"You can cut all the flowers but you cannot keep spring from coming."  ~~Pablo Neruda

Hi all,

So like many people, I'm a bit concerned about COVID-19.  To be clear, I'm not as concerned about the virus itself... although I certainly worry for the elderly and those with underlying conditions.  I'm more troubled by panic and people's behaviors and the long term implications of this economically, socially, etc.  So... when I start feeling anxious, I ramble.  And some of those ramblings involved Dyeland stories.  I ended up putting them into a Q and A format which you'll find below. 

May you all be well!  And if you're sick of singing "Happy Birthday" whilst washing your hands, may I suggest a little ditty that begins "When you walk, down the road..."  ;-)

God bless,
Jenni

Question: You've mentioned your love for the show "The Chosen" before.  How, if at all, does it impact how you write the biblical era scenes and Joshua?

Answer: Firstly, I'm very set on not turning the Dyeland stories into fanfic for "The Chosen."  I absolutely love what "The Chosen" is doing but there are various plot points that I've written that make it impossible to merge the two.  For just one example, in the Dyeland stories, Mary of Magdala and Mary of Bethany are the same person.  She also knew Yeshua from her infancy.  In "The Chosen," we haven't met Mary of Bethany but I think it's safe to assume she will be a separate person.  Mary of Magdala meets Jesus as an adult and, if I've done the math right, is actually a bit older than him in the show.  So that just plain doesn't work and that's only one character. 

But the bigger reason for not wanting "The Chosen" to impact my writing much is that doing so would be paralyzing.  If you read the stories, you've likely noticed that serious writing didn't really take off until after TBAA ended.  Part of the reason for that was simply that I was a student for all of TBAA's run and writing papers took precedent.  But it's also true that it's difficult to write characters whose future you don't know.  I mean what if in 2001 I'd written a story with a flash forward to 2006 in which Andrew, Monica, Tess, and Gloria were still consistently working cases together?  Well, when TBAA's finale aired, that flash forward would no longer make sense.  Continuity would be gone and there are already enough continuity issues as is.  So I have it in mind to eventually introduce Cephas/Simon Peter into the stories.  If I was set on his character paralleling the character in "The Chosen," I would have to remain mum on whether or not he and his wife had children until the show chose to broach that.  And I'm just not really interested in being restricted in that way. 

Another important distinction is that while I believe Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow in the sense of who He truly is, there's a definite distinction between the Yeshua/Jesus of the first century and the Joshua of now.  The Jesus of "The Chosen" is pretty affectionate but less so than Joshua.  Joshua doesn't have to contend with the strict policing of interactions between men and women. All the Friends are very, very clear on who he is in a way the Apostles weren't pre-Resurrection which is also very freeing.

I think where "The Chosen" has impacted my writing is in how I visualize Joshua's facial expressions and how he might move.  I have difficulty animating faces in my head so seeing such a fantastic, spirited portrayal in "The Chosen" helps with that.

If you'd like to check the show out, please search The Chosen in the App Store or Google Play and/or visit www.thechosen.tv.  Let me know what you think!

Question: Given the current coronavirus situation, it has me wondering... could the angels inadvertently bring a contagion into Dyeland?

Answer: Nope.  If you think about Andrew or any of the AODs in particular, they're likely to spend time around contagious people and/or immuno-suppressed people.  So I think God would see to it that they were automatically disinfected (for lack of a better word) before entry into, say, a hospital room and then again upon leaving that location.

Hypothetically, if Andrew was assigned to someone dying of complications from influenza and was working as their hospice worker, he would take all the necessary precautions any medical professional would take both before visiting the patient and afterwards.  But if said precautions failed, I think God would do away with any lingering germs because, for all we know, Andrew would next visit someone battling cancer.  God would never want an angel to function as a vector for disease.  Nor would He want Andrew to bring anything home to JenniAnn or the kids.  Not only would that just be cruel but it would also raise way too many questions in some instances.  Influenza is common enough but I think we can assume Andrew has probably been assigned to people who died of Ebola.  If he carried that back to Dyeland and JenniAnn got sick and was admitted to a hospital in NYC, the CDC would be asking a whole lot of questions about how it was transmitted to her.  Plus, it all really goes back to the idea of God being a good boss.  If any human employer had it within their means to protect an employee and their family from a potentially fatal condition related to their line of work and failed to do so... they would be raked through the coals.  God, who is perfect, should be way more ethical than a flawed, human boss.

I'm also going with the idea that the angels only ever get sick because there's a purpose for it a la when Monica was blind or Tess had Alzheimer's.  Often that purpose is to reach and relate to an assignment.  But I also think it's possible God might, say, allow them to get a cold so, in the case of those with anam caras, they could be doted on for a bit and strengthen that relationship.

