Since this story has grown so much bigger than I ever imagined I feel like its time to borrow a page from some of my favorite SimLit writers and offer you a synopsis of the characters and my thoughts on where to start for first time readers. With that said lets meet the cast shall we...
The Main Cast
Danielle and Londyn Huntley
Danielle(L) is a romance novelist. She was born and raised in Willow Creek with her lifelong friends Summer Holiday and Liberty Lee. She moved to Tartosa searching for her muse. She had seen all the stories about how romantic Tartosa is and she felt there could be no better place to inspire her to write thrilling romances. So she packed up and moved. Tartosa has been all that she had hoped for and so much more. It was where she met Londyn Huntley, at the time an actress from Sulani, and the love of her life. They live on the little island lot at the southern tip of Tartosa. Both are Starlight Accolades winners and their careers are really taking off, even though Danielle is currently searching for a new publisher.
Summer Holiday and Darian LaRue
Summer grew up next door to the Chabert's and Lee's. She has been friends with both as long as they can remember. Summer is a talented chef and with some coaxing from Danielle she joined her friend in Tartosa. Since she's arrived her career has taken off and she met her lover Darian. Darian was a Dotcom wonder boy along with some buddies in college. They decided to sell their lucrative Dotcom business to a larger tech company, pocket the money and take a break for a while. He arrived in Tartosa planning for it to only be stop number one on a globe hopping journey, but after falling in love with Summer he's decided to stay right here with her. They are about to launch their own web based cooking show that they plan to film in their home.
Liberty and Matteo Rossi
The third member of the Willow Creek expats. Her life was turned upside down by Travis Scott. He tried to take advantage of her and then lied to try and focus blame all on her. The fallout from that saw Travis booted out of the house, Summer finally answering Danielle calls to join her in Tartosa and left Liberty by herself in Willow Creek. She realized her dreams of being an astronaut were never going to happen so with a little nudge from Bella Goth she became a secret agent. On a trip to visit her friends in Tartosa she met Matteo and her life really changed. He was a hard partying play boy, or so he pretended. That lifestyle put him on the outs with his family and was threatening to wreck his dreams. He was instantly taken by Liberty and she saved him. They are now engaged and live in a lovely home overlooking the bay in Tartosa. Liberty is a star at S.I.M.S. where she is one of their lead investigators, and Matteo is back on track to realize his dream of owning his own restaurant.
The Supporting Cast
Allegra Rossi
Matteo's younger sister. She is fiery, feisty, sassy, and stylish. She lives in Windenburg and is a singer with the local opera company. She knows how to play Matteo like violin to get him to do things he should do but doesn't always want to. She is ready to slap sense into him if need be. Don't take that the wrong way, she adores her big brother and his fiancé. She has gone out of her way to welcome Liberty into the Rossi family. She currently lives in Windenburg and is a singer with the local opera company there. She dreams of one day coming home to sing with the Tartosa opera.
Izabella Bernard
Izabella is an aspiring businesswoman. She has plans to create her own line of clothing and makeup. She has worked as both a model and an actress to earn some money and make contacts to help her reach her goals. She also has a business degree so she is more than just a pretty face. She used her education to turn the money she made from modeling and acting into the seed money for a good life and to get her business going. She had a brief fling with Leonardo not long ago when she was in Windenburg, and later Tartosa, on business. She was unaware of his dating Summer at the time and she also thought she had seen the last of him when she returned home. Izabella is no fool but she admits she has a habit of making and choices in men, a trait she got from her mother.
Leonardo Ricci
A former friend and roommate of Matteo's who briefly dated Summer until she realized he was more interested in himself than her. He is a first class weasel and a raging misogynist who had his former friends in Tartosa fooled. After Matteo fell in love with Liberty they asked him to move out so that they could be alone together as they started their life together. Liberty had broken Leonardo's spell over Matteo when she rescued him from the party crowd. Quietly seething at Liberty and Matteo for ending his free ride on their dime he sought out an easy mark he could con into supporting him, Izabella. He turned up at her door recently full of charm and lies. He thinks because he got in good with Izabella once before that she will easily fall for his con. She took him in, but he's in for a shock. She's not the dummy he thinks she is. She has every reason to believe he's conned other women and she wants to put an end to it before he does it to her or another unsuspecting woman.
Hannah Taylor
A 5 Star chef who recently beat out Summer for the job of host of a new Foodie Network cooking Show. Hannah is Summer's shero and she works hard to open doors for other women to follow in her footsteps. She is going to mentor Summer and help her reach the same heights.
S.I.M.S. Director Shantel Bridges
Liberty's boss and a tough but fair one. She has a reputation around S.I.M.S. Headquarters as the Dragon Lady. It is a carefully crafted facade that keeps certain troublemakers in line or at a distance. The agents who work under her see a different side, but make no mistake she expects nothing less than their absolute best. If they give her that she will do anything for them.
