One day, I got to thinking (as I occasionally do), "What would happen if Lara Croft met Sheena of the Jungle?" (or, more to the point, what would I want to happen?). Thinking it unlikely that the upcoming Tomb Raider film would provide any entertaining hijinks of the sort I was envisioning, I decided to take a stab at it.

The fact that I have never played "Tomb Raider", or read an entire "Sheena" comic book (I just scanned 'em for you-know-what) isn't really an obstacle to this type of writing, since it relieved me of the obligation of doing any actual research about the characters. I was able to just make up my own versions of 'em, and get started.

Originally, I had pictured this story as a sort of "Damsel in Distress" epic, having a structure that Tom Clancy, for one, uses: introducing a large, seemingly-unrelated group of characters, and seeing how they all come together as the story moves along. Unfortunately, that sort of writing works best when the reader has the entire book in front of them, and can be drawn farther into the story at a rapid pace. It doesn't work all that well when chapters sometimes get posted months apart. As a result, some folks have found this story confusing. Rather than explain too much of what happens, let me just say that ALL the characters you meet along the way have some relevance to the story, and that much of what may seem unclear really will fall into place before we're done. I estimate it will eventually run to 10 chapters.

As always, your feedback is appreciated: jebdel@excite.com