He's BACK!

Hi.
I know, it's been a while.  There's no real excuse other than getting tired of bitching about things in typed form... not finding time (in the mea culpa sense) and many other events that have happened to me.  But I return, just like Pan always says he will.  And I've brought good news.

Peter Pan: 
Betwixt-and-Between
My interquel novel bringing to light the lost years of everybody's favorite lost boy.
is HERE!  That's right... AVAILABLE!
Amazon link

How did a wild, eternal infant in a London park become the Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up fighting pirates in the Neverland? Which, of course, requires growing up — and ceasing again? Tall questions for such a small boy. At long last, the story of how a baby came to be the boy we know on the magical island.

Once again, I've scoured Barrie's remaining ideas, delved into his world and devised the answer to one of the most troubling dilemmas in all of the Pan-iverse.  I hope you enjoy it.  I've already had two of the toughest Pan critics delight in its pages... and some non-fanatics are satisfied as well.

It's been too long, but I am finally able to bring it to you.  Thanks for waiting.  I really appreciate it.

P.S. - If the e-book versions aren't available at the time of this posting, they will be up soon.

Publishing Cusp!

You know that interquel

Peter Pan: Betwixt-and-Between

I've written and keep going on about?

Finally, the process of publication has begun.
Yes, that's right...

Thanks for waiting so patiently by the window all this time.
It really won't be long now.

As a small token of my appreciation, here's a peek at the back cover.  I've talked about it, now it's right before your eyes.  With any luck, you'll have a tangible copy in the near future.

17 Is the New 14

Well, folks, I'm almost done with the illustrations for the interquel Peter Pan: Betwixt-and-Between.  Actually, I probably would have completed the batch already but for one thing...

...and that one thing is good news for readers.

There will be more than the original amount promised!  Yes, really.  I'd said I'd aim for a picture each chapter (there are 14, like the number of the Darlings' house) but now there truly are some extras.

A chapter two-thirds of the way through is much longer than the others.  I couldn't decide which scene to depict.  So I took on the challenge of making all those I considered.  For it would have been a crime not to show certain characters and such...so yea, I've now three pictures in that chapter.

I'm halfway through creating the next chapter's - and that leaves but four more to produce.

Truth is I don't decide on what to illustrate until I've read through and format-tweaked each chapter, so I can't exactly give an estimate on when I'll have those four ready.  And even if I did plan on which ones, I'd still have to gather the necessary bits to create the scene, which also takes time.

So hang in there, readers.
Every day is a day closer to getting your hands on the "missing" part of Peter Pan's life.

*Correction to the # in next post.

To PRE or Not to PRE?

A while back in the comments of this post, I started to ponder the idea of “prequel.” It’s a curious thing, a prequel. For in order to be a prequel for the audience, the “original” needs to have come first. That sounds like a no-brainer. But consider some examples.

As I’ve said before (and also re-posted links to Danny Pitt Stoller’s great articles as such) The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis are often [and I feel erroneously] read in chronological order. Technically, of course, The Magician’s Nephew is a prequel to The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. But for many, it’s not seen/understood that way, though it is most definitely a prequel as far as Lewis is concerned — he didn’t know the events himself when he wrote LWW!

George Lucas’s epic saga of Star Wars is famous for having prequels. But let’s face the facts. It’s a bit different than with C.S. Lewis. Here, they are not really prequels. Lucas had written out the grand scheme of the story he wished to tell from the start. Granted, it received rewrites and drop-outs, but on the whole, he knew the spine of the story. Due to feasibility concerns he began his tale in the middle. (Also because Episode IV - A New Hope is the only part that can manage to stand alone [in case it had been a flop.])  I cannot confirm that it is true, but allegedly Hayden Christensen wants to one day show his kids the episodes “in order,” meaning beginning with Episode I - The Phantom Menace. (I think that would ruin the suspense of the saga, just for the record.) Either way, the “prequel trilogy” is only such because they came out secondary to the “original” set.  According to Lucas’s musing and composition, they’re not — at least not in the same sense as Lewis.

Those are but two examples of this "phenomenon."

When I’d been writing Peter Pan: Betwixt-and-Between I always thought of it as an interquel (a sequel to one story and a prequel to another). I had just assumed that people would already know the story of Peter Pan (a.k.a. Peter and Wendy.) Anon pointed out to me that someone, however, just might not know that story and read the adventures of Peter Pan from “the beginning,” starting with Barrie’s Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens (or The Little White Bird), moving on to my interquel and then on to the story most of us know. It didn’t really occur to me that someone wouldn't consider it an "adventure before." (To quote Slightly in Hogan’s version: Stupid of me.) But seriously, although unlikely, it’s bound to happen. Thus, in that sense, I did not write an interquel/prequel.

The status of “prequel” is relative.  Something to think about, eh?