My aunt left me a universe.
My aunt Geanora was a writer.
And an artist, a teacher, and a spiritual guide.
She created a world large enough to hold multiple novels. One made it into print. The rest remained unpublished when she died in 2017.
And then they sat.
The books still existed. The characters still existed. The world she had imagined was still there.
Eventually, I realized I couldn't leave it there forever.
The Books
Beyond the published novel are additional manuscripts, drafts, and outlines that continue the story.
I inherited all of it.
Not only the files and books and journals and notes, but the question of what, if anything, should happen to them now.
The Curiosity Project
I am revisiting the work, beginning with Curiosity.
That means reading things closely, making careful revisions where the work needs them, and figuring out how to bring this universe to readers who never had the chance to find it the first time.
I'm also reading the work aloud.
Curiosity will unfold chapter by chapter, with ways to read and listen as the project develops.
This is an act of stewardship, collaboration across time, and, inevitably, interpretation. Even though I was her first reader and helped build this world, I can't ask her what she meant, though we talked about this work often. I can't hand her an edit and wait for the argument, even though we passed drafts back and fourth for years before she passed. I have to make choices while remembering that the reason there is anything here to choose from is because she made it first.
