A Manifestation Of Boyhood Dreams

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I’ve started a new writing project. I wasn’t going to talk about it for a while yet, but I was just telling (emailing) one of my best friends about it, and thought part of the email would make a good blog. Truth be told, several of my blogs have been the result of messages to friends.

The project is a collection of short stories about a small town, in Eastern Oregon, called White Star. The gist is, a group of retiring lawmen founded a town a hundred some years ago, which was away from everything. Over time, the town evolved into an isolated community of artists, writers, and free thinkers. The mechanism behind the evolution is spelled out, in a way that makes sense, in the introduction. Some of the stories will be mysteries, some will be funny, some will be town emergencies, etc... I've also written in an ongoing mystery concerning the founding days of the town.

I say it’s a new project, but I’ve actually been drawing the townspeople for seven years, and defining the relationships between the characters. The roots of the stories, even go further back than that, since the Marshal, who lead the other lawmen to found the town, was an imaginary playmate from my childhood. Back when a toy cowboy pistol served as the primary outlet for my imagination, Marshal Duke Elling and I defended the early citizens of White Star from countless forms of villainy. Today, the progeny of those boyhood adventures will finally make it to paper.