Why Do I Do This?

I’ve probably told you the Spider-man story, yeah? How I wanted to be Spider-man when I grew up, but then learned that Spidey wasn’t real but that he was invented, written and drawn by a few guys in New York City? And then I realized that maybe I could even be one of those guys?

So, really, from about the age of seven, I loved the concept of storytelling. Bardic traditions, oral legacies, word of mouth, what have you - the idea of ideas being shared back and forth from person to person, generation to generation, nation to nation, and so forth - - that’s just kind of godsmackingly delightsome to me. I remember the stories my father told me, about being a tough guy on the streets of Modesto that helped in some small way to inform the stories of what became “American Graffiti”, or of being in the army, or being a fireman, or the stories he told me about the settlers and trappers of the untamed west. Or of him starting me on my appreciation of modern storytelling like Star Trek and Star Wars, westerns and war movies. Or taking note of the little details like the “suicide doors” in the old 1940s cars, how to tan an animal’s hide (hint: every animal has just enough brains to tan their own). My parents taught me the magic of words. They taught me about adventures.

My first favorite things were stuffed animals - all of mine had names, and they all had their own way of looking at the world, and I made up little stories for them all. And then I found books - the words that stay - and fell in love with Richard Scarry’s books, and Dr Seuss’ books, and Where the Wild Things Are. Then I moved up to Lord of the Rings, the Hardy Boys mysteries, and then Dragonlance and more comic books and more books, and eventually the storytelling attributes of music like Sting and Genesis and all those musical, lyrical storytellers.

Music, for those following at home who may have noticed this, plays a tremendous part in my love of storytelling - because to me, music is like the great blue sea. When your words bring you as far as they can, you find yourself at the unfathomable deep, and that’s where music takes over. To me, dwelling between the mountains and the sea has always been one of those impossible contentions. Nobody wins, nobody loses, you just toil there in the foam and hope you neither drown nor perish from thirst.

But that has always been a pretty internalized metaphor for me. It is there I wrestle.

A while back - about a decade now - I had that conversation with my child, who dared me to tell a story about a girl who kicks butt. I had the perfect character in mind, an eleven year old girl who found out she was a monster hunter. An angel of death. A reaper. Her story began with “Reaper’s Return”, to which I was surprised to learn brushed up against the genre of Steampunk. And that book turned into six.

It sort of started out as an effort to describe a new mythology - another way to look at life and death, in a way which was based more upon the sense of relative prioritization and self-determination, and less about religious tenets or political affirmation. It was just about the pressures of the world being placed upon a young girl’s shoulders, and her rising to the task.

From out of that whole endeavor, more stories emerged. More ideas, more concepts, more metaphors. Some darker, some much lighter. Children’s stories, dark post apocalyptic nightmares and some I haven’t even begun yet to quantify.

And I’ve been doing that all with one hand tied behind my back the entire way. And now, that hand is loosed and we can truly see what my stories are worth. Both to myself, and, my friends, to you.

You know that old homily, where when god closes a door, she also opens a window? Well, I kind of feel now like she’s done more than open a window - it feels like the whole west side of the house is gone, and an addition is being added on, and in the meantime there’s a lovely sunset out there, and… is that a red panda in the back yard? Let’s go find out.

In other words…. let’s go for an adventure, my fellow travelers. Bring me that horizon.