Blast From the Past Chapter 1
#1 of Blast From the Past
"Everyone welcome our guest of honor, Joanna Steele!" The announcement was met with cheers from the auditorium as Joanna walked out onto the stage. It wasn't the biggest writing convention, but it was quite a respectable size, and the attendees were enthusiastic, and generally quite pleasant.
As she looked out, she could see how happy they were to see her. Guest of honor... always felt a bit overblown to be called that. It wasn't that the enthusiasm of the fans bothered her, she just... never quite felt entirely worthy of their adulation. But that was a big part of what kept her humble, and that humility was... well, part of her appeal. At least according to her publicist.
It wasn't a long walk to her seat on the stage, where the host of this event was standing there to greet her. As she walked, she waved at the assembled nerds, and as she reached the host, she shook his hand and sat down for the interview. She'd begrudgingly gotten used to these affairs, having learned and painstakingly practiced her responses... never quite going to boilerplate replies that the fans had heard a thousand times before, but too uncomfortably close to it for her liking.
The interview went on for quite a while to make sure the fans got their money's worth to come and listen to her talk about her experiences as a writer, and what plans she had for stories going forward. She'd also practiced conducting these with an air of enthusiasm that she... rarely felt. But, as the interview should have been wrapping up, the host hit her with a curveball.
"It really is amazing to see how far you've come from your early days writing children's stories. I'm sure there are quite a few people out in the audience who fondly remember sweet little Suzette and all of her adventures," he said, getting a rather... hearty round of cheers from the audience, which surprised Joanna. She never thought that people would have remembered her children's stories. "I know that quite a few fans, myself included, have wondered if you'd ever re-visit Suzette and her world. Possibly from a new perspective."
The surprise was visible on her face, her mouth hanging open a bit as her publicist watching from backstage was having a fit. This wasn't on the list of topics that she would be asked about! He was going to give the organizers of the show hell for this! She blinked for just a moment before she gave a sheepish little smile, "I... didn't realize that anyone really still remembered those old books... they were so long ago..." she said with a small laugh, looking out over the crowd, seeing how intently they were looking at her, waiting for her response to the question.
"Revisit Suzette and Sunshine Valley... you know, I'd never thought about that, really," she said with a little shrug and a chuckle, "I'd never imagined there'd be interest in that." That statement was met with a roar of cheers, showing her just how much interest there was in that. Her eyes went wide as she looked out over the crowd, her mouth hanging open once more. She closed her mouth and swallowed, taking a deep breath as she did her level best to center herself once more. "I suppose that I'll have to look into it. See where things stand with that, but if I've still got the story in me, I'll certainly see what I can do," she said, looking across to her publicist, seeing how apoplectic with rage he was, "But, I do have to say that's not a promise," she said, trying to forestall his anger and deflect it from herself.
The interview didn't last long after that, and when she got off the stage, her publicist emphatically told her that revisiting Suzette was out of the question, making sure that she understood that it would have no support from the company. He was this close to cutting her time at the convention short, but she talked him down from that, reminding him that it was the goodwill of the fans that kept her making them money. He sullenly agreed to let her finish out the con, leaving to go take some antacid.
It wasn't long after the panel that Joanna made her way to the room where she and the other guests of honor went to do autographs for the attendees (another source of revenue for the convention and the publishers, of course). After her interview in the main hall, there wasn't a single fan who wasn't telling her about their fond memories of Suzette and the impact that those books had on their lives. It was eye-opening to hear stories about how those books had given the attendees the courage to face the challenges that they dealt with as children.
Bullies had, in their eyes, become agents of the Dark Forest to be overcome by the brave inhabitants of Sunshine Valley. The struggles that Suzette's friends had with difficult subjects in school gave heart to those who'd struggled with school as well, putting many of the solutions that Joanna had included in the books into practice. Deaths, divorces, and even just scary weather... all of them were made easier to handle by reading about Suzette and her adventures.
When there were good lulls, even the other guests were happy to share their own memories of reading her Suzette stories, either when they were younger, or reading them to their own children. She chatted away with them, curious to know more. She had honestly never really thought about Suzette since she'd switched over to more adult works, but... look, you don't walk away from something with that kind of an impact on peoples' lives.
