Rose is a veteran military officer and social worker, a competition-grade pistoleer, an expert martial artist, tough-minded, quick-thinking, and fearless. In short she has all the makings of a good action hero—yet I never have written her as such! The closest I got was Virga, but even there she plays the part of the steady, indomitable commanding officer rather than the two-fisted guns-blazing ass-kicker. Lately I have been hankering to find just one good situation to let her cut loose.

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As part of an old Twitter thread starting with a query about Timber Spruce’s age (just out of high school, apparently, which would make him eighteen and about a year older than Sci-Twi), Mr. Rudell had this to say about Sunset Shimmer:

Sunset would be older . . . age-wise she’s like a senior who was held back a couple years!

Discuss.

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Well. “Spring Breakdown” . . . happened.
  I should begin by stating this has nothing to do with Virga per se; I knew that job was dangerous when I took it. This is about the episode in and of itself.
  It was bad, pure and simple—possibly worse than the original featurette: awkward pacing, enormous plot holes, dreadful characterization. This was not at all up to Mr. Confalone’s usual standards.

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Addendum: I was rather hoping to finish Virga with zero downvotes. Ah well. Perhaps it’s one of the serial downvoters who seem determined not to miss any of my stories.

Including the vignettes in the author-notes boxes, which quite reasonably aren’t included in word counts, Virga has crossed the line into novel length—my first. By the time the three epilogues are finished, it likely will reach that threshold even without the vignettes, albeit only just.

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