Z: Zoology

This is the perfect day for this post. Why? I'll explain later.

Zoology may be a bit of a stretch, but it's something for 'z.' For this one, I'm going back to the beginning of The Experiment. Audrey Raingold is taking Biology the year The Experiment happens, which necessitates learning about animals. So some of the course would be considered zoology. Audrey's introduction into the story is when she is dissecting a frog for school.

Audrey is somewhat based on me, and so her frog dissection is as well. She finds a beetle's exoskeleton in her frog's large intestine as I did in mine. I don't really remember much else from the dissection, except that I got bored with it before I was done, but the beetle experience has been incorporated into a story. After all, stories are better if they have some truth in them, and I've heard that authors are supposed to write what they know. (Though I have also heard it is better to write what you want to read.)

Why is this the perfect day? My sister and her friend dissected their own frogs today. My sister's frog has a more interesting story than mine. It had a ladybug in its mouth. It was also full of frog eggs, which was pretty gross. Biology can be quite interesting, and even furnish stories for fiction.

Y: York and Jen

York and Jen Mercer are fifteen year old twins who meet up with the Raingolds about halfway through their adventure. They both went to public school where they constantly got themselves in trouble by questioning the wrong things their teachers tried to teach them. As Jen tells Audrey, "My teacher had been trying to teach us some baloney about the Constitution that wasn’t even slightly true, and I proved her wrong straight from the Constitution itself. Apparently they can’t have people doing that."

Jen wants to be a nurse. Her father was a doctor, and so these two combined gave her the medical knowledge necessary to deal with some unfortunate incident which befell them.
I'm not sure what York's ambition is, it wasn't necessary to the story, but he does have a dog. His dog is Canis, and Canis is very attached to his young master.

Jen was a dream character, she was in the dream about the fight on the bridge. That's where she got her name. York got his name because of Ian and Kansas. I was going to have a bunch of characters with state names, but in the end there were only three: Indiana (Ian), York, and Kansas.

York and Jen have a smaller role in the story than I at first thought, but they do have a role and they play it well.

X: eXperiment

It's been exactly one month since I wrote my last blog post. I never intended to let it go so long, but life has a way of getting busy, especially when one is involved in a congressional campaign.

I have to cheat a bit, because again there are no X-rays or X-boxes or xylophones or people named Xavier. So we have eXperiment. The eXperiment is what The Experiment is all about. It is a plot by the President and Miss Reginald to control the lives and minds of the American people. Along with that, there are scientific experiments performed by Miss Reginald.

Miss Reginald is trying to find a way of weakening the mind and making it susceptible to mind control. One of the ways she tried it was weakening it with the infirmities of age. Her experiments don't always go as planned, as Georgie Prescott could tell you.

She also was working on experiments to create fearless warriors. The one line I had in mind from the very beginning has to do with this experiment: "It is my pet project. To see what kind of monster I can create." This experiment causes Anne Rubin no end of grief. It is one she is determined to reverse, even more so than the experiments on the general population.

The eXperiments are a central element of the book, and what I desperately hope will always remain science fiction.

W: Why . . .

. . . I Wrote The Experiment.

I realize this is a major stretch for an A-Z post, but I didn't really have much to say about the weather, and I've been wanting to blog about this for a while.

I want to say first off that I didn't write The Experiment because dystopian is "in." I didn't even learn the word "dystopian" until I had completed all but my very last revision, and that revision, while it contained a major rewrite of the ending, was due to comments from a test reader, not to having discovered the dystopian genre. Besides, I'm not really sure The Experiment actually is dystopian. "Political thriller" seems to suit it better. But the reason I wrote it is the reason I think dystopian stories are popular. Because it's coming.

I wrote The Experiment because America is heading downhill fast. Even as I wrote it, I worried that the events portrayed in it would become outdated before I finished. Indeed, I hoped it would be in that America would turn around and get back on track. Alas, we have only continued downward. I wrote The Experiment as part of my endeavor to warn people and wake them up to what is happening.

A major part of The Experiment is the government using public schools to indoctrinate people to their cause and control them. This isn't wild speculation. The government is trying to do this. Look at all the regulations placed on schools. The schools and teachers are so wrapped in red tape they can no longer truly teach. Common Core is a major part of this. It creates national standards for education, which is truly a very bad thing. Everyone is different, but Common Core forces everyone to be exactly the same.

