The Making Of Malcolm

You're 12 years old and nothing seems to stay the same. Everything's moving… people, places, things… never slowing to a speed that allows for any form of a detail to be noticed. Or so it seems. The brain is crammed with multiple overloads of information from every direction, all being sorted and categorized and, hopefully, to some extent, remembered.

But one thing's for sure: there's hair growing in new places where hair was undeniably absent. You're not sure if that's a good or a bad thing. If it's not on your head, what's it for? What's going on? Such an unprecedented discovery sometimes leads to unusual, imagination-fueled, sometimes frightening thoughts: I probably have some strange unknown disease from the creek water I was told not to drink the other day on my way home from the playground? If you were anything like me you tend to incriminate yourself first.

And then, there's acne... but we won't get into that right now.

As I begin the first read-through I feel like I'm reading the diary that I never kept as a twelve-year-old, but wish I had.

Becoming Malcolm & Molly

"If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark.  Dark would be without meaning."

~ C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, "Christian Behavior"

My father loved to read and he enrolled me in a book club at a very young age.  I'd receive books in the mail sent in tough brown cardboard cartons that were brutal to open.  I proceeded every month to go through the ripping and tearing ritual until the book, none the worse for wear, finally appeared in my hands.  Glancing at the cover, my fingers would open to the first page without looking at anything that came before it. I set my eyes on the first words of the first sentence of the first paragraph and launched into the adventure of reading with the zeal of a soldier advancing in battle.

I read the thirty-three volumes of The Happy Hollisters at a young age and then set my sights on the school library, which offered the complete Johnny Quest series, which I read straight through to the end.  St. Stephen's was a small Catholic school, but it had a well-staffed and well-stocked library. As long as there were books to be borrowed I was happy and I have the fondest of memories being a St. Stephen's Crusader.  I'm grateful for every minute I spent there as a student... and an altar boy and choir boy, as well.  I was raised with a strong set of values that resonate with me still as a young man in his sixties. 

As I begin the first complete edit of the book I feel myself moving like the ghost of my youth through Malcolm, providing real-life substance to his literary being. Which is a bit like being grammar school kid again, seeing the Sisters of St. Joseph hovering about in their black-and-white floor-length habits, remembering the smell of chalk dust again.

I invite you to join me here as I write the second draft of my first novel, Malcolm & Molly.  I'll include an excerpt with each post. Stay warm (it's winter here) and keep givin' 'em Heaven.

Your time may come.  Do not be too sad, Sam. You cannot be always torn in two.  You will have to be one and whole, for many years. You have so much to enjoy, to be and to do.

    ~ J.R.R. Tolkien (2012). “The Lord of the Rings: One Volume”, p.691, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.