As previously anticipated (see "The Challenge of the Ordinary," May 29, 2025), Sam "Chief" Johnson has not been an easy person to track across the years. I am slowly building quite a profile on him now, thanks to the online Daily Racing Form archives. While these don't provide all the details I might want, the references there do help me pin down where he was active at a given time. Trying to find material on someone with so common a name as "Sam Johnson" in the huge Newspapers.com database is like trying to find particular snowflakes in a blizzard; being able to apply filters as to the cities/regions and times likeliest to yield references to the correct Sam Johnson makes a huge difference. So, I am making progress there.
I also finally got back to writing a little on the Firebird idea last night and am pondering on how best to handle an encounter between the heroine and Baba Yaga. This is challenging because Baba Yaga has plenty of surface familiarity for those even slightly acquainted with Slavic legend and mythology but is a figure with a thousand faces when you go below that surface. I don't want her to be just a stock figure of the Evil Old Witch to be gotten around somehow, like a boss in a video game. At the same time, she has to present a serious challenge for the heroine on a number of levels, one that should draw on the heroine's unique gifts and have a significant impact on her character arc. That means I have to come up with a fresh way of presenting elements that could otherwise fall into one of several pretty tired tropes. Which may force me to grow as a writer as much as the fictional Vasiliya does as a person.
I also finally got back to writing a little on the Firebird idea last night and am pondering on how best to handle an encounter between the heroine and Baba Yaga. This is challenging because Baba Yaga has plenty of surface familiarity for those even slightly acquainted with Slavic legend and mythology but is a figure with a thousand faces when you go below that surface. I don't want her to be just a stock figure of the Evil Old Witch to be gotten around somehow, like a boss in a video game. At the same time, she has to present a serious challenge for the heroine on a number of levels, one that should draw on the heroine's unique gifts and have a significant impact on her character arc. That means I have to come up with a fresh way of presenting elements that could otherwise fall into one of several pretty tired tropes. Which may force me to grow as a writer as much as the fictional Vasiliya does as a person.