April 25, 2002

"Stories aren't tee-shirts or GameBoys. Stories are relics, part of an undiscovered pre-existing world. The writer's job is to use the tools in his or her toolbox to get as much of each out of the ground intact as possible. Sometimes the fossil you uncover is small; a seashell. Sometimes it's enormous, a Tyrannosaurus Rex with all those gigantic ribs and grinning teeth."
- from Stephen King's On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

Well, I've just found my fossil. And it sure ain't no damn seashell. More like a snarling prehistoric beast of mammoth proportions. Right now it's flashing its razorsharp sabers at me, trying to frighten me into giving up before I've even begun. It's stomping its gigantic clawed limbs, shaking the ground underneath my feet, and its angry roar is deafening. It doesn't want to be unearthed.

But it really has no choice. My toolset may not be complete yet, and some of the screwdrivers may even be a bit rusty, but I think I have enough tools to start prying the bones from their clammy, earthen grave.

Besides - I have her voice on my side. That quiet, sedate voice of my Aunt Martha, prone to break out into cackling laughter at any moment - she has already started to tell her story to me. Not by actual words, but through her legacy of the twenty-five books she wrote about her travels, and an equal amount of photo albums, filled with splendid depictions of the world as it was at the beginning of the last century.

I hope I will prove myself worthy to retell her story to you all.