Miss Reginald's experiments are something that I sincerely hope will always remain science fiction, but sometimes I have my doubts. My mom has sent me links to several articles which indicate that scientists are trying to do similar things. One article even mentioned a Google person saying it might be possible someday to upload your brain to the internet. I hope it isn't true, but it's scary to think it might be possible.

I don't focus much on religious persecution in The Experiment, but that is something else that I believe is coming. If you look at all the anti-Christian agenda being pushed everywhere, you will see I'm not being a conspiracy theorist. Prayer outlawed in schools, but Muslim indoctrination classes mandated; the constant slaughter of unborn children; perversion considered normal; immorality accepted . . . America is no longer a Christian nation. My pastor even said yesterday in his sermon that though we have not yet experienced religious persecution in America, he thinks it is not far off.

I am not a crazy conspiracy theorist. Yes, I have an active imagination, but it is not imagination that makes me think America is on the brink of destruction. I have been greatly involved in politics for about ten years now, since I was eight years old, and I pay close attention to national, state, and local politics. I have studied our founding documents and principles and helped to teach them. I have listened to talk radio almost every day since I was five, and have learned quite a lot about the true state of our nation. I pay attention to what goes on in this nation, and where we are headed is not a good place. I want people to know what is happening to America.

And that is why I wrote The Experiment.

V: Vehicles

This is where you get to find out just how weird I am. My dream car is not a fancy sports car, or a limousine, or any other car that's typically considered cool. I don't even know what the names of cool cars are. My dream car is a 15 passenger van. Preferably with a bunch of kids in the backseat.

The most important of the vehicles in The Experiment are the 15 passenger vans. The Raingolds and their friends take 15 passenger vans when they begin their journey to Courtstone. The 15 passenger vans are even engaged in a car chase. I loved writing the car chase. It was a lot of fun. When I revised The Experiment, I had some difficulties in making the car chase possible, but I was determined, and eventually succeeded.

Some other vehicles in The Experiment include police cars, semi trucks, limousines, and a bus, but my favorites are the 15 passenger vans.

U: Unconstitutional

Unconstitutional . . . it's Abby Raingold's favorite word. She doesn't just say it to use a big word either. When she says a thing is unconstitutional, she's right. In The Experiment, the U. S. government does many things which are unconstitutional. The first that Abby points out is when government officials insist on entering the Raingolds' home without a warrant. A warrant is required and, as Abby said, "it has to be a reasonable warrant! It’s unconstitutional for you to do it without! That’s unlawful search and seizure, and we’re protected from that by the Fourth Amendment!"

At another time, Abby mentions that the government is only allowed to do things specified in the Constitution. This is clarified by the Tenth Amendment: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

As much as I wish I could say it is not true, unconstitutional behavior by the government is a thing not relegated to fiction. In fact, the government today seems to do more that is unconstitutional than is constitutional. Gun control, the NSA, and the "separation of church and state" are some prominent examples.



Below is a fun and educational video written and acted by some good friends of mine all about what the Constitution is and why it matters. The government needs to follow the Constitution, and it's your job to make them do it.

T: The Machine

Well, I'm back.

I had a nice Christmas break with my family, despite people getting sick, but now it's time to get back into normal life. And for this blog, that means maybe finally finishing my Experiment A-Z posts.

I know of three things in fiction called "The Machine." Of those three, two are torture devices, and one is an automobile. The one in The Experiment is not the automobile. The Machine is a large, cage-like device with wires pointing towards the center. Miss Reginald loves The Machine, though I doubt anyone else does. It creates extreme torture, and generally causes the victim to pass out.

Linus Prescott describes the pain caused by The Machine as being "more painful than if every bone in your body were crushed into a powder." Luckily, there's no more detail of the pain than that. I don't think I could go into any more detail. I'm a bit squeamish. My youngest sister was reading The Experiment for about the hundredth time yesterday, and she said that the point where I said "The agony (she) suffered in those minutes can never be put into words," was cheating. But for me, it's enough. The Machine is a terrible device.

S: Samuel Polk

Samuel Polk is another one of those characters I made up to fill a specific role. I needed another teenager who could drive, and so I named him Samuel. Now, you may be wondering why I had a character named Sam in Across the Stars, and a Samuel in The Experiment. I obviously like the name, but why? That can be answered in two words: Samwise Gamgee. He is my favorite character from Lord of the Rings, and so I started to like his name. I can't very well go around naming my characters Samwise, so I decided on a different name that can have Sam for a nickname. So Audrey called him Samuel.

