Return To The Forest

Heyo and Wehlgm!

The gang’s all here, everything’s ready to go and looking good so far. Those of you who know what’s going on can skip the following. For anyone else who hasn’t heard the initial ramble:

About 5 years ago, a collection of squirrels used to eat, sleep and play in the park outside my window, and I began writing A Favor in Return, based upon the notion that these little rodents could talk. Starting out, I had no idea whether the story would be 20 pages or 200, and as good as I can be at starting things, I’m even better at not finishing them. So the deal made with myself was that if I could sit down for a couple of hours every Saturday, the story could run wherever it wanted to, for however long, and I would do my best to keep up.

Twenty pages became one hundred. One hundred became two hundred, and I began to have a sneaking suspicion that the story had no intention of stopping. I’d kept my part of the deal… this was a problem I hadn’t expected. The story wasn’t cooperating, and by this time I was chasing after it all day Saturday and most weeknights as well. I could vaguely see where my story about squirrels wanted to scamper off to, and the ending that it seemed to like the most wouldn’t be happening in the next twenty, fifty or even a hundred pages.

It was time for an ending, but not necessarily the best place for one. Those who have read the story will understand how difficult it was to slow down, organize the loose ends, and stop. After two years I needed a break from the little story about a family of talking rodents.

That was the plan, originally. Take a break from the story, do some story-related art, relax… I mean, the story was done, right? Done what I set out to do, ran the race, paid my dues, all that good stuff. Right? Well, I was wrong. The internal dialogue was just beginning, and rattled through my head continually… The story has to be edited. Will there be pictures? Well, yes, that would be a good idea. Is it possible to draw a squirrel’s tail so that it looks like a tail, as opposed to a cloud or the business end of a broom? There can’t be a book without a website, right? How does one go about promoting work to a real publisher? What about an agent? Oh, and by the way, when is the second part going to continue?

And so on. The squirrels were taking on a life of their own.

I like squirrels. Yep, I do. Yet it wasn’t so long ago that I wouldn’t have given them more than a passing glance. Those who know me now probably wonder what happened to induce me first of all to write, and then to put out a story about squirrels. Perhaps it was only a confirmation of what they already knew. At any rate, three years have slipped away since I finished the first part, and now that the surrounding details have been looked after, it’s time to see where the story wants to go.