Hi Christine,
Thanks! Joan (who is a dog-lover; so am I) read a short story a while back from a memoir by Steve Bernstein called Stories from the Stoop, which tells of his experiences as a boy growing up in The Bronx (NYC). It’s the first story in the book and is about his Malamute dog, which he became very attached to. His father, a plumber who had a drinking problem, gave the dog away in a card game.
Joan’s memory of that story was the inspiration for ours. The theme of our book is Intolerance. The secondary theme is losing one’s pet. The setting is a future dystopian world with a sprinkling of science fiction elements, such as robot pigeons (flying drones), humanoid robots from Planet Plake, and a tyrannical king. There are also gadgets like watches that can become invisible and communicate like cellphones, and 3-D printers that can make almost anything (except those watches!).
The exiles participate in contests for a chance to get out of the desert and get their pets back, but it’s all propaganda. The two teen protagonists (with the help of a special talking robot pigeon called Lucky) need to find a way to depose King Sagittarius.
Joan (who specializes in books for young readers) was mostly the storyteller, and I was mostly the poet, though we also wrote many of the poems together. Sometimes elements of a poem generated material for the plot as we went along. It was a really fun collaboration.
|