At one point in the story, I decided to write a chapter about Samuel, simply because I didn't know what would happen next to the Raingolds. To do this, though, Samuel needed siblings. I have a little notebook full of fictional families I've made up, and so I looked through that to find a Samuel that would suit the part. I couldn't find very many Samuels, but I did find one family that had one with several older siblings, a twin sister, and a younger brother and sister who were twins. These were the Polks. I decided to use this family with a few alterations. For one thing, I never mention whether or not there are any older siblings. For another, I changed the ages of the girls so there were no twins. Then I had the Polks as can be known from The Experiment: Samuel, Samantha, Timmy, and Tabby.

Their part in the story expanded slightly from the tiny chapter I wrote while stalling the Raingold part. Their chapter doubled in length, and Tabby had a role to play at Courtstone. Their main role, however, is to show that these events are happening to others, and to expand the Raingolds' acquaintance. And that role they fulfill very well.

R: Raingolds

Finally I come to the Raingolds! I don't see why I always seem to pick last names for my main characters that come so far down in the alphabet. The Raingolds were a family I made up based on my own family except with extra kids, namely two little brothers. I made up random stuff about them for a while, but I really wanted a story to put them in. However, I couldn't come up with a good one. Then I had the dream which inspired what I then called Stand Fast, and decided to put them in it. It was a perfect fit, though the finished story is considerably different.

Audrey Raingold is the oldest, and somewhat based on me. She does tend to be somewhat bossy, and likes little kids. The muffin batter she mentions dumping on the inside of the oven is a true story. And I also found a beetle's exoskeleton inside of the frog I dissected for biology. Audrey is a lot braver than me, though. She is responsible, but she doesn't really want to be in charge. I suppose this is somewhat like me. I am capable of leading if I absolutely have to, but I hate doing it. Honestly, I think Audrey handled the whole situation better than I would have.

Ginnie was inspired by my sister Rebekah, but I think Ginnie came out even quieter than my sister. Ginnie is mostly just there, to support the others without obtruding into the story. Her relationship with Carrie Pauley as piggyback ride giver is taken from real life. "Carrie" did always get Rebekah to give her piggyback rides, and she did tell Bekah to jump over things, saying, "I won't fall off. I promise."

I'm not sure where to start with Abby. She is based on my sister Addyson, as my family was quickly able to see. I remember when my dad was reading it for the first time, my mom asked him, "Have you met your daughter yet?" Yes, Addy does talk a lot about the Constitution, and in an intelligent way. She knows it. She knows politics, too. Though Abby doesn't do this in the book, Addyson has gone into very detailed descriptions of why property and income taxes are wrong. Abby is rather argumentative, but she knows what she is talking about. She is a tomboy, and an entertaining character. Abby and Ian are the life of the story, which leads me to Ian.

Ian is not based on anyone in particular. However, his name is. His name is Indiana, which is because of Indiana Jones, though that is not the story explanation. I originally called him Indy, though I decided before I wrote it that I would call him Ian. He is, shall we say, spirited. In a less delicate way of speaking, he is a pain. He is very active and, well, he is a little boy. He is only seven, and doesn't know when to keep his mouth shut. He also is argumentative, and gets into good natured fights with Abby. It doesn't take much for the two of them to get obnoxious together. As a character, I like him, though I'm not sure I would want him to be my little brother.

Then there's Collin. He's two, and, apparently, not much of a talker. He gets carried around a lot by the older children, but he doesn't really do much. I'm pretty sure he's a cute little thing, though. At any rate, the little boy who played him in the book trailer is.

And that's the Raingolds.

Q: Quadruped

I had a hard time coming up with something for "Q." In fact, I was having such a hard time thinking of something that I looked through all the words beginning with Q in my dictionary several times. Finally, I noticed the word "quadruped," and thought, a dog is a quadruped, I'll do Canis! And so this post was born.

I love dogs. I haven't always, but I do now, especially my yellow Labrador retriever Sophie. There is no mention of a dog in Across the Stars, so I had to put a dog into The Experiment. It isn't the Raingolds' dog, it is York's, and while the dog doesn't have much page time, he plays an important role. His name is Canis, which is Latin for "dog." And yes, that was on purpose. I was having trouble naming him, so I asked my mom and my sisters for ideas. We threw around a bunch of possibilities, and I ended up settling on Canis. I don't remember who thought of it, but it works. Canis is a very obedient dog, and very faithful to his master. I never specify his breed, but I tend to think of him as a German Shepherd, or something of that sort. Strange, because I like retrievers best by far. Canis has a job in the story, which he fulfills, but it could be considered a bit spoilery, so I won't say. It is in chapter 20.

