Author's Note (previously November/December 2017, now: August 2021)
Hello to the enjoyers of this crumbling book-in-need-of-repair.
It's nice to know folks are still taking an interest instead of scrolling on a useless news feed filled with junk mail. :)
There have unfortunately been stalls in the continuation of this work and its parent version "Margaret Josette Dupres." (You can reach that one if you click my name and find the bottom of my profile.)
I was using something the internet once managed in plenty known as "The Honour System", that is: Unsupervised arrangement in which customers or users help themselves to goods or services and are relied upon to pay for what they take. In this case it would have been feedback and discussion rather than cash of any kind, of course. (Or worse the new Monopoly money of "like-buttons" and stat hits.)
It is true that "Margaret Josette Dupres" was doing very well for that, but somewhere along the way the practice of book-club discussion eroded and most of what was gleaned became generalized positivity, similar to what all versions of the like-button enhances by so much exposure to the constant use of it.
One reason the novel grew into something better from the first draft was fans of this couple reached out to me and we discussed the character's lives on the original program within the 1790's, 1890's and 1960's time-periods. When that discussion began running low there wasn't much more to go on. On top of that this work is also derived from an interruption series known as "The Pit of Ultimate Dark Shadows" which is nowhere near complete. Hence, the alterations in our beloved characters lives can only be understood as far as that interruption series currently contains, as well as the original Dark Shadows, Clue: The Movie, and The Ghost & Mrs. Muir.
In the last year or so this natural and required discussion dwindled. So, all of these things are taking much longer than one would presume.
There will need to be some changes in tenses in the third draft of the novel to be combined evenly in chronology with the audio drama.
If all of this seems rather technical, it is. I resigned from a good job to take on all of this work fully and obtain the needed help and discussion from the right people who had a vested interest. Unfortunately most of what I got instead was invitations to waste time in Zuckerberg Land (Facebook) and its various carbon copies.
I am grateful to have found, and continue to find, the needed discussion for "The Pit..." project in the old-fashioned ways that still work, and work better: pen friends and letters. However, these friends I lovingly garnered have little to no interest in the novel, just the audio show.
I let Melissa and Lisa, close friends now in this endeavour, know that even as I've depleted the social network poison of Facebook from my system, I still care deeply about our shared group of members who came or were invited to the Barnabas & Maggie group on Facebook. I've created other avenues outside of Facebook for these fans to socialize, but that virtual playground can be an extremely difficult thing to stop using. (It took me a year of hard work and good help to do it. It is the worst addiction I have ever had, and no joke!)
One network I will, for the time being, still use is DREAMWIDTH dot ORG. This online zone can be difficult to use and I believe this is on purpose to be a set of tools better employed by people who are either more tech savvy or can take on the challenge and enjoyment of learning. This makes it less addictive and therefore less attractive to the spoon-fed masses. If email is somehow "too scary" then I offer that online location. I created a Barnabas and Josette group on Dreamwidth.
I do all of this for the sake that I realized the chat wasn't coming years ago due to the overwhelming show of non-canon pairings in Dark Shadows fandom online, and that would easily mean that the fans who wanted relief for the people we watched on the screen would be a longing that had turned into a rather big "No-no" somehow. It was the fans of Maggie and Barnabas who were truly ostracized and ridiculed.
I guess I'm a fan because to me, and my husband, the reincarnation and reciprocation was blatantly obvious to the point of hilarity. But fans, such as yourselves, are the people who were denied access to each other from intimidation and scare tactics by others. Absurdly silly, but sadly true. There are a few who aren't grateful that I went through so much hell to help provide them a way to find each other, but for me it's been the principle of the thing anyway. And a fair number are grateful, which helps. (For Lisa, though, I and Melissa have quite a bit of "hero worship" in a sense, to which Lisa often responds, "Oh stop that!" Hee hee hee.)
So that is about it as far as the progress of this work is going. I knew the internet in its earlier stages, before mobile phones were a thing almost everyone had. To me email was about as hygienic a communications tool as one could get. All the rest seems less necessary, but as far as what I can use Dreamwidth is "very good" for the time being, if we must use any such equipment to chat.
Take care,
Daryl
COLON slash slash barnabas-and-josette DOT dreamwidth DOT org
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