The second Merry Mariner short story is out, and man, it's a good one! Click below to get it now, for pay-whatever-you-feel-like:

I'm really excited about this story, and the reason is that Waldo and the Spider's Sting is the most representative of what you can expect from the upcoming full Merry Mariner chapter books. Verona vs. the Doldrums was written as a sort of prologue, an introduction to the family and the ship, but with this story we get our first look at the colorful peoples and cultures on the Seven Seas. We'll travel to Marjoram, the City of Spires, visit the locals there and get a literal taste of their unique way of life, all while Waldo tries to chase down his escaped poisonous flying tarantula. That's what the chapter books will be - thrilling adventures in exotic, fantastic places.

But that's only the half of it. 

The other reason this story is representative of the full books is that it's chock-full of fun extra stuff. There's a map of Marjoram at the beginning, and at the end there's an Appendices section, including detailed scientific information on the story's infamous insects, schematics and blueprints of the machines Waldo builds, and even one of Mamma's recipes, all fully illustrated and as whimsical as the story itself.

This is also how the chapter books will be - full to bursting with all kinds of great bonus stuff. As a kid I used to love books like Dinotopia and the various Star Wars encyclopedias, which felt so much more real because they filled out the world in incredible detail, delving into the minutiae of life in these fantasy places. Maybe I can inspire other kids (or kids-at-heart like me) to dream up their own universes for me to travel to.

Another reason I'm excited about this story (what am I not excited about, really?) is that I'm visibly getting better at drawing, and illustrating for books, specifically. I'm still no Hergé, but I'm learning, and it shows. 

Here's an example of what I mean. Below is one of the illustrations from Verona vs. the Doldrums.

It looks more like a frame from an animated cartoon than an illustration from a book, doesn't it? That's not a good thing. Why does it look like a movie?

After getting really lovely feedback on the story and illustrations over the holidays, I settled on two reasons. First, it's a rectangle, with squared edges abruptly cutting off the background, and it even exhibits the same aspect ratio (length-width dimensions) as a film or television show. It looks like it could fit right on your TV.

This is fine if you're looking at the drawings on a big plasma television or computer screen, but not when you're reading it in the context of the story. Book pages are portrait, not landscape-oriented rectangles. This drawing and many others like it in the book get scrunched up on the page, and it hurts immersion. It feels wrong somehow.

Clearly my background as a filmmaker is to blame - I'm used to thinking in landscape rectangles. 

But there's another reason this doesn't look like a page out of a book: it's in color. One of the more interesting bits of feedback I received came from an elementary school teacher, who said that she much preferred the black and white version of Verona vs. the Doldrums because it actually felt less childish. The desire to be seen and treated as an adult is very important among my target age group, 6-12-year-olds. They don't want to be seen reading "kid's stuff," and brightly-colored drawings are like goofy saturday morning cartoons. Black and white, however, is more classic, more timeless, more adult, which is exactly what I'm going for. It's critical to me that the Merry Mariner stories don't feel like "children's books;" my golden ideal is Pixar, who manage to make films that truly appeal to All Ages.

I make a concerted effort not to "talk down" to kids in my writing - I just didn't know I could be doing it with my illustrating.

So when starting the drawings for Waldo and the Spider's Sting, I kept in mind these two points: 1) portrait orientation, 2) black and white. Here's a final full-page one from the story:

Now that's more like it! That, to me, feels much more like a classic, literary illustration. I've still got a lot to learn, but this is a big improvement. Even the drawings that aren't full page are designed to flow better with the text and bring you into the world:

So if you've already wandered over to the Stories page, you'll notice there's no color version available for Waldo and the Spider's Sting, and I've taken down the color version of Verona vs. the Doldrums (if you still want it, you can get it here). You can still pay what you want.

I think it's the right choice. Black and white, in a book anyway, feels both timeless and ageless.

Enjoy your trip to Marjoram, and watch out for flying tarantulas!

- M. Ray

I'm always amazed at how much stories can change from the time you come up with the idea to the final piece. Sometimes the change is quite drastic, and can be for unexpected reasons.

Last week I finished the treatment for the Fritz & Felix short story. Each of the short stories will be from the perspective of a different member of the family Wicklow (the twins counting as one character, since they're pretty much the same). Treatment is a term I borrowed from screenwriting - not sure if they use it in books as well - which is the thing between the outline and the actual first draft. I like to describe it as a kind of written explanation of what happens in the story from beginning to end, as though I were telling it to you in person. "This happens, and because of that this happens, but then this happens..." and so on.