P: Pooles, Pauleys, and Pardens

The Pooles, Pauleys, and Pardens are friends of the Raingolds. They are inspired by friends of mine, some of whom even starred in the book trailer for The Experiment.

The Pooles are Elisabeth, Mike, Maddy, and Elliot. The Pauleys are Bethy, Grace, Suzy, and Carrie. The Pardens are Annelise and David. The Experiment is dedicated to those who inspired these characters. For some of the characters, I used the middle name, or a variation thereof, for the name of the character. For a few I chose a different name, Elliot and David in particular. Those were just random names chosen because I didn't want to call a character by the middle name of the person they were inspired by. "David" found himself and his sister in the book when he was reading it, and his question was, "Why didn't you give me a little brother?" After explaining that I didn't need any more characters, he told me that next book I put him in, I had to give him a little brother. I wasn't planning on putting him in another book, but I'll have to keep that in mind if I do.

The characters didn't all come out exactly like the person they were inspired by, but they suit the story. Since the Raingolds are based on my family (with two little brothers), I can't help but think of The Experiment as being a story about me and my sisters and friends, though in the story we are all the ages we were three years ago. It has served to make the story mean more to me, imagining us in those circumstances.

O: Orphanage

Is it just me, or are orphan stories the most dramatic, sad, awesome stories ever? Anyone who knew me as a child knew my favorite game to play was "run away from the orphanage." We would make up the worst orphanage matron we could think of, slip out of the "orphanage," which was usually a dugout at a baseball field at the park, run around in circles with imaginary dogs chasing after us, journey far and wide in the small area of the park we were playing in, and set up housekeeping next to the same baseball field we had run away from, though this time it was far away. Then we would go back home to the air condition in our respective happy homes, and eat dinner with our families.

How does this figure into The Experiment? Especially since hardly any of the children are orphans? Well, they are treated as such. They even go to an orphanage at Courtstone. They are put in dormitories, given ugly gray uniforms, fed nasty food, faced with the possibility of being separated from their siblings . . . it's just what orphan stories are made of. I want to write a true orphan story someday, but since I haven't yet, I have to be content with the orphan story elements in The Experiment.

For any others who enjoy the drama of orphans, I highly recommend Thursday's Child by Noel Streatfeild. It is one of my favorites.

N: Nonconformists

The Experiment is about nonconformists, the people who refuse to conform to the confines of the government's control. A major section of the nonconformists would be the homeschoolers. There are a lot of those in the book. Maybe I'm biased, but I like homeschooling, and since I don't have any personal public school experience, my main characters are generally homeschooled. Other nonconformists in The Experiment are from private schools, though I don't feature any of them. Then there are the public school kids, who constantly land themselves in detention by refusing to accept the lies they are being fed. What happens to these nonconformists is the premise of the whole book: they fight back. They are freedom fighters.

These freedom fighters don't always have the upper hand. In fact, I would say the only way winning is possible for them is because they rely on God. The children are taken from their homes and placed in homes of those of people under the government's control, for the purpose of assimilating them into the society. Because removing them from their parents' influence will make them more controllable, right? Not so much. These children are nonconformists themselves, and will stop at nothing to save America. They are pursuers of freedom, and The Experiment is their story.

M: Malcolm Crowdler

Malcolm Crowdler . . . the evil President of the United States, one hundred years in the future. I find that I tend to have an evil ruler in my stories: King Jorrid in Across the Stars, Malcolm Crowdler in The Experiment, the Stryte Toarna in my WIP (work in progress) Creighton Hill . . . evil rulers are just so useful in a story. The backstory of the creation of the character Malcolm Crowdler is nothing spectacular. I needed an evil president, and Malcolm Crowdler was the first name I thought of, so that's who he became. Honestly, I don't know much of his backstory as a character either. I'm not much like Tolkien, I don't create extensive history for my stories and characters. I just fill it in when necessary. And I never found a reason to make up President Crowdler's backstory. But here's what I do know.

I found out from Miss Reginald that he was commissioned by The Head to fulfill the position of President. I don't know who The Head is, though. According to Miss Reginald, the President is selfish and likes power. He likely held a position in the government before he became president. He is very controlling, and doesn't like to tell people what is going on. He tends to make others work on a need to know basis. He obviously is smart enough to control the country, he must not be a product of the purposefully bad schools. However, he must not be the one completely in charge, whoever The Head is would be that. He is rather cruel, and his treatment of Johnson is no exception. He even calls himself Johnson's master. Malcolm Crowdler's outcome in the story is one I will not divulge. You have to read it for yourself.

