Snowflake Method - Other Important Characters

Since I last posted, I have told the story from two other important characters - Agent Tracy Averdue and Mr. Von Schutzel, both from the Asylum for Miscreant Characters. Here is the story through their eyes.

Agent Tracy Averdue – POV

The basics of this case were as follows: The perp – Malcolm Price – was plotting to change places with his creator – Nick Aceret – and then kill Aceret off. We discovered the plot after Millicent Marianna Freedman succeeded (for a short time) in taking over her author’s body by basically pushing the author’s essence – her soul, if you will – out into the ether so Freedman could enter her body. Since Aceret had created Freedman prior to her author’s use, and since the other characters created by Aceret seem to become more than he created them to be at a higher ratio than that of other authors’ creations, we decided to review Aceret’s work to find out why. What we discovered instead was Price’s plot and the machinations he’d already accomplished to this point – encouraging Freedman’s delusions of grandeur to a dangerous point and working to get Marlena Kevan written off the page when she became a threat to his how delusion of being the superior character.

I brought this information to the attention of Mr. Von Schutzel, the director of the Asylum for Miscreant Characters. He attempted to gain Aceret’s attention and inform him of Price’s plot, but to no avail. After reviewing our options against the severity of the threat, we decided to assign Agent Kevan the task of ensuring Price’s plot did not succeed as well as the task of bringing Price to justice.

At first, Agent Kevan was a bit reluctant to take on these tasks due to her previous dealings with both men. Additionally, she did not agree with the assessment that it was Price, no Aceret, who had her written off the page in the third book of Aceret’s series. However, when she perceived the threat to both the character realm and the realm of reality, she accomplished the task at hand like any good field agent would. Successfully.

Mr. Von Schutzel – POV

When Agent Averdue brought Malcolm’s plotting to my attention, I was alarmed! We’d had other cases of characters attempting this sort of maneuver, but managed to abort the attempts before they were visible even to the other characters in the story lines – at least until Millie came along. Her brief stint in the realm of reality alerted us to look more closely at Nick Aceret’s characters – for some reason, the characters he creates have a higher rate of being more than he created them to be than those of other authors. Agent Averdue reviewed Mr. Aceret’s work and found the markers, warning signs, clues, however you wish to describe them, where Malcolm had influenced not only Millie in her delusions of grandeur, but also where he convinced Mr. Aceret that Marlena was no longer an asset to the storyline. There were also indications of his plot to switch his essence (his soul) with that of Mr. Aceret, so it would actually have been Mr. Aceret that died at the end of book five in his series, not Malcolm.

I tried to tell Mr. Aceret, to warn him, but to no avail. He was too wrapped up in his story – authors tend to get extreme tunnel vision when they are close to finishing their projects we’ve noticed – to listen to anyone, let alone a voice from the character realm – he likely thought I was his inner critic, who’d never really liked Malcolm from the start – that should have been a major indication, Mr. Aceret! – oh well.

After reviewing our options on how to best deal with the situation, we decided to bring Marlena in to work the case. She’d done a remarkable job with fetching Millie back to the Asylum and getting that poor author back into her own body after hanging about her library watching Millie nearly make a muddle of the author’s writing career – so we though Marlena would be perfect for the job, her previous dealings with the two men not withstanding. We did not expect her to be so reticent about accepting the task at hand however! Agent Averdue did an exceptional job laying out the facts to her, but Marlena had to reconcile her head with what she’d lived through, and we didn’t realize how much of a debate that would be! It was nearly too late when she finally agreed to take on the task! If it hadn’t been for Mr. Aceret’s over-caffeinating ways, we would have been too late!

Be that as it may, Marlena, the dear girl, came through and we got Malcolm back in his proper spot just in the nick of time. That is one character that will never attempt any such thing again! Oh, and we saved Mr. Aceret as well. I believe he is still on sabbatical from writing however.