In the Valley of the Sun

Lilith Parker is working at the local paper, announcing births and birthdays and deaths. One morning her boss Shannon gives her a more exciting assignment – research the local haunted house and write an article on its history. Nice flavor for Halloween, right?

But then Shannon turns up dead the next day, the local townspeople seem intent on keeping the story of the haunted house a secret, and Lilith is being haunted herself. Will she survive?

If you’re a new reader, go to the beginning and you can click all the way through the story from there. And you really should start at the beginning – it’s a very linear story and you won’t get the most recent update at all if you haven’t read what came before.

I also added a story index page.

Think of it as a literary Sims story – it’s a character driven psychological drama that tells its tale through imagery and metaphor and symbolism. There’s abstract poetry, occasional updates that are almost 100% pics with very little text, and some experimentation with storytelling concepts.

Oh, and I really really appreciate the comments on here. I love you guys so much and you’re such an inspiration to me to keep going.

Progress Update

I went back and forth on doing this because I don’t want to clog people’s RSS feeds, but oh well.

I am working on the draft for the final update and the epilogue. I was kind of hoping to have them done today but lolololol at that. It’s going to take some time and effort and it might be another week or more. I want them to be the best work I am capable of at my current skill level.

Also I may borrow a neat idea from Spark Stories (an excellent Sims 3 story blog you can find on my blogroll) and make some Valley wallpapers. Would anyone be interested in that?

My YouTube Seth playlist is up to 87 songs. I went through and picked some of the most Sethian and put together this playlist if you want to check it out.

And yes, everything except the blog has been deleted. Valley, though, continues on. Nothing can take away the joy and the love that I feel for this story, and I want to give it the best ending that I can. Thank you all so much for your patience and your support. I love you all.

Ten

I thought I would do another Seth short before finishing Valley. This one was inspired by a writing contest at a forum. The due date for the contest was the day that I started plotting the story out, so oh well for that.

The prompt was “ten”. Originally Seth was going to be ten years old but then this came to me. It’s the story of Seth as a tenth grader. And no, there aren’t going to be any pics. We’re being brave and going full text here.

Flood

The fire raged.

Light

She followed him.

Empty

The truth, Lilith…

Interlude

Official Valley will resume next week. I needed a break, and I also needed an entry for a writing contest on Boolprop. So here you go, a little Seth interlude featuring World Adventures to enjoy.

It’s set between Sarah’s death and his return to Sunset Valley. I like to think it’s an anniversary of Sarah’s death – thus the drunkenness. He’s in Egypt researching ambrosia and he’s fairly close to figuring it out. The contest involves your sim telling another sim about something in their past. Only 5-7 pictures allowed. It was fun writing straight text.

Interlude

The tide of tourists had ebbed, leaving exhaustion in its wake.

Angel

Fire brought you here.

Watcher

“Mr. Sekemoto, so scared to talk to you. To tell you about me.”

Seeds

Jason’s voice would not be waking her from this nightmare.

She thought she should feel something about that. But Jason seemed very far away. Everything seemed far away.

Dark

She follows me.