Project Elfhome - Afterword

In a different story, I’d played with the idea that Tooloo had tapped a hapless pawn and sent them off to do impossible things. Originally the pawn had been sent to Onihida to free Impatience from the oni. I realized that the story wouldn’t be placed in Pittsburgh, would require massive world-building and wouldn’t be a short story. I abandoned this project.

What if Tooloo called Law and arranged for her to save Bare Snow? Tooloo is quietly blocking the Skin Clan right and left. The fact that Bare Snow is Water Clan finally became vital to the story. If she’s found in the wrong place, her presence could trigger the restart of the clan war. I wrote out Tooloo calling Law in the middle of fishing and had Law go off to find Bare Snow. Her location was a natural extension of canon: Windwolf had been attacked in Fairywood and gone on foot to Tinker’s salvage yard. If you wanted to start a clan war, putting a Water Clan elf in Fairywood was a logical way of doing it.

Originally Bare Snow had been a normal, innocent female. I got as far as Widget hacking the DMV when I realized that wouldn’t work. As a trigger to a clan war, there had to be more of a reason to suspect that she was behind the ambush. Also a normal person wouldn’t chase after bad guys. Law had a history of going toe-to-toe with guys stalking women but her taking on an entire horde of bad guys didn’t make sense. It needed to make sense that Bare Snow couldn’t go to the Wind Clan with the news that Windwolf was going to be attacked. There was also the oddity of Bare Snow coming to Pittsburgh all by herself with no promise of joining a household.

At some point I remembered that I had set up that Windwolf’s grandfather, Howling, had been assassinated. What if Bare Snow’s family were the assassins? What if the Skin Clan had been behind it? At that point, it all worked. I rewrote the scenes so that Bare Snow was now a well-trained assassin whose mother had a price on her head.

But what was the story really about? The emotional heart of an action story is very difficult to figure out sometimes. For a long time, it eluded me. I nearly reached the end before I knew what it was. From Law’s name to her profession to her choice of pet, I had gone with extremely quirky choices. (And yes, some of that reflected the inspiration.) Unconsciously I’d been having Law pick out things that were logical and wonderful for her, but that people around her hated. The heart of the story was staring me in the face.

Pittsburgh Backyard and Garden

Sometimes it’s hard to remember what triggered a story. I vaguely remember talking to June Drexler Robertson about wanting to do a story in Pittsburgh that didn’t center on Tinker that dealt with the day-to-day life of humans trying to cope with magic and monsters.

I think if I had to list the very, very root of it, it was the scene in Tinker when Oilcan and Tinker are warning Ryan of the dangers of Elfhome’s native life. They mentioned a list of safety rules posted at the observatory’s dorms. (Don’t leave doors open, report any strange animal no matter how cute and harmless it seemed, don’t go into the swamp without a flamethrower…) At some point later I tried to sit down and write out those safety rules. It wasn’t as interesting as I thought it would be but it had promise of growing.

I don’t remember how it went from “normal Pittsburghers” to a DYI TV show but I recall giggling madly. For some reason, the first thing I thought of was Alton Brown in a pith helmet. I allowed him to go a little manic, influenced by MythBusters, and freed from the constraints of “Don’t try this at home.” (Okay, so maybe a little Bob Ross too with “and a happy little tree lives here…and it’s trying to eat you.”)

Having gone off the deep end with Hal, I needed someone to balance him. Someone behind the scenes, calm to his manic, careful to his blithe enthusiasm, and heavily armed. I decided that Jane would be the opposite of everything that was Tinker. Tall, blond, intelligent but not a genius, liked to settle her problems with her fists, and had the world’s most plain first name. (The last name of Kryskill comes from the family that actually built Hyeholde Restaurant.) She’d have a large, sprawling family: grandparents, mother, uncles, aunts, brothers, sisters, and cousins. She would even have a pet: a big, well-trained guard dog.

The idea screamed for a take on a “fish out of water” story. I wanted outsiders coming to Pittsburgh and the natives having to deal with the fact that the newcomers don’t know how to deal with the local dangers. (Basically I cycled back to the seed idea of Tinker and Oilcan’s explanation to Ryan.) I decided the Pittsburghers were doing a gardening show a la Elfhome and that the incoming crew was doing a more rarefied animal documentary.

Mind you, most of this was at a subconscious level and happened in the course of one afternoon during the conversation with June.