Next on the menu is yet another rumination on the doings at the comic strip 9 Chickweed Lane. My writing it was prompted by the recent marriage of the whacky yet enigmatic "itinerant dairyman" named Thorax, and deputy sheriff Esme Meadow. A strange pairing, but any pairing at all with Thorax would have to be considered strange. I first thought to write a short exploration of what their married relationship might look like, taking into consideration what we've seen of Thorax to date, and how it would affect his few close friends.
It did not stay short. Once I jumped on this horse it galloped off at a dead run into unknown territory. Strange and wonderful territory. It's a broad ranging exploration of an alien's love for a human woman. Not an original premise, at all, but I hope my treatment of it will be an enjoyable read for Chickweed fans. It is, as I said, not short. It is much longer than my other pieces on the subject of 9CL. When finished, it turned out to be a medium length novel.
Most of the characters in 9CL are in it, and their assorted reactions to Thorax's marriage, and the subsequent life changes that occur for all of them, are what constitute the bulk of the tale. If anyone is offended by the uber-frank language and vividly rendered sexual situations, too bad. If a high level of loving and gently graphic eroticism is not your cup of tea, then I suggest you go elsewhere.
There are also several brief references to events that "happened" in my other efforts in regard to 9CL, but did not actually occur in the strip. This piece starts out "in canon" as they say, but it quickly diverts into territory that is light years, literally, away from canon. My previous pieces are explorations of what happened in the strip's past, or to expand upon some aspect of it left unexplored. This one is different because it projects events well into the future.
Nothing of what I wrote has the
remotest chance of ever appearing in the strip, to put it as mildly as
possible. If the inestimable Brooke McEldowny gets wind of this piece, I
hope he is not outraged by my presumption. My apologies to him in
advance, along with my assurances that this tale will never be monetized
in any way, shape, or form.
I emphasize that before reading this, one should be familiar with not only my shorter pieces of Chickweed fiction, but also be reasonably conversant with all the characters and their life stories up to the time this was written, which was in the fall of 2020.
This piece is too long to include in this blog, so I've made it available as a free PDF which can be downloaded or read online. The link below will take you to it. Thank you.
Warning Warning! This novel is significantly lustier, but just as loving as my other pieces. Significantly lustier as in wildly erotic. Fully and baldly X-rated, with possibly another handful of Xes thrown in for good measure. Alarmingly frank I would call it. But every outre' happenstance occurs in the context of deep and abiding love. If you can not abide such eroticism then I strongly suggest you not read this novel.
Addendum, 21/09/03: Recent plot developments in Chickweed make this piece even more speculative than it was before. Alas, being overtaken this way this is a distinct hazard of writing fan-fic about an ongoing creative project. I'll just call it an alternate history of Chickweed that diverges, drastically, from canon shortly after William and Esme's marriage.