I haven't written all the stories yet, but I came up with what I thought would be good story ideas for each character short story so that when I launched the website you'd get a peek at what's coming up next. I'm actually writing and illustrating them on a rolling basis (currently at this moment I'm illustrating the Waldo story, editing the Mamma story, writing the Fritz & Felix story, and plotting the Pappa story. Whew!).

Two weeks ago was my deadline for the Fritz & Felix outline and treatment. When I sat down to write it, I had every intention of doing my original idea: Fritz & Felix: Pirate Kings! It would be about the rowdy twins joining a pirate gang and learning that actually, pirating isn't all that great. Perfect, right? A high seas adventure, the ideal counter to the more intimate, personal story that comes before it. 

So I did it. I wrote the outline and treatment over the week, only to realize at the end that it was simply too much. I had a pirate crew on a steam-powered lighthouse-barge pirate ship, a mean pirate leader named Captain Azimuth who carries a whip and has a screw for an eye, and a huge pirate fortress, made out of bone, hidden inside a sea-cave. These aren't your usual clichéd swashbuckling 1700s pirates, either, these are steam-and-steel pirates in the age of electricity. The story took place over several weeks, as the twins impress Azimuth with their pirating skills and boundless energy for excitement, even eventually becoming "kings" of their own ship and crew. But the more they raid and steal from innocent sailors, the guiltier they feel, and pirating loses its adventurous sheen. Eventually they turn on Azimuth and undo his entire operation.

That's a lot for a short story.

I saw two options. I could throw it all out and start fresh, or try to squeeze it down into a short story. I didn't want to do either. It's a fun idea, and different than the usual kid's book pirate claptrap - not worth tossing away, but it also didn't seem possible to chip it down to short story length, either. 

There was a third option - I could start fresh, but save it for later. It might be just perfect for an upcoming book. Each of the longer, proper books will be based in another climate - the first one in the desert, then in the jungle, then the snow, and there will be one all at sea, as well. This Fritz and Felix pirate story would make a great part of a larger book. I could scale it up, rather than trying to pare it down.

So I shelved it, and started fresh. My mind still on high seas adventure, I mulled over various scenarios until I came back to an idea I had originally wanted to use for Verona's short story - stranded on a small rocky island with a lighthouse. Throw in a hidden treasure and a monster, and now I'm writing Fritz & Felix on St. Spooky's Isle. 

Each of the short stories so far written underwent changes. Verona vs. the Doldrums originally featured Verona abandoning the family in search of wind, but I wanted the story to feature all the characters, to introduce everyone, and to take place completely aboard the Merry Mariner, so she stayed put. 

Waldo and the Spider's Sting was originally Waldo and the Ivory Ark, about Waldo searching for his missing albino tarantula and meeting a collector of albino animals aboard a huge ship made of ivory. It was too complicated, and I felt I was losing the narrative thread, so I stripped away everything but the problem (poisonous tarantula has gone missing in a populated area) and went from there. The ivory ark is a neat idea though, so that'll be shelved for a future story.

Mamma Troubles the Trolls dogged me for some time. It started out as Mamma and the Miniature Megalomaniacs, about a colony of thieving gnomes living between the walls of the Merry Mariner. That turned into Mamma and the Missing Everyone, about the family mysteriously disappearing one by one (an idea which made it into the Fritz & Felix story, incidentally), and then became The Missing Voice & Mamma, about Mamma trying to organize a mass renovation of the ship without the use of her powerful voice. All of these somehow fell flat, like I didn't understand her character.

Why? Why couldn't I spin just one good yarn about Mamma?

After a bit of navel-gazing, I realized that Mamma is the only member of the family Wicklow who isn't somehow a mirror reflection of myself. Verona is my own impatience and adventurous spirit, Pappa is my inner bookworm and absent-mindedness, Waldo is my interest in all things mechanical and touchiness, the twins are my sense of humor, and Pip is my wide-eyed naiveté. Mamma, however, is everything I wish I was. She's strong, both in muscle and will, she's self-confident, decisive, no-nonsense, and everybody loves her. She's also extremely stubborn, unlike myself. I usually go with whatever, but I admire in others the ability to stand their ground against any onslaught. Stubbornness can also be a flaw, of course, so I made her butt heads with a troll, the only thing more stubborn than herself. What happens when an unmovable objects meets another unmovable object? Find out in Mamma Troubles the Trolls.

Looking back at it, as I write, each story changes more drastically than the last. I'm not sure what that means, but considering that old adage, "the best writing is rewriting," I'll take it to mean that I'm getting a little bit better each time.

See you on the next adventure...

M. Ray