On a related note, any angel who decides to age is doing exactly that.  That means gray hairs, wrinkles, aches and pains, weakening eye sight, etc.  But that's very different than a communicable disease.

Question: If you could go back and change anything, what would it be?

Answer: As I've mentioned before, I would have given JenniAnn a name completely separate from my own. In some ways, I feel limited in what I can do with her character because I'm always afraid people will think that what happens to her is paralleled in my own life. It would maybe be easier if she was named, say, Penelope. But the truth is I do sometimes work out issues in my own life through her. And sometimes what's going on with her is completely foreign to my life. As long as both those are true, there would probably be an element of "Is this at all true?" for readers regardless of her name.

I've also said that I wish I'd made JenniAnn older when she first met Andrew. But, as with the name issue, I'm not sure that it would really help. I believe so many of the issues that arose in the wake of #MeToo are massively important. But I'm also sometimes concerned about the experience of so many women getting grafted onto the experience of one woman, real or fictional. If someone was new to the stories, they might be appalled at the pairing of a much younger female with a drastically older male in a position of relative power. Whether that female was 17 at the onset or 25 may make no difference in someone's perception. And there are lots of ways that could go very, very wrong. But it might also be totally fine. So I guess what I'm saying is, in the end, I wouldn't want to change JenniAnn's story just because the same story with other individuals could have been bad. *Her* story is not bad. The relationship works for her. If anything, I think she can sometimes be a little too controlling, even if unintentionally.  On the rare occasion that she has appealed to Andrew as an authority, he's refused to respond in kind and will only make decisions with her as an equal.  So just because someone might perceive a power imbalance, that doesn't necessarily mean there is one so I guess I wouldn't change JenniAnn's age, either.

Question: Are there meant to be direct parallels between any of the modern-day characters and the biblical characters?

Answer: For the most part no.  I think Peter Garcia-Campbell is a pretty good parallel for St. Peter/Cephas given he takes over for Joshua with JCS.  But I don't know that it follows that Peter is necessarily any more of a leader than anyone else in the group.  I suppose Emma could be seen as a pretty direct parallel to Mary Magdalene given she plays her in JCS and had a close relationship with Joshua in childhood that disintegrated in adulthood only to then grow even stronger.  And not to be too spoilery but Cameron does end up being quite Paul-like. 

In "The Messiah," a trio of characters thought maybe they were paralleling biblical characters: JenniAnn/the woman with the alabaster jar, Josef/Joseph of Arimathea, and Nico/Nicodemus.  But none of that panned out... thankfully.

So, by and large, the stories and fates of any given person in the Bible can't be used to predict the fates of a Dyeland character.

Question: Are there any social issues that you haven't addressed in the Dyeland stories that you would like to?

Answer: Yup.  I mentioned #MeToo above and I think abuse within employment would be a good issue to explore.  The problem is the Friends tend to employee each other and I've no interest in converting someone into a villain just to make a plot point work.  So I'd need to figure out how that would happen.  Likely the person experiencing the abuse/harassment would have to be a new character who falls into the orbit of the Friends rather than a Friend since the Friends' bosses tend to be other Friends.

Something that could potentially be very interesting was if Andrew reconnected with an old assignment that he once admired and that guy had developed into an abuser.  Obviously, Andrew would be appalled and horrified and that could tie into how so many people had to grapple with disturbing truths about people whose work they admired.  I dunno.  We'll see. 

I'd also like to introduce a transgender character but I would want to be confident I could do the character justice.  As a cisgender woman, I would be concerned about speaking without experience.  But I do think it's important to show Joshua as having infinite love and compassion for all people especially as transgender folks are so often mistreated by religious groups.  So we'll see.  Maybe someone who comes into the Chrysalis or True Light or St. G's or any of the other Friends-affiliated businesses and organizations.

Now that Belle is getting older, I'd like to do more with her identity.  It recently occurred to me that, if she's like me, JenniAnn likely has a number of her childhood toys that she would want to pass down to her daughter as they become age-appropriate.  But growing up when I did, most of my dolls are white.  I'm sure multiple people, including her parents, have given Belle dolls that look like her but I wonder if she'd wonder about why her mom didn't have any dolls that look like her?  It seems like such a simple thing but I think it would be a reminder to JenniAnn that Belle is going to face some societal issues that she never did growing up as a white girl in the Midwest.  And, eventually, Andrew and JenniAnn (with an assist from Behnam and Isra) will have to be more open with Belle about her birth mother.  So that could be very interesting in time.

So that was fun!  But now I better get to updating the web site because I am, once again, very behind!

This newsletter is dedicated to John Dye for giving us two TV series that you could totally binge if you're, ya know, stuck inside for a while. 

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