Jake's Dream Comes True

Writing Journal: Just finished The Adjusters #45. It was weird. All about the secondary characters. Not entirely sure how I feel about it. But it moves the plot along. I'm having a love/hate relationship with Book IV. Hopefully working on #46 will help out—back to Jenn's perspective.

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It's been a busy month of August, split between work and family. But I'm here, and I read all the emails, and I read all the comments, even if I'm slow on the response and even slower on the postings.

Fact is, that's pretty much my problem these days. Since life is so busy, a lot of stuff gets put on the shelf where it grows and grows, and when I get a bit of time to do something about it, I look at the overflowing shelf and don't quite know where to start attacking it. Not an original problem, I know. I just haven't found a satisfactory solution that works for me.

The story this week is a little saga that just finished posting on the EMCSA (although I think I read it over at Storiesonline), and which many of you have probably already seen, but if not, let me present Jake's Dream Comes True, by Billy_Ray77: “After being pummelled by a pair of bullies, Jake’s mental powers manifest themselves.”

Now, the description doesn't really do the story justice, as the author himself points out in a post over at MCForum. And I admit that the first time I tried reading the story, back when it was only two or three chapters long, it didn't grab me. But there's an actual story there, one that goes way beyond the somewhat succinct description above that misleadingly suggests a Guy Gets Powers And Fucks Everything That Moves story line, a story about how Jake deals with his powers, and how they affect the people that he loves. It's a nice and sweet story, with less pathos that I would have expected—sadly, in my hands, that story would have had a few of the nice girls in there somewhat used and abused and I can tell you exactly where that use and abuse would have occurred!—but still plenty of twists and turns. It reminds me a lot of a couple of classic mind-control stories of years past, one of which I can remember the details of but not the title. I'm going to have to find it and link to it one day.