As I’ve mentioned on these posts, my main work-in-progress these last several months has been my novel Preserve The Revelation. However, while writing it (since last September), other things have come to mind. One of them was a new short story, an unplanned one in the Danny Tompkins series. That had been bubbling up in my mind since around last October. I wrote a few notes about it, to preserve them. I even started the story in manuscript, lost it, and started it again on another sheet of paper.

I found the first paper, merged the two beginnings, and wrote maybe 500 words. All of this, mind you, in odd moments after finishing my work daily on PTR. It was February 14th that I sat and typed what I had, then kept going. In early March I finished the story, took a week or so to read and tweak it. All of this was on days I was letting PTR simmer, to give me time to get a fresh perspective on it. At some point that included starting work on the cover. It all came together this past week. I uploaded it to Amazon on Thursday, March 16. By Friday everything had synced up on all of Amazon’s systems, so I announced it on Facebook. So far, no sales. I haven’t yet put it up on Smashwords and other sites.

The story is this: Daniel Tompkins, now in his sixties, comes to a better understanding that, due to life circumstances, he missed much of his teen years. This affected his adult ability to relax and have fun. He ponders how to break free from this baggage of youth.

This series started in 2010 when I wrote “Mom’s Letter“. It was the story of the day Danny learned his mother had entered the hospital to die, something that happened while he was at scout camp, something he hadn’t seen progressing as the summer wore on. Later in life he found a letter his mom wrote to him at camp that week. That started a flood of memories, and inspired Daniel to write a poem about it.

I first wrote that story for a contest, one that a lady in church told me about. I submitted it (didn’t win), and later expanded it beyond the word count allowed by the contest. The best part of the story was in those extra words added. I ran the story through an on-line critique group, and two real life critique groups. When I made the decision to self-publish, I didn’t want to start with a book, so I decided to use this to learn how to do it. It first went live for sale on Amazon Feb 15, 2011.

I never thought of making that into a series. It was a story I wanted to tell. But then I thought, perhaps Daniel had other memories of when he was young Danny who had just lost his mother.  Could these memories help some other teenager who faced similar circumstances? The story of the wake and actual funeral seemed the logical thing to do next, so I wrote “Too Old To Play“, the title taken from the poem that’s included in the story, a poem that pre-dates the story. Then came “Kicking Stones“, featuring Danny’s memories of returning to school after his mom’s death, told with the metaphor of kicking stones on the walk to and from junior high. This had a lot of Daniel’s inner thoughts and reflections.

Then came “Saturday Haircuts, Tuesday Funeral“, which featured Danny’s father, how he coped with his wife’s death, and raising three teens on his own. Then, since I’d focused on the dad in a couple of stories, I decided I’d better do one on the mom. So I wrote “What Kept Her Alive?”, which showed the struggles Danny’s mom went through and how her life was perhaps prolonged because of the activities she took part it, activities she could do from her invalid’s couch.

So now, the series is complete. No, really. I know I said that after the last one, but I feel a sense of completion with publication of “Growing Up Too Fast”. I do plan on republishing each of the earlier ones, to tweak the covers to be more alike, and to add links to all stories in the series in each book, now that they are all published. I’m also thinking of combining them into a “boxed set.” We’ll see; maybe later this year when I have a lull in writing and publishing activities. I will, of course, keep you all informed should that happen.