It all really began twice; that is to say, the two separate strands that
intertwined to become the concept of The Bureau of Shadows began at very
different times, in very different ways. The first strand began as a dream that
I had sometime before 2000; I have no more precise date than that for it,
though possibly two or three years before. I jotted down the details, about two
pioneer boys who went on a wild folktale adventure, on some yellow legal pad
paper and showed it around; the general consensus was that, yes, it would make
a good story. And there it stood for many years.
The second strand showed signs of
life around 2006, when I began what was projected to be an entire book on the
adventures of Martin Blake, a high school student seeking to enter the
government Paraskills Program. I had finished the first chapter, printed it
out, and started on the next when my computer crashed, obliterating many files.
That made me abandon the project in despair.
In seeking for a new project, I
revived the idea of the first strand, which I had dubbed 'The American
Fantasy.' I wrote a first chapter, and my older brother Mike joined me as coach
and advisor. Before we could get very far, however, he passed away and I again
became bogged down in gloom and inertia. And there it stood for some time.
In the meanwhile, a third project
started stirring sluggishly in my head. It was to gather together several
already existing stories, write some new ones, and unite them under the rubric
of 'Tales of Gothenberg,' using the little fictional Texas town I had created
for Blake. It also got no farther than the planning stage, a wistful dream
while I struggled with job and daily life.
Then, in 2015, I had my TIA, or
mini-stroke. That removed me from the job and daily life, but not from the
struggle. In the enforced idleness and deepening poverty, I turned to
transcribing my old diaries, poetry, and hand-written stories into computer
files. This brought many old ideas back to the surface.
At the very bottom of my penury,
my brother John came to my rescue. He would pay me $20 every two weeks for
every chapter of 'The American Fantasy' I finished. This was enough to tide me
over some very lean times. I went to work with all the eagerness of a donkey
going after a carrot on a stick.
'The American Fantasy' (or
"Unsettling Tales", or “A Grave on Deacon’s Peak” as I later
re-titled it) brought me two things: the character of Samuel Frobisher, and the
idea that the father's disappearance in the story was due to the fact that he
worked for the Department of Extranatural Affairs. Before I had even finished
"Unsettling Tales" the first new short story of the Bureau was
written, and its growing mythos had begun.
The Bureau of Shadows has
attracted to itself much of my old work, and my attention. It had absorbed
Gothenberg, as well as Blake, and kept shooting out new branches. How long
could this go on? I wanted to see.
Story after story followed, and
then began to slow down as my natural dithering proclivity asserted itself. I
was depressed, perhaps, after the high of actually completing a project, but
getting no further in publishing it. I became distracted with my niece's
wedding and by beginning to transcribe John's work on 'Goldfire;' I actually
started writing new stories about that old high school era effort.
I was kicked back into gear by
another, less severe, but still frightening TIA in May of 2018. Within a month
I completed two old stories I had been dallying over and wrote two new stories
in the span of a week. Now I have gathered together a list of notes on story
ideas jotted down at random and garnered from dreams. My plan is to try to
write one of these stories a week.
[And then, of course, my book was published by Dark Tidings Press.]
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