My first thought as I began reading this chapter was how I had tried my best to make George’s exit from the game believable. The second thought was about keeping him true to his character. Throughout the story, I have not been able to ‘warm’ to George, even though he is the book’s main protagonist and the game’s hero. I find him irritating. His self-pity is overpowering, which might sound odd considering the fact that I am the author and I chose him to be the main character. Imagine if I had picked someone else, and given them the avatar name of GoD? The story would make me cringe… Once he was chosen, that was it. Each of the players in the story has a role to play and a character. These are very clear in my mind, and I cannot change them even if I wanted to.
I think because of my dislike for George, it made his chapters harder for me to write. Simply less pleasurable. I find that happens with all of my books. I disliked David in Ember. Loved Bonkers in The Sixteen Bobs of Doctor Ivanov and enjoyed all three godparents in Three Shoes in a Pair.
Still, there were some fun facts in his part of the story. The whole idea of keeping secrets and not trusting anyone enough to tell them. The book was written at a time in my life when I had a lot of this experience. I learnt the importance of keeping a secret. I also learnt the side-effects of them.
I survived. LOL
A digital fun fact was writing Heaven or Hell. A dangerous online game, that from my childhood experience is exactly the kind of game that would appeal to kids. Totally wrong, completely dangerous and therefore a must. It was fun thinking it up, and maybe one day, if we ever do achieve direct synapse connection it might come true. Either way it is a great place to start a new story.
Once I finished with George, and his attempts to find Jessie – which were again very egocentric and ‘cry-baby’ styled – I can recall the sheer rush of pleasure when finally I could switch between characters. Jessie has to be my favourite. Evylin is my ‘kind of woman’. Maybe one day someone will ask me if I actually knew someone like the girl in the vault and I will blush – but Jessie is the most enjoyable character to write about. She has that bubbly innocence about her while being incredibly clever. I feel she is at that age right between childhood and adulthood. There is a lot of playfulness and wisdom all mixed up.
So yes, I really enjoyed writing about her investigating the fight between Spoiler and Evylin. Of course, it wasn’t all fun. That would be a lie. The cross referencing at times, especially those that were for Wallson and his comical images were at times very time-consuming. Remember these books were written before AI support so all the search had to be done alone, there was no machine guiding your thoughts – which may in the future be a good thing. Searching the internet alone allowed my mind to go where it wanted. I find AI, at the moment, does not support this. There are a lot of good things about AI, but I am sure in time we will discover there are a lot of bad things. This probably will lead to certain restrictions on its use. But still, I think it would have been a lot easier if I had AI when I started looking for Sherlock Holmes references. LOL. I was skim reading synopses and several webpages in the search for the few references which a reader will fly over, but visually, one day might be worthwhile.
You must remember that most of the scenes were written with a visual concept. Scenes would play out inside my mind. Some of them were written, others were started but never completed.
I did find it curious reading the passage about Wallson and his built-in non-violence software. Today, this is exactly the same kind of thing that has been written into Google Flow. A program I have used to create ‘fun’ videos behind my ancient songs. It is this very program that will cause me to eventually cancel my subscription. It blocks all kinds of nonsense. It’s extremely frustrating. I also need to apologize to Google AI, as the hype has made me believe it can do far more than it actually can. But enough of that, I just remember thinking as I read it – how many other small, miscellaneous predictions have I made in the book (by book I am referring to the whole story). Time will tell.
In the end, even with George, I found the chapter easy to read. Yes, I might get a bit carried away with my characters and spend more time searching a single reference than I would on the chapter, but hey – this is something I enjoy: my fun in writing the book.
SO, I wonder what chapter Nine has in store for me.
