Why is this here?

Sanne and Marcus stories have been floating around in my head for a long time now, often inspired by weird science I run across, and geologists' field stories of course. While I didn't see the "driftless area" map until later, it looks a lot like how I imagine maps of the Desolate Areas do. And I suppose the name of the Desolate Areas was inspired by Captain Cook's name of the Kerguelen Islands, aka Desolation Islands.

Map of the Driftless Area of the American Midwest showing state lines (Wisconsin, Illinois, Minnesota, Iowa) and several towns within that area. Glacial till is spotted, the Driftless is solid.

But so sometimes one gets this horrible ~~bitch~~ er, wait brain itch to read a particular book. Just one problem—this book doesn't exist. Nobody's written it.

One solution is, well, to write it. Unfortunately, I am not a writer. Also, my characters have decided to be geologists (this was not my choice!), and I am not one, nor do I handily have any in the vicinity. I'd rather have someone else write these stories, someone who can actually write and knows what a geologist knows. But, you know, with exactly my characters and my events and the exact descriptions of everything and interactions between it all and... all that stuff AI can't do (yet?).

But so here's Sanne's Notebook. It's a labour of love, a work in progress, not particularly good and even embarassing enough that I don't tell anyone who knows me that I'm doing this. I do have it on a public server so I can open it on any device and (re)read it whenever I want. And I do. I'm re-reading it all the time. Writing it is not scratching the itch, but reading it is.

I enjoy watching Sanne go from a swearing, immature, insecure and frightened young scientist into an understanding, confident person who learns courage isn't being fearless, accepting her body isn't giving up, and how to love herself and others. I guess that's her character arc.

I just love the sad invertebrate weirdness that is Marcus. He's a little too excited about things, but that's good, right? He taught me to stop fearing inverts and love their wriggly segmented antenna'd little bodies, sometime around the year 2020 (thank you!). There's not really a character arc though. Maybe he's too old, but he just is.

I really, really like these Desolate Areas. They freak me out in a way that I know I can't really get right in words, but they can scare me like the strongest nightmares.

And anyway maybe, just maybe, someone else might enjoy it too. I'll probably keep this online for as long as I can afford a Linode and a domain name.