the story behind the story

I’m published!

And about damn time – I’ve been writing about writing for the past 7 years but didn’t have a scrap of fiction to share…until now.

Some context: the latest round of edits on Fool’s Gold slowed (further) over the summer due to burnout. I needed to get the creative juices flowing again, and what better way than with a short story? Something with a simpler plot and less time/emotional investment.

When I stumbled over evidence that Rudolf II had a pair of Mexican hairless dogs in his extensive menagerie I couldn’t resist playing with the notion of a yipping lapdog that turned out to be more than it appeared.

I queried through the fall. Of twelve publications, six rejected me, five didn’t reply, and one accepted. This, I gather, is par for the course. Persistence really does pay off!

My put-upon animal trader, Janek, is entirely made up. And goddamn, it was freeing to write a fully fictional character! No timelines or documentation to work around! I based his curmudgeonly attitude on Rowan Atkinson’s character Edmund Blackadder, a long-suffering servant to idiotic royals in a series of 80s British comedies. My logline for “The Zolo Hound of the Newly Found World” was “Blackadder runs a zoo”.

Laurenciana Pylmannova, however, was completely real. What little I could find of her was fascinating and still left me enough room to make up a personality.

Please read and let me know what you think, either here or over at Tall Tale TV.

Janek and Laurenciana WILL return, along with Felipe.

Published by

Allison Thurman

Raised on a diet of Star Wars, Monty Python, and In Search Of, Allison Thurman has always made stuff, lately out of words. She lives in a galaxy far, far away (well, the DC metro area) with too many books and not enough swords.

2 thoughts on “the story behind the story”

  1. I enjoyed it immensely, with one complaint… I want more on what happens with the pups and Janek.

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