A bit about “The Ship’s Cook”

If you haven’t heard this week’s episode yet, you might be missing out. For those of you that have, I thought I might share a bit about the story and the author behind it.

Carmen Fowle wrote the piece for a creative writing class she was taking. Before she did so, she asked me for permission, of course. At the time, The Dreamer’s Thread wasn’t even half way completed, if I remember correctly, and I was doubtful I’d even finish it, let alone that it would become what it is today. Carmen is one of my Second Life NaNoWriMo partners in crime and was privvy to my whole process. She was one of the folks that would get sections of my book every few days and would send me little corrections for the typos. Consequently, Sirahal happens to be the name of her Second Life avatar. As you might guess, Squiddy Geiger was/is/who knows with those two her SL significant other. When I said in my opening lines of episode one that some of my friends even had their names and personalities plundered for my story, I wasn’t joking. After reading my sections featuring Sira and Squiddy, the two had quite the time turning their avatars into mermaids and sending me several photographs of the result. Hilarity ensued.

When I read her little back story for Sira, not only was I incredibly flattered (how many people get fan fiction for incomplete works? lol) but I knew then that I would want to include it in whatever form it took when it was finished. In fact, it made me think about all the other stories I wouldn’t be able to tell within the confines of The Dreamer’s Thread. Being as it told from the first-person perspective, it isn’t always possible to answer all those questions about a character’s past. Especially if there isn’t time for the stories to be told or if the protagonist simply doesn’t think to ask a question regarding said story.

So, for NaNoWriMo last year, when I completed TDT and still had words to go in my goal of 50k in a month, I began working on a “short story” involving Cyrus and Dedric. I made my 50k, but didn’t finish the story. I got stuck in a section and have yet to go back and finish it. If there’s any interest in it, I may go back and tweak it (or, you know, finish it) then record it for release somewhere down the line. It wouldn’t come out until much later as I think it contains some spoilers for the main story. As it was, I was hesitant to release The Ship’s Cook for another week as it would have been nice to have the “a-ha” Squiddy moment(if you’ve listened, you know what this is) come from me, but I don’t think it detracts from the story.

I’m currently seeing if I can get a similar short story out of Squiddy’s real life counterpart, but with him it’s difficult to get much beyond “Roses are red, violets are blue/I’m thining of a story/Of Squiddy and you” (via Twitter courtesy of @tweetyiscool a.k.a. Carmen). He’s a much better writer than he gives himself credit for, but I know several folks with the same problem in that regard…lack of motivation or confidence to do anything about it. Maybe if I harass him enough write me a story just to shut me up. Might need Carmen’s help with that one though.

Regardless, I hope you all enjoy The Ship’s Cook. Make sure you send a tweet out to @tweetyiscool if you’re on Twitter and let her know what you thought, or just leave a comment on this blog post. I will be sure to direct her to it.

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