Hi all,

I hope everyone is having a good start to April!  I'm wishing a blessed Easter and Passover to all who celebrate!

God bless,
Jenni


So yesterday I was thinking about how we used to do an April Fool's prank.  Sadly, my imagination just hasn't been churning those out in recent years.  I had a good one that I thought of a while back... and promptly forgot.  So no prank this year.  But it did get me to thinking about all that's happened with JABB over the years and things I wish I could change... but then second guess.  So I decided to make a list.  Here goes...
Things I Would Change... or Maybe Not...

JenniAnn's First Name- As I've mentioned before, I definitely would have given JenniAnn a name that was completely distinct from mine.  It would probably have been Penelope which is why, in Shelby's eventual novels, the JenniAnn character is named Penelope and then why Shelby's daughter is named Penny.  She's named after her grandma, just indirectly.  The reason I liked Penelope is she was the long-suffering and loyal wife of Odysseus.  I thought it was appropriate since one of the tensions in Andrew's and JenniAnn's relationship, at least in the beginning, was Andrew being sent all over the world while JenniAnn had to wait at home.  One thing I do NOT regret is another name I was at one point attracted to which was... Isis.  She's an Egyptian goddess and wife (and sister, yikes) of the god of death (Osiris).  I obviously did not know of a terrorist group sometimes referred to by that name.  I feel really bad for all the girls named Isis but very much glad I escaped having to re-christen a fictional character over it.

Nonetheless, the reason I wish I'd gone with Penelope is because I think almost sharing a name with JenniAnn can give the impression we share a lot more life experiences than we do.  And I definitely do draw from my life for her... but I do the same with Andrew, Ed, Emma, etc.  Even Joshua!  So that can be a little awkward.

However... If JenniAnn had been named Penelope and gone by Lady Penelope then Andrew wouldn't call her "Laja" which is a contraction of Lady JenniAnn.  "Lape" just doesn't work for me.  So that would be unfortunate.  But I still wish I'd had the foresight to name her Penelope.

JenniAnn's Age- I know I've mentioned this one, too.  I wish I'd made JenniAnn older when she met Andrew and sometimes I regret the plot element of JenniAnn having seen Andrew as a child.  It's important to note that Andrew had absolutely no knowledge of that until much, much later.  So he was never manipulating any situations.  But I don't love the possible implication that JenniAnn may have kinda molded herself around that experience.  If I could go back, I would likely remove Joshua's direct involvement.  Then again... I dunno.  Joshua knew what he was doing. 

I really dunno.  I run this one around and around in my head sometimes and even had Andrew and JenniAnn themselves talk about it in "Forever and Ever, Amen."  The bottom line is that, in the real world, if a thirtysomething man met a seventeen year old girl and started hanging around with her, we should probably be concerned.  But Andrew was not some random thirtysomething man.  I think if he'd done anything untoward, God would have whisked him off to the Netherworld, no questions asked.  From his side, the relationships was completely chaste and very appropriate for many years.

And, at the end of the day, quibbling over a few years seems goofy when JenniAnn would remain millions of years younger than Andrew.  But there are ways I soften that for myself:

1.  I believe Andrew is millions of years old but, like many of the ancient but non-Watcher angels, was kind of in a state of innocent babyhood for eons.  I don't believe he was active in human affairs until the last few thousand years and, based on TBAA, that seems to be when angels start increasing in maturity.

2.  I also believe in a sort of life before birth which means that JenniAnn's human body is forty years old but her soul could be nearly as old as Andrew's. 

3.  The Bible is filled with pairs who I think are a whole heckuva lot more problematic than Andrew and JenniAnn even if they are closer in age and the same species.  Yet God still used them.  Two people well past the age of legal consent (even if one party was a minor when they very first met) eventually getting together, with some prodding from concerned family, because they realize they do better together than apart... well, that raises my eyes brows a whole lot less than, say, David and Bathsheba.

4.  Along those lines, there are a lot of women who have been raised to believe it's their divinely ordained role to stand by their man no matter what.  Abuse can be glorified as "obedience to one's husband as to the Lord."  So an argument could be made that JenniAnn is actually in a far less precarious position than many women married to men are.  She was not raised to give Andrew any deference.

But still... I would have made JenniAnn eighteen when she met Andrew.  It's goofy and arbitrary but it would still seem better to me.

