Tag Archives: Behind-The-Scenes

“Catania’s Forest” Behind-the-Scenes

Catania’s Forest has been a bit of an adventure, but not one I regret. For one thing, writing it has given me a much different perspective on the Christmas story.  So much so, that’s it’s making me want to write more allegories or re-tellings.

This story (like all my stories, really) is inspired by and dedicated to my King, Jesus Christ.  It is also dedicated to all the little drummer-boys I’ve met in my life, from the black-haired one to the curly red-head; and to Emerald, and all the life he breathed into the Little Drummer-boy song.  I wish I could remember who inspired me to make Emerald up.  Also for my talented, stubborn, ornery characters and all their help.

Characters

The character who came first (surprisingly) is Tyre.  This centaur is mixed up with this story’s origin, and also with the subtitle.

Somewhere back in the scary recesses of my brain where stories ambush me and make me write them, the stargazing attributed to Narnian centaurs was connected with the Wise Men’s Christmas star.  Once formed, the idea refused to be forgotten.  What must naturally come next was Jéru’s flute, and Catania’s bow.

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“The Sacrifice” Behind-the-Scenes

Behind-the-scenes!  It’s long–you have been warned. 😉

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The Inspiration

The inspiration for The Sacrifice lies way back, before I even had a blog.  The original story was inspired by a short dragon story from The Children’s Book of Virtues edited by  William J. Bennett.  I came up with a story that was essentially The Sacrifice, but still quite different.  I was planning on writing it down, but then had inspiration for The Captured Princess Series (cheesy title, I know), which has basically the same plot line as The Sacrifice, just stretched and twisted into five stories–and pretty long stories too, for me at least.  After writing that, the other story felt short and uninteresting and I gave it up.

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The Mushroom Feast Behind-The-Scenes

We started school today!  September is here, and the School Year’s begun–it just feels like fall.  I’m seriously ready for flame-colored leaves, crisp Autumn mornings, and pumpkin English Muffins.  Just all of sudden I’m ready to let summer go.  It’s my first year of high-school, and I’m planning on making it a good one!

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Anyway, behind the scenes. . .

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“Into the Dragon’s Lair” Behind the Scenes

And just to dash all your hopes quickly, no, this is not a story-post.  I decided I was going to do a post like this with all my stories right before the last chapter.  I’m just going to take the time to tell you where I got my inspiration, where the picture came from, and other random things now.

* I hadn’t thought of doing this when I started posting, so I already told you where my inspiration came from.  It was Spencer, me, Mom, Becca, and Michael that were on the geocaching trip; and Spencer made up titles  for all of us that I used in my story–except I think M was the luggage or the passenger or something (because he was in the stroller that Mom was ‘pilotting’) and I just couldn’t go with that; so I gave him a different job (spoiler alert: you’ll see him and Dad in the last chapter).  Oh! and Spencer actually left me alone and walked off out-of-sight in the trees looking for the geocache for a little while.  Being left alone in the Bolivian jungle would be WAY worse though, the only thing that made it nerve-racking was pessimistic me.  And I made the spider up off the top of my head–I don’t think there’s any such thing.

* The picture is actually of a tree in China, not Bolivia; and it’s not in the jungle, it’s in a park–but I thought it would suffice.  With a selection like this, it was hard to choose:

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* Like I said, all the characters are named after one of my family members, only spelled different.  I also mentioned that in the original manuscript I spelled the explorer’s name S-P-E-N-C-E-R like my brother, but here I spelled it S-P-E-N-S-E-R.  I also spelled the female dragon’s name F-O-G-G-Y-N-E-S-S in the first copy, but I changed it to the regular F-O-G-G-I-N-E-S-S for my blog.  I don’t know why I spelled it weird in the first one.  Maybe I didn’t know how to spell it right… I don’t remember.  This way feels more natural (because it is) and my computer doesn’t give it that annoying red underline.

* I think I wrote this book in one day, or maybe two or three–not many! 🙂 I made almost everybody I lent it to read it one chapter at a time, because I love dropping people on cliff-hangers!

 

I hope you guys are enjoying my story!  I can’t wait to post the last chapter!  See you guys, and happy Saturday! 🙂