Excavating the secrets, scandals, and untold stories hiding below the surface of life, and giving voice to the characters who make or made those hiStories happen.
Last Friday, Mary Hoffman and I met up in London for a good old-fashioned brainstorming session. Our Kickstarter campaign now successfully funded and our much deserved holiday breaks behind us, it was time to crack on with our collaboration: In the Footsteps of Giants.
As with most creative endeavors, the way forward seemed smooth sailing at the outset. But once Mary waded into the breaking tides of the writing process, the route we’d planned proved un- navigable; her intended narrator an inadequate guide. We needed to chart a new course, together.
Our ensuing discussion, which focused on questions of genre and voice, forced us to examine the heart and soul of our mission to Turn History On. It compelled us to ask,
I was downstairs with Gryffindog in the park just in front of our house today when, out of nowhere, a jubilant yellow lab came lolloping toward us. I’m always extra vigilant when Gryff meets a new dog for the first time; you never know when one or the other won’t be friendly. But I quickly dropped my guard as this dog exuded pure joy with every move. She was just so happy to be alive. I couldn’t help but notice, though, that a patch had been shorn off the fur on the middle-right of her body. It took me a second longer to realize that the dog was running on three legs. And only then did I see that the wound at the shoulder of the missing leg was fairly fresh. Finally (keeping in mind that all happened in the space of about seven seconds), I recognized the dog as one of Gryffin’s friends. One we hadn’t seen all summer.
Tessa’s owner and I shared “Welcome back”s and “How was your summer”s before I ventured to ask what had happened. She’d been hit by a car. It was touch and go for a while. The vets had to take the leg. But she was bouncing back more quickly than expected, defying all odds and expectations.
