A new Mensura story: (re-)introducing Kani

So. Tomorrow I plan to do something I haven’t done in a long time, at least intentionally: publish part of a story that’s still in unfinished first draft state. First, though, a little story about the story.

Kani is a coyote character I started roleplaying years ago, one of my few male characters. I never quite inhabited him, though, the way I did Arilin. I have too many characters because all of them are me; that’s the same reason I’m a writer, I suspect. There’s some Arilin in me, and there’s some Chipotle, but there’s also some Saida and some Autumn. There’s some Tallulah, although there’s probably more Deborah (her girlfriend from her original story who is a white cat and a writer no you shut up). And, yes, there was some Kani, but… increasingly distantly.

So I’ve started a new Mensura story about Kani.

Chipotle never appeared in a canonical story version until she showed up in Saida & Autumn. (She actually appeared in a couple stories by others, but never by me!) This introduces her—and by proxy other characters in her orbit who may eventually show up, like her half-sister Chiltepin and cousins Serrano and Cascabel—to Mensura. The new piece should do the same for Kani.

Even though they’re a coyote, Kani isn’t related to Chipotle. And, as the singular they might have tipped you off, they’re nonbinary. Why the change? The simple version is that I’d like to write more varying gender identities, and Kani will be my first viewpoint enby character. The complex version is… well, complex, in the way that themes around identity often are. I’ll just say Kani doesn’t feel so distant now.

This story continues the tradition of Saida & Autumn and Red Savina: works that are very much “Arilin stories,” but still stretching what I’ve done before in certain ways. Things I still don’t know:

• How long this will be
• How big future parts will be
• Whether it’s going to end up becoming a new serial here
• What the title is
• Whether this is even going somewhere at all

Because this isn’t finished, it’s not going through the same kind of editing that I prefer, although it’ll still get a quick once-over and a spellcheck. If you do find any errors, please point them out. In fact, this is something I’d really like feedback on from all of you in the comments. Yes, that means you, too.

As they say: it’s an adventure! But I hope you’ll like how it starts out, at least. The post should go up sometime on Sunday.

Edited on Sunday to add... I've decided to split up what I have now into two posts this week, one of which will go up later today and the other of which will go up on Thursday, the day after Christmas.

(Procedural note: between the first two scenes of the new story—which together are a size not far off from three of my more typical weekly posts—and “Lovely Little Fish,” I plan to let the Patreon charges go through on January 1st.)