L: Linus Prescott

L is for Linus, finally someone I have something to say about. He is another dream character, the one who rescued me from the creepy guy when I was yelling for Georgie. He is Georgie's younger brother.

Originally, Linus was going to be 16 years old, but when I started actually writing The Experiment, I decided he would be 20. I don't believe he was originally Georgie's brother either. He has been involved in trying to stop The Experiment for years, and his name is one Anne recognized from snooping in her brother's files. He is very smart, but is, by his own admission, no scientist. He can't do anything with chemistry or biology, but when it comes to technology, he can do just about anything. Don't ask me how, because I have no idea. He basically fulfills the role of a double agent, situated as he is within Miss Reginald's scientific research facility. He has been able to disable security devices while making it appear as if it accidentally broke, and he can get out of whatever Miss Reginald may confine him in.

On personality . . . he has a temper. He and Anne have some heated exchanges. He cares about his sister, and is anxious to reverse the experiments performed on her. He's great at spying, but he won't take the initiative to fight back. This frustrates Anne to no end, but he is insistent that the time is not right. He does insist that Anne obey him, and when she doesn't, it causes conflict. I suppose he's in the right, but still, I tend to be more on Anne's side. He is good friends with Brian and Henry Rubin. Linus is an interesting character, and I enjoyed writing about him.

K: Kansas Whitman

Kansas Whitman is a prime example of how my original idea is nothing like the finished product. First things first. She is a dream character. I don't know why the girl in my dream was named Kansas, though people in my dreams have had even stranger names. (One dream had young men named Vladimir and Foy, a boy named Atkinson, and a little girl named Rohlie.)

I originally thought Kansas would play a much larger role in the story than she did. Back then, though, it was completely separate from the Rubins' story and was under the working title Stand Fast (which I desperately wanted to change). I was going to have a bunch of characters with state names in that book, but in The Experiment there are only four: Indiana (Ian), Virginia (Ginnie), York, and Kansas. Kansas was also going to be the granddaughter of the Donahoes. She and her parents were to be rather estranged from the Donahoes, because of political differences, but that did not end up coming into The Experiment at all. I doubt now she is any relation to them, even in the first draft.

There are a lot of things from the idea of Stand Fast that I still would like to work into a story. I am working occasionally on a side project that is another dystopian type story, only with grownups as the main characters, so maybe some of it will get in there.

Kansas in the final version is a minor character, someone the Raingolds meet on their travels. She is basically in the same boat as them, taken from home, forced to work as a slave, etc. She seems like a rather spunky little girl. I know she was in my original ideas, but she didn't really get elaborated on much. She's there, though, and I'm sure she could have a very interesting backstory if only I had bothered to make it up.

J: Johnson

J is for Johnson, President Crowdler's minion, or lackey, or whatever you choose to call him. He is a minor character who performed the tasks needing to be done by an extra character. He is the only named employee of the President, unless you count Miss Reginald, so I suppose he is somewhat important. Regardless of his relative importance, his entrance into the story was rather unspectacular.

I was writing a chapter about President Crowdler, where he is told that the escapees have been recaptured. I needed a name for the person telling him, and Johnson was the first name I thought of. Thus, Johnson entered The Experiment. He had other tasks; he became the chauffeur, he tried to be a bodyguard, and most of all, he was there for the President to order around. Johnson doesn't have many scenes, but he's all I could think of for "J," since I had to put Jen with York in order to avoid repeating information. I do kind of feel sorry for Johnson, since he is under the President's control, but . . . I must say no more. I can't give away the ending of the book.

As a supplement to Johnson, here's a link to my latest interview, on KingdomTales.org.

I: Inspirations

This wasn't what I was planning for "I," I was going to do "Injections," but I have a lot more to say about the various things that inspired The Experiment. It's a lot more interesting, too. The things that consciously and unconsciously helped to inspire The Experiment don't all normally go together.

