#twelve points

YOU GUYS.

🇳🇱 Tonight’s the night! The final of the Eurovision Song Contest is here! I hope Duncan Laurence will give a great performance en gives us a win after 44 years. 🇳🇱

"All I know, all I know.

Honestly, you all can't know the relief I've felt the last few days that people are reading and enjoying the story. I knew it was an irrational worry but I was still quite concerned that it just...wouldn't be interesting, or people wouldn't like Caleb and Buck because they weren't part of the original cast of the books, or that people would have lost interest between the last three, which come as a set, and this one, which is sort of the first of the "next chapter" as it were. I knew this was unlikely but it was still a significant concern.

So it's really delightful to hear that you like Caleb! And delightful in general to know people are enjoying his story. Right now I think Jerry is getting as much love as Caleb, which I also can't say I object to. Michaelis might be not-so-secretly my favorite, but Jerry tends to be a bridge between the original canon and the new -- he's just very fun to write and because he has had such a varied life, he's a good connector. (Of the various ideas floating around in my googledocs, Jerry is either the framing device or a major opening pov character in fully half.)

I read it HOURS ago, and I'm still snickering under my mask at work.

LOL! Maybe I'll have to write it. I've been meaning to get back on the ukulele myself.

When I made up the set list I was drawing heavily from Eurovision 2022's semifinal/finalists, and in particular Solo Olo is based on Zdob și Zdub's entry, The Train (which is not about drinking but possibly about wanting to unite Romania and Moldova). So if you can picture that sound, only a drinking song ala Tubthumper, that's the gist of it.