Project Elfhome - Afterword

Nigel came from June telling me about Nigel Marven and Chased by Dinosaurs. She mentioned a segment of Nigel letting a poisonous spider walk across his face. I decided to name my naturalist in tribute to Marven, but I decided not to watch any video featuring him so that my Nigel wouldn’t be a copy of him. I think Monty Python was more of an influence on my vision of Nigel. Riffing on the name Chased by Dinosaurs, I decided his show would be Chased by Monsters, which suggested a natural end to the story.

Just as I was working on the story, I happened to see the video of Aimee Mullins doing a TED Talk. Aimee was born in Pennsylvania with a medical condition that resulted in her lower legs being amputated when she was an infant. Despite this, she went on to be world-class athlete, actress and fashion model. She really inspired me. I decided that Nigel would have the same condition. It was only later that I decided to make use of his lack of feet: evil writer that I am.

With all that in the mix, I sat down and wrote the two obvious scenes. The first one establishes the PB&G crew, its show then unnamed, filming one of the monsters I’ve mentioned in the books but hadn’t shown. The strangle vine had to be aggressive enough to warrant heavy weapons, thus the whole octopus plant on LSD came into being. Jane gets the phone call informing her of the babysitting job, and then in the next scene, she meets said newbies.

Originally I wanted Jane to be working on a show whose name was a riff on a real television series. The first one that leapt to mind was Victory Garden. I went off and researched it and decided it was totally not what I thought it was. So I went with Pittsburgh Lawn and Garden. While typing the show name for the twentieth time, I decided to abbreviate it. By changing “Lawn” to “Backyard,” I could make it sound like a PB&J sandwich.

By the very nature of Pittsburgh on Elfhome, the arrival of Nigel and Taggart had to be on a Startup day. I couldn’t bring them in after July since July was the last Shutdown. Bringing them in prior to July meant they wouldn’t be struggling with the big world problem of the war between elf and oni, and that seemed pointless. Anything they discovered about the oncoming war would have caused problems with information already stated in the books. So obviously, Chased by Monsters arrived in July.

It meant that the biggest news story was Tinker’s kidnapping.

It set up a “you’re a genius” in terms of plot since I established that Mercy Hospital was the only human hospital in town and it’s right beside where Tinker takes the nosedive during her kidnapping. By hurting Hal, I gave him front row seats to everything. Wow. Cool. The story just flowed out.

This triggered a problem though. By seeing Tinker kidnapped, why wouldn’t this be the news story that the crew followed? Yes, it was out of their field, but a woman’s life is at stake. As the author, however, I couldn’t have them focusing on it because they couldn’t influence the events. But by the same token, I wanted them to learn something big that justified doing a story from Jane’s point of view.

I stalled around the Neighborhood of Make Believe scene, struggling to figure out how to make it a big story without stretching the fabric of the published book’s universe. Eventually the “ah ha” light went on and I realized that Tinker’s kidnapping had to be a catalyst for Jane to cope with the angst of a similar event in her life. Thus Boo was born. It was a kind of have your cake and eat it too setup.

Blue Sky

In Wolf Who Rules, I wanted Tinker to talk with Tommy Chang prior to saving him from the Wyverns. I had in my mind that he would be a major player in Pittsburgh but I had the problem that he’s not the sort of person Tinker normally would interact with. I made him the race promoter to give them a common element. Tommy seeks Tinker out to find out how much her being made into an elf changed her mentally. Like Maynard, he wanted to know where she stood in the political landscape. He couldn’t, however, just ask her flat out like Maynard could, because that would indicate he was part of the conflict. The conversation about racing, then, was all just a cover.

At the time, I was ordering promotional materials through an online printing site. Their e-mails for proofs came from the address of Team Big Sky. It seemed too perfect not to use. In a throwaway line, I set up that Team Big Sky was John Montana and his little brother, the half-elf, Blue Sky.