Venessa Jeong
Londyn's friend and fellow actress. She is quite the comedienne and famously caused merry chaos when she officiated Londyn and Danielle's wedding. She later admitted to Londyn, that she intentionally, and hilariously, flubbed her part.
If you are new to this story after reading the bios above you can jump in anywhere really and not feel too lost. I will offer my list of chapters I think will help get you into the story and I will include the page number where it can be found.
I would suggest starting with Chapter 6 (page 2) where we see Danielle reveal the depth of her love for Londyn. Next I would suggest Chapter Fourteen Parts One and Two (page 6), this explains the rift that used to exist between Londyn and her parents and their reconciliation after learning of her engagement to Danielle. It is a wonderful story of mending relationships and acknowledging wrongs and coming back together in the spirit of love and understanding.
After that if you're interested in Venessa's virtuoso comedy wedding officiating you will need to read Chapter 20 (page 8). It's not something you have to read to get into the story but as time goes by I think her part gets funnier and funnier.
The next chapter you should read is Chapter 22 (page 10), where you get a glimpse into Matteo's wayward period and how Liberty pulls him back from the brink and then I you can carry on with the remaining 9 or 10 chapters that will catch you up to where the story is as we prepare to ring in 2023.
Thank you all so much for reading. I say this a lot, but it's true, I never could have imagined when I sat down back in April to start this that it would grow to become what it is. I owe it all to you the readers. You inspire me, and as you will see as you read through that inspiration has done so much to make me a better writer and storyteller.❤️
@Ellupelluellu I set Danielle and Faith up to each do a generic chat and cheated Faith's emotions to get those expressions. From there it was just watching and pausing and clicking 'c'. I had quite a few pictures that I uploaded to my Imgur that were never used to dig through.
Edit: I can't believe I forgot to say thank you for your kind words.?
My heart is pounding! ? That was riveting. I have the feeling we've seen the last of Faith but I'd really love to read about the after effects. How the mighty have fallen.
@simgirl1010 Thank you! Faith's story arc is over. I might flip a coin some time and see if she learned from this or not. Now Danielle needs to find a literary agent and a new publisher. With the success of her first novels that Faith was still promoting and the reviews by the few critics who were able to review her newer books, she'll have no shortage of publishers lining up to work with her. Her agent will help her avoid another bad experience like this. She's wiser for having gone through this, and blessed to have Londyn by her side too.?
I love this so much! Now for a better publishing deal for Danielle! As for Faith, I’m glad to see that she also suffers some reputational damage and doesn’t just lose an author. Danielle should be careful though. Typos aren’t enforceable, so the intention of the parties is more important than the written text when it comes to contract interpretation in court. But Faith doesn’t know that so … B)
The legality of typos is interesting and I guessed at it, part of the creative liberties. I assumed the language as written was binding unless it was an outrageous mistake, like the threshold of sales was typed as $100,000 instead of $1,000. In my writers mind, Faith just wants Danielle to go away. Faith sees that she can't intimidate Danielle like she has others and the threat word of her actions will have when it gets out causes her to choose to cut her losses and focus on damage control. She could choose to fight to hang on to the books that Danielle wrote that make her loads of money and risk everything. If the fallout of people coming forward about her abusive behavior has really negative effects on her business she could lose everything including Danielle's books. Sacrifice that handful of books, appease the remaining authors and try to move forward. In the real world a vindictive person like Faith would probably choose to fight on both fronts, but I never intended Faith's arc to last more then a chapter or two. I have more than enough storylines and characters at the moment. Danielle's new agent and publisher may make appearances but they would be like Liberty's boss Shantel, not very often and just for a scene or two in that chapter.
"DaniRose2143;c-18206220" wrote: I took a couple of liberties with the language of Danielle's book deal. Even with my research I couldn't find any real information about how a writer can track their sales unless they're self-published which she isn't. I took the things I did learn and spun them together to make my own system for her. Same thing to a lesser degree with the threshold for Rights Reversion. Every contract has different terms naturally but I took a few examples and create Danielle's clause.
Liberty or not, you sold it very well. I did look up the phrase Rights Reversion, as I hadn't heard of that one before. All-in-all, this was a great chapter.
Time passed after Allegra and Liberty teamed up to get Matteo to set aside his shame over his actions and go see their parents. Their mother Francesca especially wanted to see and hug Matteo instead of talking him by phone.
"Matteo! Matteo! I've missed you so much! I just want to hug you and hold you forever. I've been dreaming of this day, when my bambino would find his way back to me." Francesca said as a smile split her face and the tears welled.
