Prologue:

Hello. My name is Jennifer Hightower, and I once led a normal, everyday life, the way that many other high school students in this world do. I went to school every day, came home in the afternoon, got a full night's sleep, and I didn't have a job. Well, I take that back. I was only partially normal. I didn't actually have a really close friend, I loved school, especially math, and I dressed and talked differently from the other kids. In fact, I had never said a single swear word in my entire life. And to top it all off, my father had been killed by a drunk driver when I was four, and my mother had remarried three years later, the summer after my first grade year, a wonderful man named who treated me as his daughter even after they had children of their own together. But one day two months before I turned 16, my normal, somewhat common lifestyle suddenly became abnormal, and it was all thanks to a proposition from a rather unusual character.

This is my story.

PLEASE read this author's note before you continue! This story is currently under revision. I began writing this story 8 years ago, back in 2006. At the time I was but a sophomore in high school and had really only recently begun writing. A few months ago, following years of serious writer's block on chapter 8 of this story, which was to be but one book in a series in which I had planned 10 books and begun a few chapters of about half the other books, I discovered what a weirdo my character really was. I began to seriously regret some decisions I had made, which made her very annoying when I was trying to just maybe be a little funny.

I am still working on revising chapter 1. Once chapter 1 is done, I will be able to submit a chapter every week or two until we catch up to my present place in the story (Aside from chapter 1, I have completed up to Chapter 7), and I have parts of at LEAST six or seven different books written that I hope to keep working on and share with you over the years. Most likely this particular story will not be much longer than 20 chapters, and almost definitely no longer than 30.

I basically ended up scrapping and restructuring Jennica White, my original character, renaming her Jennifer Hightower and thereby allowing me to salvage, without having to even change her nickname, some of the bits of the stories which I still love after rereading them all these years later. I took out many of the references to my own life, combined a few chapters to make them more worth waiting for and helping the story get off to a faster start, and even changed up the future pairings (which, aside from Linka and Wheeler, will not begin to be set in stone until Book 3). I am, however, maintaining the artistic license that caused me to pretend that it has only been 11 years since the Planeteers were 12, 16, and 17 years old, since I am now only 23 myself and feel I don't remember enough about the early 2000s when they would have actually been those ages.

So far, I am much happier with the changes I have made. Jennifer is a much more normal, believable character than Jennica was. (At least, a far less annoying one!)

I look forward to sharing her adventures as well as those of the Planeteers with you!