The principle inspiration was from dreams, which I described here. The dreams are described in the third and fourth paragraphs. Another non-book or movie inspiration was America. America has been going downhill for a long time, with the government taking more and more power and trying to control every aspect of our lives. I listen to Glenn Beck most days, so I heard about it a lot. Common Core is one of these ways, a national education standard the government is trying to implement which essentially will make everyone the same and allow the government to collect and store records on us. The Affordable Healthcare Act, more commonly known as Obamacare, also takes away freedom and helps the government to collect information on Americans. I wrote The Experiment before the whole NSA spying thing became known, so that wasn't even a part of this inspiration. And if you didn't already know I was a conservative political activist, you do now.

The Giver by Lois Lowry and A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle were a big part of the inspiration, more specifically, the society in The Giver and the planet Camazotz in A Wrinkle in Time. Both are very controlled and not the least bit free. I remember thinking how there were lots of books with situations like that, but not very many about it becoming that way. So I decided to write one.

Another thing that inspired The Experiment was an episode of Gilligan's Island. I believe it was called "The Good Doctor" and it was about a mad scientist. The scientist came to the island and took the castaways to his home where he switched their minds with each other. So the idea of a mad scientist became inseparably connected to The Experiment. A character from certain children's Star Wars books had a part in it as well. In the Rebel Force series by Alex Wheeler there is a character called X-7 who was taken by the Empire, his memory was erased, and he was used as an assassin, his mission being to kill Luke Skywalker. Later in the series, you find out who he used to be, Trever Flume, a principal character in the Last of the Jedi series by Jude Watson. Trever wasn't exactly the greatest character, he was an orphan and a reformed street thief, but I liked him and hated to find out what the Empire did to him. This greatly influenced the experiments on Edmund Rubin.

In Turn Homeward, Hannalee by Patricia Beatty, Hannalee is forced to be a servant for a cruel couple after the Yankees kidnap her during the Civil War and ship her north. The Raingolds' life at the Donahoes' was inspired by this.

In parts of the story, the Raingolds and their friends are in orphanage-type places, which was because of my love of orphan stories. Some of the stories that inspired this are the musical Annie, Changes for Samantha, Thursday's Child by Noel Streatfeild, and Mandy by Julie Andrews Edwards.

Thinking back on The Experiment, I realized that the experiments on Georgie were probably influenced by the Vita-Wonk and Wonka-Vite in Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator by Roald Dahl and Anne's memory most likely came from Cam Jansen's photographic memory in the Cam Jansen series by David Adler.

It just goes to show, what you write is influenced by what you read!

H: Holly Reginald

Holly Reginald is a scientist, and one of the main villains in The Experiment. I struggled to find a name for her for a while. I looked through our baby name book, possibly one of the most tattered books in our house, in search of a name. I decided her last name would be Reginald, and I thought at first that her first name would be Anatola. However, thinking about that name, I decided I wanted to use it for an orphan girl in a story inspired by L. M. Montgomery's books instead (and no, I haven't written it yet). The first name I thought of after making the decision not to call Miss Reginald 'Anatola' was Holly, and so that became her name. Most of the time I just call her Miss Reginald, though.

One of Miss Reginald's lines has been in my mind since long before I began to write The Experiment. I thought of it then, and still do, as the sort of line that would be played in all the trailers if it was a movie: ". . . he is my pet project. To see what kind of a monster I can create." I was determined to work it in somehow, and I did.

Miss Reginald's character underwent some last minute changes about two months ago. One of my test readers pointed out how she unrealistically rambled on and on to no one about her evil schemes. I admittedly have great difficulty writing villains, so I was glad that this reader pointed out ways to make her more realistic. It was difficult for me to figure her out, to learn her motivation, and so I wrote an interview with her to learn more about her. You can read that interview here. Miss Reginald is an interesting character, and you can read all about her in The Experiment available tomorrow (though if you want to stalk Amazon and Createspace, you may be able to find it later today:) ).

G: Georgie

Georgie is one of the dream characters, in other words, she was in one of the dreams that inspired The Experiment. In the dream, I'm not sure whether or not she was really old, or if, like in the story, it was only Miss Reginald's experiments that made her appear old (though Miss Reginald wasn't in the dream). Georgie is twenty-five years old and sister to Linus Prescott. She isn't actually in the book much, but she is there.

She has few lines to say, but mostly Georgie is one of the reasons they are determined to fight. Anne meets her when Linus takes her to Georgie's room, the only place they can talk without being overheard. Linus is desperate to reverse the experiments on Georgie, but, not being a scientist, he doesn't know how. Whether or not the experiment can be reversed you will have to find out from The Experiment itself, available October 1st. And, starting October 1st, you will have an opportunity to win a free copy of The Experiment!