"I missed you too mamma. I'm so sorry for everything I put you all through. I'm even more ashamed that I couldn't face you and papà. I thought I had messed up so badly I just couldn't face you and papà. You never held our mistakes against us before, Allegra and I. You taught us the lessons we needed to learn from those mistakes and we always moved on." Matteo said through tears of his own.
"It's ok Matteo. None of that matters. It didn't matter then and it doesn't now. The important thing is we are a family again." https://i.imgur.com/GMLzPy1.png
It was such a happy time, the Rossi family was whole for the first time in years. With everyone back together again the family villa felt like home. It was time to make really make Liberty feel a part of the family, even though this wasn't her first visit to see her future mother and father-in-law. Francesca had reached out to Liberty during one of the phone calls with Matteo and told her how to find the Rossi's villa. She was welcome anytime and didn't need to wait on Matteo to find the strength to look his parents in the eye. His fears were unfounded, there was no questions or reservations about his actions. Just joy that he was back. They quickly settled back into the routines Matteo remembered and that Liberty was learning. The Rossi's love to talk and the living room was second only to the kitchen as the most important room in the villa. https://i.imgur.com/ewT1GWt.png
Allegra was able to extend her visit to two weeks instead of just 3 days. That gave everyone more time to get to know Liberty better and to bask in the love that was always at the heart of the Rossi household. Francesca and Allegra were both smitten with Liberty. They come from different worlds, vastly different backgrounds, but they could sit and talk about anything for hours. https://i.imgur.com/EcUfUA0.png https://i.imgur.com/6LMVRpQ.png
The last few months had brought a lot of changes to Liberty's life. Just over a year ago she was still living in Willow Creek with her friends, Danielle, Summer, and Travis and she was dreaming of being an astronaut. She was still the innocent, childlike, tomboyish Liberty. Willow Creek is now in her past, as are her dreams of space. Now she works as an investigator for S.I.M.S. and has her own office. She's engaged to the most handsome she could ever picture in her wildest, steamiest dreams. Together they've discovered each other and themselves in the most personal of ways. All the things she remembered Danielle and Summer talking about and doing are now front and center in her mind. Liberty looked up and realized she had become a full grown woman. The tomboy she thought she'd always be was gone and she was happy to wave goodbye. Now to lean on her circle of girlfriends to help her finish the transformation.
"I was thinking how much fun it would be to have...what you call lunch together tomorrow at Celebrazioni." Allegra said as she reached for her glass of wine. "Then we can let the men go do whatever it is men do and we can have a girl's day out." https://i.imgur.com/5hHb9k7.png
"That sounds wonderful Allegra" Liberty replied. She has been wanting to learn Simtalian and she seized the opening. "You were searching for the Simlish word 'lunch', so what is the Simtalian word for the midday meal"
"We call it 'pranzo'. What you call breakfast, we call 'colazione'. Your supper is what we call 'cena'" Allegra said then added, "I love that you are embracing our home, your new home. It is such a wonderful place and I miss it terribly. Windenburg is nice, but I dream of the day when I can come back to Tartosa and sing opera."
"I know what you mean about Tartosa. Willow Creek is special to me, but I can't imagine ever going back. Not to live anyway. Tartosa is where I want to spend the rest of my life. Right here in this little corner of paradise with Matteo."
Allegra nursed her Avornalino as she looked out over the ocean from her perch on Matteo’s veranda. “My brother has always been lucky, but never more than when he found you”
“I feel like I’m the lucky one for finding him. And the friend we have to thank for bringing us together is right down there in that little villa, Danielle Huntley,” Liberty said as she saluted with her wine glass. Liberty and Allegra were now climbing the stairs to the upper veranda and the comfy love seat by the aquarium. “I have my other friend from back home, Summer Holiday, to thank as well. I had come here on vacation to see them. Summer wanted to take me shopping for a dress for going partying. I also forgot my swimsuit so she talked me into getting this gorgeous bikini, then she and Danielle said we needed to head to the bay to christen it.” Liberty could feel the wistful look forming on her face as her mind drifted back to that day. https://i.imgur.com/XOZFagU.png
“That’s when you met Matteo, wasn’t it?”
“Yes. I know now Matteo had been friends with Danielle for a while before that. I sometimes wonder if Danielle and Summer had planned that meeting before they even mentioned taking me shopping.”
“Remind me to thank them. Without them…oh why waste precious time wondering what might have been otherwise. Let’s toast what is!” Allegra raised her glass and the veranda rang to the sound of crystal on crystal. “So cara(dear), what would you like to do tomorrow on our girls day out?”
“Clothes shopping. I look at you and Francesca and I would love to have a bit of your style. My friends are even picking up their style game. I’m tired of the tomboy look.”
“Mamma and I can help, but cara, you don’t have to be fancy to be a Rossi. It helps, but it isn’t mandatory. You’re not saying you want to do this just to fit in?”
