The game didn't last, but Jess did.
Eleven years ago I challenged myself with the task of writing a year long story in journal format. I had a general plan on where the adventure would go, but the details unfolded for me, much as they did for my readers.
To my surprise I not only lasted the year, I found after that year I wasn't ready to say good-bye to Jess or the family she'd managed to create. "A(nother) Year in Seattle" was born.
The plan for AYIS, as I called it, was to follow the official story line set forth in the Archology Shutdown.
That story didn't last a full year. I had reached a perfect ending and decided to end the story well rather than drag it on for another three months and lose the 'good ending'. That's one of the joys of writing-- you control where and when the story ends. But the story didn't end, not really.
After the shutdown came the 'black out' and I opened up my site for some good old fashioned group story telling. Sadly, I didn't keep up with the entries, some really good entries were lost.. and a few of mine. My last attempt to revive it failed.
Two story-lines emerged from the blackout project, collabrotive stories that I hope we will finish and publish here, but that will take time...
Three days before the start of 2010, I started thinking about New Year's Resolutions and the fact that there's only one year left to the first decade of the 21st Century (yes, I'm one of *those* people who believe in following the traditional 2001 was the start of the new century since we start counting at 1)-- I decided to end this decade with a new story of Jess Miller.
To make my life easier, I set the date forward enough that the projects I mentioned would be possible and plausible and I wanted the calendar to match up with 2010 (in the interest of making my life a little less interesting).
I have the year, I have the major character... now all I need is a plot.
"And so it begins"
-- Kosh