I'm still here! And bringing back the Crazy Soviet with a (maybe stolen from the KGB) Makarov.

Alright, so the previous two pieces I mentioned have ground to a complete standstill (why, I don't know), but I am working on an Aleks & Chloe piece. Penelope Turner was basically what would've happened if Aleks hadn't went through any significant change since I made his character in Grade 8 (just in a girl's body instead of a boy's), so she's incredibly hard to write, and the vampire story? It's too early for me to call a shot on it yet, but it might be dead in the water. Granted, if that is the case, it'll probably have two spiritual successors: Aleks meets Inga (the piece I'm working on now) and whatever comes of it, should I decide to explore Inga's world more. Several kettles of funky-tasting tea (that I may or may not have screwed up when I was brewing them in the mornings) and as many weeks of worrying about a few of my close friends later, I'm back.

I'm not sure how many of you have read An Exercise in Frustration!, but the portrayal of Aleks in that book is more restrained than the portrayal of him in Aleks meets Inga. Granted, in the first one, he was in a world similar to our own (the main difference being the USSR still exists on maps and the world is populated by a mixture of humans and beastmen), while in this one, he's in a world that, as far as any of them can tell, is populated by two humans (one of which dies in a manner that makes Aleks terrified), three beastmen (Aleks, Chloe, and Eve), and everyone else is a carnivorous vampire. Aleks, however, has a secret revealed to the reader about him, primarily because I was aching to know as well (I'm the author and the guy who created the character, if that says anything). Still, it's going well, but the layout is gonna be a little different because I'm letting ChatGPT try to guess what his problems are… some of the things it spits out is funnier than watching The IT Crowd, Sanford & Son, and Little Britain nonstop.

Anyway, to sum it up, Aleks, Chloe, and Eve are gonna be back on my Writer document (I use LibreOffice, sosumi) for the foreseeable future. Just for fun, if anyone reads this blog and likes the characters, I'd like to see where you guys think the characters started out and how they came to be. If that's something you're interested in, just write it in the comments, and I look forward to seeing what the world comes up with!