The following was written at the request of the Stoughton Press. I am revealed to my community.
I was about to have one of those birthdays that end in a
zero, you know the ones I mean, and I’ll admit , it was freaking me out. I had
seen The Stoughton Press land on my front stoop in the past. It was interesting
and I read it, and like most of you recycled it when I was done. But that April
day, I got curious. Who was putting this paper out? I studied the letter from
the editor. What’s that? They want story ideas, the wackier the better. I knew
she was talking to me. Quickly, before I chickened out, I typed an email with
several story ideas, and without thinking too much, pushed send. To be honest,
I expected a “thanks, but we have that covered” a few weeks later, but that
wasn’t what happened. Almost immediately a got a reply, “love your ideas, we
should meet”!
Uh-oh, now I had to step up and deliver. I’m not a writer,
never aspired to be one, but I knew I could put a string of letters together in
a slightly witty way. But I really wanted to support my budding photography
hobby. I had only recently gotten back into the craft, and my professional life
has provided me with some decent Photoshop skills. Suddenly it came to me.
Stoughton needs a troll. I was sure it had been done in the past, and I knew
about the tiny troll house along the river trail, but I wanted to photograph a
troll as it crept around Stoughton. Minutes before my first meeting with the
editor, I smashed together a photo of one of the many Stoughton mansions with a
toy duck that perched on the roof peak. It was ridiculous. Long story short, she
loved the idea, but she had a zinger for me. ‘So what’s his name?’ Uh, I don’t
know. ‘Sure you do, and you’ll write an article to introduce him, right?’ Oops,
I had stepped in it now.
I left the meeting with my head swimming, but later, I
recalled a message scrawled in the margin of a long ago high school
paper—“beautiful, you should write for a living.” I still have that paper. I
took a boring assignment and turned it into a bizarre world where tiny
creatures lived in the ink that streamed from my pen as I wrote my story. Hmm,
maybe I can do this. My insomnia kicked in, and I even took a vacation day. Who
was he? Was he a he? What did he want? Where did he live? How did he get here?
If I was going to do this, I had to know absolutely everything about the troll.
Each question was quickly answered; I scribbled it all in a notebook as fast as
it came. Very soon, I had what I thought was a 10,000 word short story. I
started writing that weekend. Saturday went by, and then Sunday morning, I’m
15,000 words in and just getting started. My husband sat me down and said,
“You’re writing a book, you know that, don’t you,” but I had promised the
editor an article. I started to examine the situation. I needed to write an
article for a paper; that made me a reporter, right? You know the rest of the
story, well most of it.
I still had that incredible adventure rattling around in my
brain. Hours, days, weeks, months flew by as I banged out a twisted troll tale—scratch
that troll tail. Never one to take an already blazed path, I have reinvented
the legends surrounding trolls, fairies, and dragons. All those “what if”
questions have led to a book that some have compared to The Wizard of Oz, and
others to Shrek, but I know what it took to create a wholly new legend:
One crazy idea…
- Two family histories…
- Six rewrites…
- Nine months…
- Hundreds of internet searches…
- Thousands of hours… every weekend, every holiday, most weeknights, and endless sleepless hours
- Quarter of a million words…
- Equals one 290-page book.
If you are an e-book reader, download a copy at Amazon.com.
Just enter Rebecca Ferrell Porter in the search box. Blue on the Horizon is getting great reviews and several readers
are already begging for the next chapter in the Legends of the Aurora series. I’m busy outlining the next book as
you read this. You going to love the wacky world that lives between my ears. To
paraphrase one of my favorite characters, everyone has secrets … I just wear
mine on the outside now.
Blue on the Horizon, available locally—exclusively at Saving
Thyme, 223 West Main Street, Stoughton.
One last thing, thanks Linda Bricco-Shalk, owner and editor
of the Stoughton Press, you’ve given my inner child a golden key to a magical
playground.
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