Her publicist was just going to have to understand that Suzette was going to become one of her side projects and that, if he didn't like it, there were loads of other publishers out there who would be more than happy to publish her books. Honestly, it was the most exciting convention Saturday she'd had in a long time, and when she went back to her room, her mind was bursting with ideas, and she could hardly wait to sit down with her laptop and get to work.
It wasn't until nearly midnight that she collapsed against the desk in her room, shaking in frustration. It was gone. Sunshine Valley. Suzette. Even the Dark Forest and its wicked mastermind. All of it was just... gone from her mind. She couldn't get any of it to click in her brain, and her fingers refused to put even one word of it onto the electronic page.
She was heartbroken and, quite frankly, ready to scream in frustration. It had been her life for years! It was, if she was being completely honest, even the reason she got into writing in the first place. Suzette hadn't just been a character that she'd conjured out of nowhere but was honestly built from Joanna's struggles growing up. And she'd had a lot of those. It was probably why it connected so well with so many people. Those stories had come from the pain of going through those tough times, herself, and had reflected both the pain that had come with those challenges and the joy she'd experienced as she'd survived through them.
The sweet little mouse was... who she had always rather wished she had been as a child. Indomitable, brave, and always ready to help a friend. As a child, young Ashleigh... hadn't always helped when it was really needed. Suzette's loss of her friend Albert... came from that failure to stand up when needed.
It was really only with processing her childhood through the Suzette books that she'd really moved past it all and been able to move on in life. "No wonder I don't have Sunny Valley in me anymore..." she muttered, her face pressed against her keyboard.
"Nah. You just don't have the old Sunny Valley in you anymore... because the old valley isn't around anymore. Not the way it was. Just like the old Suzette isn't there anymore either," a voice in the room said from behind Joanna.
Joanna had often talked to herself as her characters, as they had taken on their own lives within her writing, so at that moment, she thought nothing about the other voice. "Pfft. So. What does that mean? I've got to find the new Sunny Valley? The new, more grown-up Suzette?"
"Suzie," the voice said, chuckling softly, "And Sunny Valley... a lot has changed there."
Joanna scoffed, smirking a little bit. "Sure. Suzie. Suzie Q..." she said, shaking her head, "She's... what, a teenager now?"
"Ahhh... no. A little bit older than that," the voice said.
Joanna spun around in her chair, glaring at the speaker, "Right and just how... old... is... fuck..." she said as she sat there, staring up at the speaker. As a child, Suzette had been a very cute little white-furred mouse with shoulder-length pink hair, and an eternally cheerful look in her eyes.
The mouse standing there in the room with her... was a white mouse, yes, with pink hair... but this mouse's hair went down well past her shoulders, all the way down to her lower back. The eyes, though... more gleeful than cheerful as she grinned down at Joanna, chuckling softly, "About... oh, twenty-five?" Suzie was just grinning at her creator from across the room, leaning... way more suggestively than Joanna was comfortable dealing with against the footboard of the bed.
Joanna, for her part, stared blankly at the mouse, her jaw hanging even further open than it had during the interview. Suzie could clearly see that her brain had gone into a complete skid, and would need a moment. After several minutes, she looked down at her hands, turning them over to make sure that they were still recognizable as her own hands before she looked back up at Suzie, muttering, "I've... I've lost it... haven't I? I've gone crazy..." She'd always worried that she'd lose her mind one of these days... but never like this.
Suzie laughed and shook her head, walking toward Joanna as she looked down into the author's eyes. "No, babe, you haven't. Trust me, you're as sane as you've ever been, and I'm not some damn hallucination. I'm flesh and blood, large as life and twice as beautiful," she said, shaking her head a little and chuckling as she looked down into Joanna's eyes, "I just... kept growing up after you stopped writing me... and my world... grew up, too," she said with a tired laugh.
"But... you were just a story... my story that I wrote.." Joanna said with a whimper.
Suzie looked down into Joanna's eyes, the mirth leaving them just a bit. "No, Ashleigh... I never was just a story."