About 10 ½ years and 500,000 words ago I posted “An Incremental Journey” here; since retitled in my files as “Cynthia and the Incremental Journey.” I have changed several other titles as time has gone by. “Cynthia and the Reluctant Girlfriend” followed. We found out about Bobby Schmedlap at the very end of the previous story. Cynthia Lewis had been Alfred Gontarski, a very unpleasant, overweight man with no social skills, who just happened to be transgender. Bobby Schmedlap had all the support he could want from his family; however, they were living in near poverty. Cindy and The Wizard fixed that.

Of course, Cindy and Bobbie (Roberta) become BFFs. I had first thought that I might have Cindy and Bobbie end up in a physical relationship; however, I realized that was a dead end. So much more could happen if their relationship was just platonic. I feel that the nature of the stories matured as the characters matured. Bobbie was far quicker in being comfortable with her sexuality than Cindy was. After all, Cindy had been in a male body for 35 years, bitched about it in private, and acquired many bad habits that had to be unlearned. She did have a great support group, and her parents never doubted who she was, once she became Cynthia.

Wrapping things up was a bit problematic. Did I want a grandiose finale like in Wagner’s “Gotterdammerung” with the heroine riding into the burning Valhalla to rejoin her murdered lover? How about having the heroine quietly die with her lover not realizing it like Mimi in “La Boheme”. We could have the lovers ride off into the sunset as in “The Girl of the Golden West”; however, that’s not possible, as we know. No, the ending has to be like something that has been telegraphed ever since the first story.

I believe I wrote the epilogue before I concluded “Cynthia and the Wonderful Corrections” which really doesn’t have an ending. It just stops. The epilogue leaves us with a comfortable feeling; at least it did for me. We don’t have to worry about the lovers or anyone else for that matter. In the entire series, there is only one case of death without redemption. I believe The Wizard was really pissed off. Without a doubt, Evan Scheisskopf was clearly the evilest of any of the characters in the series. At least he ate well.

With the exception of The Wizard and Wolf, the characters are mine, and I would prefer to keep it that way. Some of the stories had been published before on Amazon with the help of Sapphire; however, I had them taken down when I became more comfortable with doing my own publishing. Now that the series is complete, I will make sure the stories are presented in the correct order. There will be three volumes of the Chronicles. I’ll have to do the covers this time. My muse is not dead, just resting. I’m kicking some things around; however, real life keeps interfering.