Well, I’ve been sitting at my computer for an hour editing The Forest Throne. I totally forgot that the first writing I was supposed to do this morning was my Monday blog post. Hence, here it is 7:50 a.m. I’m 20 minutes late and just getting started.

I had planned my post today to be about The Forest Throne, which I’ll abbreviate TFT hereinafter. I told something of the genesis of this book in a prior post, promising then to tell something of the story in a future post. The future has arrived.

The story revolves around Ethan. He’s 11 years old to start the book, visiting his grandparents for Thanksgiving with his parents and three siblings. Ethan has some issues (what 11-year-old doesn’t?), and he’s constantly being corrected as he torments his little brother and sister. He and Grandpa go for a hike in the woods behind the house, into the hollow, something they do on every visit.

This is the Ozarks, not the highest mountains part, but the foothills. Lots of valleys covered with oak trees eking out a life on rocky hillsides. Way down the hill, just before you get to the bottom of the hollow, they find an odd formation in the hillside. It looks a little like a chair. It seems to be manmade, and has a hole drilled into one of the “arms”. Ethan sits in it, calls it his forest throne, and immediately wishes it was a time machine. His grandfather reminds him “There’s no such thing as time travel.”

Later they go across the street from the house and work on a fort. You’re in the middle of the woods. It’s someone else’s land, but they aren’t around, so what do you do? You build a fort. It takes a few years of repeated visits to get it done. While playing at the fort, Ethan’s little sister finds a blue peg, which he immediately takes from her. He realized it is the same size as the hole drilled in the forest throne and determines to go back there to see if the peg fits. Maybe it’s the key to activating the time portal.

Well, he does go back there; the peg does fit; and nothing happens except the peg gets stuck. Nothing he tries gets it out. Soon the visit is over and he and his family goes home to Texas.

They come back the next year during the summer—just the three oldest kids, not the parents or the baby brother. Ethan is 12 now, and he gets to stay longer after the other siblings go home. He goes down to the throne, which is a little hard to find, but he finds it. The peg is still in place. After much trying, he learns that with a little bit of twisting the peg will come out. He pulls out the peg. In just a few seconds he encounters….

Well, this is about as far as I can go without giving away the whole plot. Let’s just say that Ethan’s hopes that the throne is a time portal turn out to be all too true. He activates it, not once but twice, and a terrible thing has happened as a result.

TFT is done. I finished it last Wednesday. I finished reading it to the wife last night. I’m most of the way through with my first round of edits and will likely complete them today. My critique group has through Chapter 4. Later this week I’ll get it to my beta readers, all five of them. They are ages 13 through 8. We’ll see if it passes muster. Hopefully it will be ready to publish not later than April.