(Interlude – March 2021, part 2)

Hi, friends.  I’m still on hiatus.  I probably will be for a while, until I get some things figured out in real life.  I promise I’ll have new episodes by the beginning of May at the latest, possibly sooner.  Last night I worked on outlining what would happen in the start of season 3, so that’s progress.

If you’re new here, this is not a typical post.  Don’t Let The Days Go By is an episodic continuing story set in 1996 about a university student figuring out life.  Finish reading this post first, then please read some others.  There are currently 88 episodes, listed either to the right or at the bottom depending on your device, so even if you’ve been following me for a while, most of you will have some that you haven’t read.  So you can read those over the next few weeks while you’re waiting for me to write new ones.  The episodes are best read in order, but can be read out of order, so if you’re new and ready to commit to be a fan of this site, you’re best off starting from the beginning, so you can experience the story as it unfolds.  But, still, read this post first.

So I’ve been thinking about a few DLTDGB side projects, and I’d like your opinions on whether or not you’d be interested in these:

(1) A recap.  I could do one post where I outline the entire plot of DLTDGB from the beginning of the prologue on July 5, 1993 until the most recent episode on June 15, 1996.  I would summarize the highlights of Greg’s life so far, in a post no longer than one typical episode.  I could also include links to a few episodes about the key turning points in Greg’s life, for those people who want to go more in depth without reading 88 full episodes.

(2) Avatars/Bitmoji/some kind of artwork depicting the characters visually.  I can’t draw well, just to let you know.  I made a bunch of fake email accounts and started using them to sign up for multiple Bitmoji accounts, with the purpose being to create Bitmoji for the main characters and show my readers what these characters look like.  I did that for Eddie and Kristina and put the Bitmoji faces on top of the real faces in the photo I used for the most recent episode.  I was having a hard time getting the Bitmoji to look exactly like the real people, but I know that I don’t have to make them look exactly like the people they were based on.  In fact, it might be better to have them not exactly the same, for anonymity purposes.  Most of the people that these characters are based on do not know that I am writing about them.

However, another glitch is that Gmail does not like that I made a bunch of fake email accounts, for obvious reasons. It makes me verify by text that I am a real person, and now it won’t even let me do that because I’ve used the same phone number too many times.  I could start making fake emails with Yahoo or other free email services, I suppose.  But there are so many characters that I could not possibly do this for every character, at least not with Bitmoji.  I was planning on doing this for Taylor, Pete, Sarah, Liz, Ramon, Caroline, Eddie, Xander, Haley, Kristina, Brian, and Shawn, at least for now, adding others as needed if I needed to cover their faces in photos.  I would not do every character, since the cast of characters for DLTDGB is just far too large.  But those twelve are definitely among the most significant supporting characters at the current point of the story.

What do you guys think… is this something you would want to see?  Also, if anyone knows a way to make characters similar to Bitmoji without having to have an account for each one, that would be helpful.

(3) Maps.  Fantasy books with detailed geographical settings, Tolkien for example, often have maps to help the reader.  Since I tend to describe Jeromeville and the surrounding Capital Valley Region in detail, I thought maybe I could do the same thing.  The problem is, every time I’ve tried to draw these maps, they end up looking just like a slightly distorted version of the real-world places that inspired these stories, and while DLTDGB is based on true stories, I also want to make it my own fictional world, and I have not yet figured out how to make the maps not look like real places but still be true to the story so far.  Any thoughts?  Do any of you want to see maps of my semi-fictional world?

Finally, in addition to sharing any thoughts on anything above, please ask me anything you want in the comments.  Questions about things happening in the story, questions about me as an adult, about the writing process… whatever you want.  I’ll answer it, unless it would involve major spoilers.

Have a great week, everyone!  Like I said, if you’re new here and you want to start from the beginning, go here, then click Next at the end of each episode.  https://dontletthedaysgoby.home.blog/2018/12/09/july-5-1993-prologue-my-first-visit-to-jeromeville/