that's totally fine. :)  

When will this start?

Apologies for ignoring this for so long, I've been busy and had technical difficulties. The first part of the solo write will be out later today, but for now, I'd like to answer some questions/clarify things/respond to random comments that I ignored for far too long.

Thank you to everyone for subitting your characters! I'm very excited to write about them, each and every one is unique and delightful.

@Joan and Azalea: Yes, of course I can ship Will and Lily! Romance is not my best genre, but I do enjoy adding in a bit of it.

@Joan: I'm sorry, everyone may only submit one character. I am not great at writing for huge character casts, and also I am annoying and want there to be ten charries because that's how many was in the original.

@Cynthia, dreamii, Peregrine, Joan (wow, you're in all my comment so far XD), and Quill: I'm so glad you enjoyed the first part, and thank you so much for reading it!

@Nerd: Thank you for acknowledging my amazingness? I feel like I should say thank you but every thing I think of to say sounds extremely awful and stuck up.

I think this is everything? Feel free to ask if you have any questions or I missed a question or comment you have already made.

***Authors Note: It's out! About five hours later than I had planned, bout out nonetheless, and I am very proud of myself for doing this because I haven't written since November except for failing the occasional MWW. I hope you all enjoy!*** 

Chapter the First 

Wilson Park was bored. Everything he had ever read about super fans going to events told him that he should have arrived in front of Sunny Meadows Publishing company at least at around midnight the night before he was invited, and probably earlier, then stake out with a tent and blanket outside on the sidewalk. So, despite the fact that he hated camping almost as much as a bad metaphor, he had slept on the sidewalk. Quite a few people had walked by giving him strange looks, but he hadn’t cared. He hadn’t cared that it is absolutely freezing at night in late February, and that his bones were giving off elaborate and terrifying creaks after a terrible rest the night before. He didn’t even care that he was, apparently, the one and only person who cared enough about this game-thing to camp out.

What Wilson Park did care about was the fact that no one told him what time he was supposed to arrive at. It was already late afternoon, and he had been sitting on that awful sidewalk since last evening. No one else had arrived. Did they all receive some sort of time to get there, and he hadn’t? Or had he been pranked? Will hated pranks. This whole deplorable situation was undeniably prank-like. It had to be a prank.

He had just started to put away his tent and camp stove when a girl walked by, seeming to be heading towards one of the nearby businesses. An extremely pretty girl, too, for that matter.

Will was just beginning to wax poetic on the virtues of red hair, glowing in the molten gold light of the late afternoon sun, when the girl turned around, her brow furrowed in confusion. He started to walk up to her, gathering the courage to ask what was wrong, when she looked straight towards the ornate, wrought iron gates of Sunny Meadows, and seemed to relax immediately. “Excuse me?”

“Yes?” Don’t blush, don’t blush, whatever you do, do not let your face turn the very unattractive color of an overly ripe tomato. Do not — 

“Lily?” Will whirled around, confused. Behind him was another boy, about his age. “Is that you?”

“Ollie? Hi! Did you finish the chapter of our book yet? I thought this week’s was especially good.”

“Me too! Maybe even my favorite so far.”

Will watched as the two people, the new boy and the girl, started talking far too quickly about some book. As far as he could gather, they were in a book club together, and they had just read a chapter about two people who fell in a hole inhabited by malicious elves. Quickly now, other people began arriving. A man with a comically thin mustache, a girl with bright pink hair, another boy with a tiny backpack that seemed inordinately stuffed with various items that all seemed to be falling out at once. Two more girls, another boy, and a young man. All of whom seemed to know each other, be extroverted enough to not mind meeting new people, or introverted enough that they didn’t care that they knew no one there. Will, however, was in the uncomfortable position of wanting to meet them all and being absolutely paralyzed with anger that they all somehow knew when they were supposed to arrive and a nice helping of shyness at the sight of someone who he might or might not be developing a large crush on.

All in all, it wasn’t a great start.

Ryan Nocnersin wasn’t having the best day, either. Starving, because he woke up too late and breakfast had gone repulsively cold, leaving him with nothing but toast and apricot jam. Cold, because he had someone forgotten that you should wear more than a waterproof jacket when it is below freezing. And annoyed, because there was a rat sniffing his feet. “What is this, some shoddy attempt at humor?” he complained. “Yes, we all know there was a raccoon in Underwood’s book, and she was absolutely adorable and rather awful, but does that really mean we need a rat now? Why is it trying to eat my shoe? My shoe is not cheese! Get away from me, you flea-ridden, germy rodent!”

“He doesn’t have fleas.”

“What?” There was a guy with a crazy mustache. Why was there a guy with a crazy mustache? Ryan didn’t volunteer to be in any Agatha Christie reboots.

“Bone. The rat. He doesn’t have fleas. I examine him personally every day during breakfast.”

“Um. Ew?”

Ryan had just decided it would be a good idea to stand in a dark shadowy corner and sulk until someone acknowledged his presence, when a girl, the little one with pink hair, walked up to him holding a pickle jar, which she handed to him. “Try a Glory Be dill pickle and get a free trial membership at the South Hamberage Deli and Grocery Store, only 72 miles and 37.642 inches to your southwest! It will change your life.” She handed Ryan the jar and ran away, giggling wildly. “Fifth graders have such an odd sense of humor,” he murmured to himself, but opened the jar. The pickle really was quite good, sour and perfectly crunchy. Not life changing, but it at least made him a bit less hungry.

Allen Underwood walked into the chaos late, as usual. Partly because he forgot his suit jacket at his apartment and had to drive halfway across the city in the middle of a traffic jam to go get it, and partly because it was kind of his signature. He could remember the first time he saw those gates. He was late then, too. Kytleen Marsh had hated him even then. And then he saw all the odd people he remembered so well, and got locked into a creepy mansion as they all got turned into paper.

He was still immersed in good memories when a fifteen-year-old girl with binoculars asked him for an autograph.

“Ah. Um, yes, here.” He scribbled a hurried signature onto the paper she shoved at him, then looked around. “I didn’t expect this place to be so… messy.”

Cassie Hatley hadn’t expect it to be anything like this, either. Her book had described the first few minutes of adventure languorously, as if the characters were doing little more than wait for a bus. This, though, was first class chaos, with tiny, pink haired girls giving out free pickles and teenagers yelling at rats. And her hero, Allen Underwood, was nothing like she had imagined.

The book described him as young, still in his teens, but this man was in his late twenties at least, with a tired, lined face and hair that, despite its blondness, seemed almost gray. He wore a blue t-shirt with a collared button-up beneath it, and his hair was shaved at the sided, leaving only the top to wave and sweep over his forehead in a way that might be attractive in someone a bit younger, but left him seeming like an old man who forget to grow up after high school. His peaked chin was obscured by a wispy beard. Only his eyes were as she had imagined, blue and twinkling sadly.

“Hello, everyone,” Allen said, and his voice, though quiet, made everyone turn. “Seven years ago, I stood here, on this very sidewalk, waiting for a woman named Kytleen Marsh.” Someone booed at her name. “This woman trapped me in her home and destroyed the other people I arrived with. You all know this. But the end of the book is not where the story ends. There is more, and I need your help.”

***End of Chapter***

{@Admin — Underwood is a false last name that I have assumed for the purpose of the story, please do not abridge it.}