Unanswered Questions: the story behind the stories

As I have often noted, when I began the long overdue process of writing what would eventually become The Uninvited Guest, my desired outcome was simple: I wanted to write a book. A book, as in one book. It was a goal that stood unattained, and truthfully, untouched for the better part of 40 years.

Way back in the early to mid 1980s, I wanted, like many writers before me, to take my shot at becoming the next Edgar Allan Poe, or, on a more contemporary sense, the next Stephen King. To that end there are somewhere in the area of 50-60 pages of a novel called Dead Man's Run still waiting to be brought to literary life. For those of you old enough to remember them, the original manuscript was created using a manual typewriter, with the words tapped out on the back of sporting event results from the New York State Empire Games.

When I covered the games as a sportswriter for the Watertown Daily Times in 1984, I brought home a gigantic stack of results from the various events. (That's how they did things before computers took over). Widespread paper recycling was still a few years down the road, so rather than throw them away I decided to put the blank side of the paper to good use and forged ahead with my version of the great American horror novel. Life got in the way, and I eventually abandoned the project, although I did take the time to retype it into MS Word a few years ago, so who knows? Perhaps someday I'll find out how it all plays out.

Where it all began: on the blank side of sports results

As usual, I digress.

But in getting back to The Uninvited Guest, the original ideas for Mr. Tout's Magical Forest germinated around the same time, first as a world for a Dungeons & Dragons campaign, and later as the impetus for a fantasy novel. Along with reading books that scared the heck out of me, I was firmly entrenched in the world of fantasy after taking a college course focusing on the works of J.R.R. Tolkien. I even went so far as to create Christmas ornaments using Tolkien's elvish alphabet. Yes—I know that sounds weird—

but it's true.

Merry Christmas 1978: JRR Tolkien style (my attempt at the Elvish language is inside the rectangle at the top)

I wrote down lots of ideas and spent hours creating the map and many details about what would eventually become the magical forest. Around that time I changed careers, transitioning from the world of daily sports articles into that of a high school English teacher. Instead of writing for a living, I was now being paid to teach other people's children to write. In doing so I changed residences four times in a 14-year span, worked as an editor for Image Comics on the side, and met dozens of wonderful young writers while serving as the advisor of the school newspaper, yearbook, and even a radio show.

With all of this going on I couldn't see the forest through the trees, as they say. So the notebook and the maps sat buried in a box of papers alongside Dead Man's Run and a whole collection of ideas and unfinished stories. As Pink Floyd once put it, "half a page of scribbled lines."

It was like being reunited with an old friend when I went through this box of papers in January 2020 and found my old chemistry notebook (the source of the maps) and my notes. To my surprise, I had actually typed up a bunch of character descriptions and ideas, so the groundwork was laid for this long-forgotten project.

Unfortunately, like so many times before, I put everything back in the box and went on with my life. But then something happened that served as the long-overdue kick in the pants that I needed—the pandemic of 2020.

As most people will attest, those were difficult days, filled as they were with fear and uncertainty. But at the same time I found myself with a surplus of an until-then limited commodity: TIME.

Relived of the burdens and travel of day-to-day life and without any sports teams to fret over, I needed something to occupy my days. And that's where The Uninvited Guest came in.

Every day, without fail, I spent hours working through and creating what had long been an unaccomplished goal of mine: writing a book. But as anyone who knows me can attest, when I get into something I am ALL in. Such was the case with Mr. Tout's Magical Forest.

New characters introduced themselves, and I wanted to know more. Who were the Wells Brothers—Pauly and Owen—and what was the story behind the Singing Sisters? And what about Toddathon Tout? How did he become the villain of the story ?

So I became obsessed with finding out, and the more I learned, the more I needed to know. Pauly and Owen's tale became the subject of my second book, Fall to the Forest, which introduced the enigmatic character named Beth Tomson. Was she a villain, or a victim of circumstances beyond her control? These were just a few of the questions to be answered.

Foremost among them was Mariah's promise  that she would return to the forest one day to help her friend Pauly. Because to me, the word promise is not something to be taken lightly. This led to Book III, Marsh Mayhem. In true Tolkien fashion, I now set my sights on writing a trilogy. But the more I

learned about the characters, their problems and conflicts, the more I realized that three books would not be enough. This spawned book IV, The Violet Hour, bringing another mysterious character to the forefront, Katriva. Shrouded in mystery and lacking memories of her past, I'm still chasing her story.

When the quest associated with The Violet Hour grew too big for a single volume, I made the decision to divide into two books, and Into the Mystic was born. There were still questions to be answered, but I could see the light at the end of the tunnel. Fortunately I had stumbled upon the conclusion of the series early on when I was writing Marsh Mayhem. The trick now

was to pull everything together and then wrap it all up in a way that connected the dozens of loose ends I had created along the way.

Which led me to The Big Show.

Truth be told, that was the working title for Marsh Mayhem, The Violet Hour, and Into the Mystic. This time, however, I meant it. Which also meant that after six books, all the mysteries of Mr. Tout's Magical Forest had been solved.

Or had they?

Within months of completing The Big Show, I found myself struggling with unanswered questions, this time centered around the Singing Sisters. Their history had been touched upon as hearsay and legend in the other books, but never really explored. So in August of 2024 I decided to do some digging, determined to learn the details behind the story of Beth and Becca Tomson, AKA the Tomson Twins. (And yes, it is a nod to the synth-pop band of the 1980s--I watched a lot of MTV back in the days when they actually played music 24/7).

Theirs was a difficult story, so much so that I spent the next 18 months separating fact from fiction while searching for the truth about the sisters from Syracuse and their journey into Mr. Tout's Magical Forest. The end result is Twin Reckonings,  the first of two planned books covering the origins of Mr. Tout's Magical Forest. Fingers crossed, I'll be back in the forest following Katriva's trail in the very near future. At this point I don't even know her last name, so it won't be easy. What  I do know is that she has an interesting tale to tell, and it's up to me to tell it.

Believe it or not, my original intent for this blog post was to describe the process behind creating an origin/prequel story. It's quite involved and different from the way I discovered the magical forest, and I'll make every effort to describe it. I'd say "promise," but as I mentioned before, promise is a word I take very seriously, so I'll leave those words for another day.