this post is actually about my nose ~

i originally made the threat here, and then i followed it up by actually conceiving a character here. but i put it all in the back of my mind because i wasn't quite sure how to fit this strange outsider into the careful epic that i had spent so much care constructing.

well thanks to a wretched sinus infection and a lot of medication that has made me both loopy and cranky (and i mean really cranky ~ like, sleepless, homicidal cranky), i think i've solved all those niggling problems and whitney ballard will be making his debut this weekend (Sunday) on Reconstruction (in his own words, no less, which is utterly terrifying to me!).

i have to say, spending time with ballard, getting to know his particularities has been very disturbing, but likewise very rewarding (especially in terms of bringing together a few loose sheep in the story ~ if i ever thought the plot was intertwined in an impossible complex fashion, it's now ridiculously so). but even more gratifying, perhaps: it's not often that i challenge myself to write a character so utterly repugnant and try see things from a point of view I couldn't disagree with more ~ and to find good in someone whose whole livelihood depends on a gross systematic bigotry.

i actually found qualities to admire in ballard, which is frightening, but i hope good for the story. and i'm proud of myself that i am not going to shrink from putting this character front and center in his own little opera.



a rather cleaned-up whitney ballard
and his long-time nemesis (unfinished),
the mysterious "reverend" luther.
three guesses who the dashing mister luther really is
(and the first two don't count)
( some slightly spoilery background for the truly masochistic )