The queue is empty, according to my books!
So if you have questions, now's the time to post 'em. I'm taking off until the first Friday in January, when I'll write my next Dear Jeannie column. Leave your questions anonymously below, using monikers like Sleepless in Seattle, and I'll get to them first come, first served.
Until then, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
Logging you in...
Lost In The Future · 588 weeks ago
With her mother's death she's now in the public eye as a High Lady, in a science fiction universe. She's torn between wanting to be left alone and not wanting to get lost in a crowd and becoming another statistic. I want to make sure her color choices make sense on a psychological level.
Anonymous · 587 weeks ago
Reva has grown up in a demoralized martial-law state (following a failed coup). Her parents were big supporters of the put-down rebels, and she's grown up fed a steady diet of bitter anger and frustration. Trouble is, she's fallen in love with (and married) a state sympathizer. He's fun, kind, solid--hard to resist. In an effort to start fresh, they've moved to a new frontier.
My question is about the dynamics of their marriage. They had one child, who died right before the move, and Reva can't have any more children. What kind of grief/trauma is she going to face, especially cut off from the family and friends she grew up with? How is she going to react to other children they encounter in their new life?
Starting Over in Statesville
Anonymous · 586 weeks ago
Maryanne grew up in a smart, sheltered community with a few close friends and a stable childhood. These helped her become one of the youngest leaders of a new aeronautical unit that merges military experiments with scientific exploration. Their first mission unexpectedly ends in disaster, wherein the surviving members of the crew crashland in an alien world with troubles of its own. The disaster stems from Maryanne and her old friends discovering that her husband (the crew's pilot) was unfaithful. The survivors aren't treated well in the new world, and eventually have to choose independence, absorption, or revolution.
My question is: Maryanne gets hit with several life-altering traumas at once--infidelity, professional failure, imprisonment and torture, massive culture shock. Because she was sheltered and stable, I don't think she has a lot of coping strategies in place for any one of these issues, much less all at once. Will she prioritize or shelve certain issues? She's well attuned to her own thoughts and feelings, but tends to be a bit dense where others are concerned.
Lost in Space
Anon · 586 weeks ago
Paulette isn't sure whether she was born in the wrong country or the wrong century. Growing up in the Deep South, she is vividly aware secession is coming for the soon-to-be-split country. Her sympathies aren't exactly for the Confederacy, but no one asked for her vote. Fine. But her strange, bitter Papa has raised her to run their plantation, favoring her over sons he actively ignores in keeping with a tradition from his home country. Paulette's never made sense of it, and bears some resentment towards both parents--who each have pushed her to conform to very different societal expectations. (She's about sixteen--and had been left in peace by her parents until she was about twelve, so these expectations are relatively new.)
As war looms, Paulette is faced with two problems: the death of her father, and a proposal from her childhood hero. Where she might have welcomed the romance with open arms, she now has political, economical, and social pressures on her that she doesn't welcome but cannot escape. She's young to be coping with wartime troubles, especially as an unwanted leader in her ill-tempered home. How likely is she to want to wait out the war and her family instead of giving an immediate "YES!" to the boy she loves? (He's very anti-secession, so the added certainty of disaster or desertion weighs the scales awkwardly for her.)
Crooked in Colleton