Late last August, I decided to write a new story. It had one driving force behind it. It had to to be fun to write. Period. There was not to be a single care about filling a blank page (or a blank screen) each morning. Not a lick of worry about plot development or character motivation. Not a blessed concern about setting or rising action or backstory.
I had a scene for the opening. It came from two years of chasing away geese from the community pond behind my house. Over that time, I came to marvel at the intelligence and behavior patterns of these powerful birds. I admired their cunning in avoiding me, while I fumed about the size and quantity of their poop.
That was it. A single scene.
When I sat down to begin, a movie started to run in my noggin. Characters appeared. Tensions developed. Color and light and texture, from 374 years in the future, after the world had gone dark and been reborn. Mutants and Haters and Horrors railed against the injustice of what nature and humans had done to them. A ruthless retail monarch kept an iron grip on the fragile social fabric of Federations and Guilds. Literacy and texts were outlawed, under penalty of death, by Librarians who couldn't trust humanity from confusing prejudices from principles and destroying themselves again.
Each morning, from August to late November, I sat at my desk without a clue as to what or who was coming next. And each night, complex humans and unusual animals, with all kinds of wants and needs appeared. It was a hoot.
From the mulch that had been simmering inside me, they came. I simply tried to keep up with them. Ray Bradbury told me to get up every morning and follow the imaginary folks that were leaving the room. I thought he was nuts at the time. He wasn't.
The book was completed by the end of November, 2019.
Then came the arduous task of checking grammar and spelling. By February, 2020, it looked like things were good. Then, word came that the world was under attack. A virus was coming. It had serious intent.
Fast forward to today. After a bunch of rewrites, to bring in the current medical and cultural shit storm, the book is done. Fantasy merges with science fiction. Hate and hope get confused and reluctant friendships are forged.
I hope you take a look at THE WILD WORLD and enjoy it as much as I did writing it.
https://www.amazon.com/WILD-WORLD-James-Hugh-Comey-ebook/dp/B08Q8NQH6V/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=the+wild+world+%2B+james+hugh+comey&qid=1607699884&s=amazon-devices&sr=1-1
