T. D. Aldoennetti's Stories

The writing of “TacPzlSolGp” (Air Force Sweetheart) and “Sorcerer/ Sorceress” (Tranquility) came about as a result of one of many weekly discussions which were held between myself, five other authors, and four agents.

At some time during one of those discussions the topic of present and past tense came up as related to story content with the consensus being that it simply was not possible to create an appealing as well as contiguous story plot which could be written entirely in present tense.

The results of that discussion were the two aforementioned stories.

I would like to note that writing entirely in present tense is not easy; especially so, if one wishes to produce a story which is readily capable of holding it’s readers while drawing them into the plot itself as well as causing them to accept the characters portrayed as real “flesh and blood” rather than some imaginary hybrid which may or may not capture the reader’s interest and which might have sprouted full grown from some pod bearing little semblance to anything human in the thought processes they proffer.

While I was not wholly successful in achieving the goal, those two stories do come close. To use present tense continuously drives one a “little mad” with the effort. Needless to say while my efforts were not as successful as I had hoped and past tense as well as others did begin to sprout here and there through the manuscripts (even after six or seven revisions), on a whole the stories did hold to the precepts of our discussion. I hope never to again need to use entirely present tense in a story at any other time in the future.

It is my hope that those stories when read, are entertaining, contain believable characters, and don’t drive the readers as “mad” while reading as they did myself as I wrote them.

In other words... please enjoy each of those efforts despite the difficult conditions which were set down for their creation.

T. D. Aldoennetti

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A View into the Mind of a Writer

The effort of trying to bring some of the stories now in my care to those of you who read them has caused this past year to be very interesting for me.

I have had the unique experience of attempting to find the latest revision of several stories while trying not to delay their postings.

I have read several stories for which I have managed to locate four or more revisions (Knowing Yourself had at least eight). Tranquility also had a number of revisions. Reading each revision and comparing each with it's predecessor has been — enlightening — to say the least.

Apparently Teddi wrote her stories in stages. The first was a basic story, okay for surface content but very little substance. The premise if you will. The first revision began to flush that out with more characters, and in the case of her stories some of her characters were just that, as well as adding more detail. The second revision would give the characters personalities which were uniquely their own as well as adding even more detail to the story. Many times she would infer things or situations to which she might or might not add more detail in a following revision. I can now readily see that an author seldom simply sits down and bingo, a story flows out from her fingertips.

Another thing I have noted from the folders in which each of her stories resides; a lot of research goes into each story. Another thing I learned from reading a story for which I have access to her research; sometimes she intentionally would place errors into her stories. Research would say one thing but the story characters would say something else. This made her characters fallible and apparently more 'human'. Sometimes even though Teddi knew the correct answer from research she would allow her characters to 'guess' and be partially correct to varying degrees. Each character guessing based upon their own unique background. Given a dozen characters, she could easily provide a dozen 'guesses' none of which would be totally correct and sometimes her characters would even get into an argument over who was most correct.

I've learned a lot while trying to bring some of her stories to you. I doubt I could ever do what she seemed to have a knack for accomplishing but still, it's been interesting and entertaining to see how she did what she did.

I hope each of you appreciates the depth of the stories as much as I am only just beginning to understand they hold.

Renae Alexiis Dumas