Letter from the Author

I don’t particularly care for Thanksgiving - the food is mediocre at best, and in general i’m not into racist colonialist narratives. So the only thing to do is join the crowd: skip right past fall into winter and the holiday season, ignoring that fall is way better.

The autumn wind brings fallen leaves and lost 30-dollar paper snowflakes from the seasonal store. It’s finally Nutcracker Season! Meaning, it’s time to see Nutcracker-themed objects everwhere and seethe with fury - is that really all the Sugar Plum Fairy is to you!? No, the season to watch The Nutcracker is all year long - but now is the only time to get merch >:D (editor's note: as much as we disapprove of the emoticon in a serious newsletter, the author was threatening mutiny if we did not comply.)

One might say that it seems like seasons are going to pass before there’s any more of this story. Unless you’re watching the Season Fairies in Prokofiev’s Cinderella, my plan is that this won’t happen. But, as the story is still in development, I’d like to cast a light on what’s happening behind the scenes. (Besides procrastinating.)

Ski lodges are a strangely difficult genre. The amount of characters is huge, and you have to introduce most or all of them before the deaths start. But introduce them all at once, and they’ll blend together. The audience has to be able to keep track of them - and so does the author. Naturally, my worst skill by far is plot!

And though the beginning might be in many ways the most crucial part, in this story, it is by far the hardest. The world itself is hard to explain, and beyond that, there’s a lot of background the audience needs to know before the plot will have its full impact. Much of what’s necessary can be worked in with hopefully-immersive description, but that’s rarely enough to interest people. the best place to start for the plot and the amount that the audience needs to know are constantly at odds.

For both of these obstacles, my strategy is to have a major source of tension from elsewhere that can be put on the backburner until the end, since it’s less urgent, while also developing an important aspect of the story. that too comes with its own issues: the plot has to feel cohesive, even with multiple conflicts.

Planning any story is a huge endeavor, but the workload only increases when it will be published in installments, more or less real-time to writing them. My style of plotting is also generally opposed to writing a story in sections. In general, I have a loose overarching outline laying out the major plot points, then make a more detailed outline by section, adjusting as I write. It’s hard for me to gauge tension and pacing from an outline, especially considering the amount of tension that comes from characters and their emotions. i may under or overestimate how tense a scene will be, so I switch scenes around a lot. 

But that doesn’t work here. In this sort of story, I have to have a full outline. There is much less room for mistakes, so I have to do a lot more questioning and planning beforehand. And if i do find an issue, I have to remedy it in upcoming installments, rather than fixing it where it was made.

My intention, therefore, is to write as much as I can before beginning to post. I enjoy writing, and it helps me catch things i may have overlooked in editing. But it’s time-consuming. Words themselves can be a challenge, in all forms. I often zone out or am unsure what has to happen next. And this story in particular is full of metaphors and description and internal thoughts - all of which have a lot of potential to feel like they stretch on forever.  And as always, I have tons of work on viola and violin!

So in the end, it still might be a while before I begin posting the actual story. In the meantime, I hope to get a newsletter out every 1 or 2 weeks. Imaginary or not, newspaper writing is fun! Especially when you hugely rush editing because you actually want to get it out, but we’re just ignoring that i’m doing that, of course.

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New Product!

The Star Boba Cafe

At the Star Boba Cafe, we always strive to improve our products, and there’s no better way to do that than listening to our guests. And so, due to feedback from the Newsletter, the Star Boba Cafe is proud to stock new, high quality mango smoothies! Our mangos are taken straight from the backrooms, and we have strict quality standards so only the finest mangos are utilized. Due to spontaneous disappearances of our mango room, mango smoothies may not always be available - grab one while you can!

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Simple Homes Incorporated

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*refund covers 1% of total retail price. This offer does not apply to items bought at sale prices

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Notice

The Editors 

Boba orders coming soon - but not yet!

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Hint

Anonymous

Try commenting on the content - ask a question, perhaps, or ask for something mentioned. A surprise may await - not, of course, that I said anything about it.