“No. I really want to look like who I am, a full grown woman. Not some tomboy. As a child and a teen that was who I was. I was more interested in video games than clothes, hair, and makeup. I was interested in those things, just not as much. Working in my office, we’re expected to look polished and professional. Once I started dressing like that for work the tomboy spell was broken. I really liked what I saw in the mirror when I was done getting ready. I felt pretty, mature, and fierce. That’s who I am now and I want my wardrobe to reflect the new me.”
"Never fear, you are in good hands."
The following day the group headed off to Celebrazioni. The plans changed quickly once they arrived. It was clear to Davide and Matteo the day was going to get properly girly so they decided to grab a drink and then go about their male bonding adventures. They agreed to meet back here that evening. Francesca was running a bit late but said she would meet the ladies at the one place she and Allegra instantly thought of during their phone conversation last night...
"Galleria Bianca De Luca" they had said in perfect unison.
Allegra and Liberty weren't going to let the sudden change of plans dampen their spirits. They talked about life, love, and Gucci. To Allegra love and Gucci were almost interchangeable terms. https://i.imgur.com/9hK8uB3.png
Liberty ordered a round of Grappo before they headed off to meet Francesca.
"To you, my sister! Saluti!" Allegra offered and toasted https://i.imgur.com/nDVMUEM.png
...... https://i.imgur.com/jn9TlYO.png
"That was a lovely toast and a lovely vino" Liberty enthused
"Whoever bottled that and called it wine should be tried for crimes against humanity" https://i.imgur.com/GSjogux.png
"I need to introduce you to proper Grappo, cara."
A short time later....
"This is the 'Galleria Bianca De Luca'" Francesca gushed. "Bianca can do anything you like and you will love her work. How far are you willing to go for a new look? Just some new outfits? Some new makeup too? What about your hair? Do you want to change that too?
"All of it. I want to unleash the new Liberty Rossi."
"Allegra asked you this last night and I'll ask you again. You're not doing this because you think you have to be a part of our family? We love you just as you are. To us you are a Rossi already"
"I want to do this for me."
"Well then, let's go meet the new Liberty Rossi" https://i.imgur.com/29oM74w.png
"Child," said Francesca, "you look stunning!" https://i.imgur.com/t9LAAR0.png
"Which dress are you going to wear to your unveiling?" Allegra asked.
"The red one. Definitely red. I can't wait to show Matteo and my friends the new me!" https://i.imgur.com/xkbaFpv.png
"Bianca wanted to get some shots of you in your new outfits. Best not to keep her waiting. We're running out of time before we need to have you in that red number and over to Celebrazioni. We want everybody to see you before they have too much vino"
This one pops in the wide shot... https://i.imgur.com/AwzCqsR.png https://i.imgur.com/Agi3PcR.png https://i.imgur.com/BPVy38t.png https://i.imgur.com/yWbQOMX.png https://i.imgur.com/v3gKf7Y.png https://i.imgur.com/1ydLak9.png https://i.imgur.com/Sklcs6v.png https://i.imgur.com/eghQY6M.png https://i.imgur.com/Yp6EvYl.png
There are a lot more I didn't get photos of. All of her really casual outfits are now under the hot weather tag. Her everyday outfits are kind of, business casual.
"I think it's time when get this stunning child over to Celebrazioni." Francesca said, realizing time was getting away from them.
"I cannot wait to see the look on Matteo's face." Allegra said. "She's going to leave his jaw on the floor." https://i.imgur.com/Um824a2.png
"Ladies and gentleman, it is my privilege to introduce the new Liberty Rossi..." https://i.imgur.com/EAaokAY.png
"Liberty?! Oh my god!" was all Danielle could say.
"I always knew you were the prettiest out of all of us, girl" Summer chimed in.
"Are you sure you want to be a secret agent? 'Cause girlfriend I know some agents who work with supermodels. I mean that too." said Londyn.
"You haven't said anything yet babe. Do you like what you see?" https://i.imgur.com/rRznFu2.png
"Liberty, you will always be the most beautiful woman I have ever seen." https://i.imgur.com/GfZfWTn.png
"Yes, I love what I see very much." https://i.imgur.com/JDTcUu7.png
"I hope your not going to get mad at me if I smear your lipstick..." "You can't silly, it's smudgeproof. Now shut up and kiss me." https://i.imgur.com/6P0FkpN.png
I've done thousands of sims makeovers, but this is by far the most unique. I've never done one and made an entire story out of it. This has been coming though. I've been thinking about this for a couple of months. Liberty has changed and evolved more than any other character so far. When I had her join the secret agent career I started wondering if this day might come. As she's advanced in her career and got engaged I felt like it was inevitable, she just wasn't tomboy Liberty anymore.