Andrew and Belle- I really don't remember what prompted it but there's a pretty significant shift in my view of Andrew's role in Belle's life from "Promises of Someday" to "The Carpenter."  He goes from Uncle Andrew to Daddy.  The whole Uncle Andrew thing was just weird.  And it was made even weirder by Max and Violeta deciding to be Belle's uncle and aunt... thus putting them on par with Andrew which was never going to be their lived reality.  So in "The Carpenter," Andrew becomes Daddy.  And then Uncle Max and Aunt Violeta were quietly phased out.  The reasoning there is clearer to me.  Once COVID hit and all the kids moved back to Willowveil, Max and Violeta just felt more like older siblings to Belle than an uncle and aunt.  Regardless of age, the five kids were all relying on two people, Andrew and JenniAnn, to help them navigate a strange time.  But, yeah, as cute as the scene is with Andrew becoming Daddy, I think I would have preferred Andrew always being Belle's dad and Max and Violeta always being Belle's brother and sister.  It weirds me out to think that Belle will watch home videos from shortly after she was adopted and hear references to "Uncle Andrew."  At least Avi won't have to deal with it.

The Flash Forwards- Most of the flash forwards I remain very fond of.  However... COVID really messed a couple up.  And it makes me concerned that other flash forwards will be similarly rendered obsolete if, God forbid, we have another pandemic.  Nothing to be done about it, obviously.  But I am being more careful in how I do flash forwards.  No big group gatherings!

Joshua- A part of me wishes that Joshua would have been involved from the beginning of the canonical era of Dyeland stories.  To be abundantly clear: without Joshua, JABB would have folded several years ago, probably not long after John Dye passed away.  For a space of time there, it was really difficult for me to write about Andrew and writing about Adam wouldn't have been much easier.  I needed a character who could carry things for a bit until I healed enough to write Andrew consistently.  Joshua was the best and maybe only choice.  But I do sometimes wonder if the abrupt shift to a Christian worldview might have been jarring to some people.  So knowing that there was no way to have a long-lasting JABB without Joshua, I sometimes wish he had been there from the beginning so the stories didn't potentially seem like a bait-and-switch.  To be clear, they were never intended to be a bait-and-switch.  I just understand it could be perceived that way.  But, again, I don't feel like there was a path forward without Joshua.  I don't think there was ever a choice between JABB without Joshua and JABB with Joshua after John Dye's death.  It was either JABB with Joshua or no JABB.

I also sometimes have to do an exercise called "I Am Not a TBAA Writer."  Because I'm not.  I'm not making any money.  I don't have a writing team.  I have no guidance from a network.  The stories are fueled only my own interest and time.  I pay for the computers I use, the Internet connection, the email addresses, and the web site.  So I don't really have anyone to answer to and I would hope that if someone ever felt uncomfortable, they would just unsubscribe.  It's not like I'm charging for this... and I think all but one person in the entire history of JABB has understood that signing up for a free newsletter isn't some sort of binding agreement to get only stuff one feels totally comfy with and will approve of 100% of the time. 

Politics- Along the same line, I sometimes wish there wasn't a kinda abrupt shift in the stories suddenly having political elements.  But this one doesn't bother me too much since most of the more political stories are only on the Story Index and not usually part of the newsletter.  Also, the idea of me at, say, seventeen writing seriously about politics is horrifying.  So maybe I don't regret this one so much.  It just makes me sad that things happened that made me feel the need to address political issues as a sort of therapy.

Babies for Everyone!- As someone without children, I really wish I'd done a better job of creating happily child-free female characters... but I end up giving everyone babies.  Thankfully, I have things planned out enough that I know some of the Gen Z and Gen Alpha Friends do end up happily child-free.  But dang... I really did not plan it well.  I suppose there is one example: Salma doesn't have children and doesn't want children.  I feel like her being a nun makes it not quite the same as, say, me.  But I also think I maybe said that in the El-Chananite Church, nuns can marry.  So maybe it is the same.  Yay, Salma!  The one that I still sometimes regret is Mary.  I would have loved to have had St. Mary Magdalene as a purposefully, happily child-free lady.  But once Yemimah popped into my head... I couldn't not have her around.  And, come to think of it, Yemimah doesn't have kids.  So there's that!

The Recursive Canon- I love this and only wish that I'd known this phrase earlier so I could have explained things better early on.  There are hints of it throughout the stories but I wish I'd made it clearer.  For a rundown on what a recursive canon is, please check out tvtropes.org.  Anyway, I just wish I'd made it clearer that the Andrew we all know and love from TBAA is not the same character as is in the stories I write.  Within the world of the Dyeland/Asteriana stories, TBAA is a TV show that aired on CBS from 1994-2003 that just so happens to have been based on some real angels.  The TBAA Andrew is not in a relationship with JenniAnn.  The Asteriana Andrew doesn't even look the same.  He resembles the TBAA Andrew and, thus, John Dye... but even JenniAnn will admit that while he's very handsome, he's not as handsome as John Dye was.  So if someone doesn't like Asteriana Andrew's situation... great news!  TBAA Andrew could still be out there doing whatever their imagination has him doing. 



This newsletter is dedicated to John Dye for unwittingly introducing me to fun beverages.  I was cleaning my basement earlier and looking at my stash of bottles that I'd kept because they looked cool and sort of referenced John's career.  Could really do with a Virgil's Root Beer, come to think of it...  Or a Sioux City Orange Cream.

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