Monday, February 1, 2021

The Beginnings

It began all the way back in 1980. An entity known as "the good David" created a sort of storyboard on a couple of pages, an attempt at a graphic novel of a story he wrote. There wasn't much to the story, it was introduced as some space traveling characters that formed a team called the Star Rangers. It was about a pyramid-shaped spaceship that was destroying planets. This predated the pyramid spaceship in the film StarGate by a decade and a half. There was also an idea about traveling to the surface of the sun and saving the world. But more or less the good versus evil trope that had been around forever. We had already formed a fictional band writing our own songs years prior. The band was just what we assumed to call ourselves, but the songs were real. Although David's songs were short and in truth were just hooks with three or four bars at most. The songs were never recorded. Thank goodness. David wrote in minor keys with mainly nonsensical lyrics. Then he had this idea about a space saga to add to our artistic collective. He'd tell of the overall story which was short and fragmented, at best, and even went so far as to write out a short theme song for it that had the feel of a choir singing it. Star Rangers be my friend/Star Rangers fight till the end/Star Rangers fly up so high/Star Rangers rule the blue sky.

However these were all ideas of a boy at the time whose villain was called Corna which I refer to now as Cornjob. In time the story faded and was never written out any further. It was just musings after all. Just a memory of the past. But...I keep things. Memories are no exception. While David shredded the past, I remembered and treasured the gems that could be something one day. Over the course of around 38 years, I had taken over where he left off and that's how long it traveled from the original. Off and on, I'd develop a few of the same characters and kept a mental record of events that could happen in this unfolding tale that has literally taken almost four decades (so far) to flesh out and add to the storyline. Over time the saga grew even if it was merely my stray thoughts about the Star Rangers and what they were. I'd think about them. I'd create scenarios in my mind about their adventures. How they came to be. What were their experiences, their backgrounds, their lives? What had they seen? And what were they fighting besides an enemy in a vast spaceship? No. It had to have more. There had to be more to it.

I had been writing this story over the years, in my head. I wrote out a summary of a chapter by chapter sequence of events around the year 2000, on paper, but that too, like David's, was just a draft. An idea. Things over the course of time have changed and the story morphed into many other ideas. It changed a lot. I drew so much from personal beliefs, dreams, experiences of battle, war, and the darkness of a world asleep when I was awake and living in half hopes and despair, and basic survival that life is. For me, you know? David had meant for it to be a film. But this is a book first, an epic novel before anything else. I always knew it would be a book and then whatever would come after.

It's a story of survival to see an end to something dark while living through it all, of what one can nurture of the spirit of bravery, courage and wisdom. That to me is what the Star Rangers represented. In a way, this story was created so long ago it's almost myth like, but instead of it being a known work of any kind, it had the grace of age and time to become what it is. Morphing into this tale you see before you. To grow and flourish in secret. Hidden from the world. A religious experience. I had never forgotten this seedling of a tale and all the while writing bits and pieces of it, all in my head.

Here now, I write it down in words...finally.


NOTE: The way blogger works is to make all newest posts or chapters on top of older ones. In ascending order. I have adjusted the posts to work in order so the dates of the actual publication of each chapter will go in descending order, so that will reflect why the dates seem to be off. It's why the date on this entry is off. There was no other way to pin it.

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