A sample from Chumpty Dumpty and the Wishing-Well War!

Work progresses nicely. I’ve reached the halfway point in the writing and have finished a few art pieces to go along with it as well. So far I’m very happy with it. One thing that I didn’t anticipate when I outlined it was how big of a role Art would play. In a lot of ways he’s the member of the trio with the most “screen time.” That wasn’t a conscious decision going into the writing, but it just sort of developed that way as I fleshed out my ideas.

Speaking of Art, here’s an unproofed, first-draft snippet from the ninth chapter, which takes place after the heroes just won a great victory. There was no time to celebrate, however, as Art was shockingly kidnapped!

What follows is the aftermath of his being taken…

Art woke sometime later, jostled by the bag slipping off his head. It took him a minute to realize where he was and what was going on, which was not usual for Art, but in this case at least he had a good excuse: He was hanging upside being carried like a pig at a luau.

Thanks to his floppy neck, he was able to contort and look at who was carrying him as well as where he was being carried: To answer the second question, they were trudging up a hill toward a splendiferous castle of pearly white. Flapping above the battlements of the towers were flags of blue with a golden triangle in the center.

To answer the first question, it was a pair of weirdos; they had shed their common, peasant attire for strange robes of blue and gold, patterned with triangles.

“Oh man, I know what this is.” Art said, startling his kidnappers.

“Melvin, he’s awake!” the creepy woman exclaimed, nearly dropping her half of the cow-prisoner.

“I can see that, Mildred.” the creepy man replied, continuing to march in the lead. “Keep going, we’re almost there.”

“He’s speaking. We should answer him.”

“You should.” Art said. “Otherwise it’s just rude, you know.”

“Hurry.” Melvin said.

“Really, I’m not mad.” Art insisted.

“You’re not?” Mildred replied, looking down at dangling head, weighed down slightly by the twin wooden poles they had tied him to and were carrying on their shoulders.

“No, really. I’ve dealt with you people before. No offense.”

“You have?” Mildred looked to her companion, bewildered at the idea. “Melvin, did you hear—”

“It’s not our concern.”

“Come on. Put me down and let me hear your spiel.” he chuckled. “I could probably tell it to you, in fact.”

Mildred stopped walking, which forced Melvin to stop walking. He put Art’s back half down and turn to scold her, but she was already sitting down to hear what he had to say. “Mildred!” Melvin scoffed.

“Hush Melvin. If he really is the chosen one, we must listen to him.”

“The chosen one?” Art said. “What are you selling, exactly?”

“What? Selling?”

“Wait, so you’re not a multi-level marketing scheme?”

“Multi…” Mildred glanced to Melvin, who was just as perplexed. “What is this marketing scheme you speak of?”

“Oh boy. Okay.” Art took a deep breath. “First, I’m going to need like a sharpie and a really big marker board…”

* * * * *

“There it is!” Betty shouted. She was in the lead as the gang ran down the dirt road. They had awakened a good hour or so after Art was carried away and immediately set off after the kidnappers.

A sleepy little hamlet of a town was nestled at the foot of a tall, grey mountain. Villagers moved about, minding their business as they went about their day, paying little attention to the trio of outsiders hurrying into the heart of town.

“Hi.” Betty said, wheezing as she waved to a villager. “We’re looking for a friend of ours. He’s a…cow.”

“Oh ya?” the man said, smiling gently at them. “Ve haf los’ of cows, ya. You need milk cow or beef cow?”

“No, we don’t want to buy a cow. We’re friends with a cow.”

“Friends with cow?”

“Friends with cow.”

“Oh ya, ya, ya.” he said, nodding. “I understand, ya. Ve haf los of vegetables and tings too, ya. No meat for you, ya.”

“No no, we’re not vegetarians, we just—” Betty started but settled for a weary sigh.

“Hi.” Chumpty said, waving at a different villager.

“Hi yourself.” she replied with an accent not quite as thick as the other man. “Velcome to our village.”

“Thanks…listen this will sound strange but we had a friend that was kidnapped and we’re trying to find him.”

“That’s not strange at all.” she said.

“It isn’t?”

“Well, I suppose a kidnapping is out of ze ordinary, but I’d bet your friend was taken by Madonna.”

“Madonna?!” Betty exclaimed, her head turning sharply toward her.

“Yes. She lives in ze castle near ze entrance to ze Volcano Road.”

“Volcano Road?!” Chumpty exclaimed, his head turning sharply toward the tall, grey mountain that loomed over them.

“Ya.   Ze Volcano is ze chief landmark of Aesopville.”

“Aesopville?!” Gwen exclaimed, her head turning sharply to one particular cottage, tucked away a little off road. “I’m home!”

“You’re a strange bunch.” the villager replied, smirking at them.

“I guess.”

“Come on!” Gwen said, hopping toward her cottage. “I vill introduce you to my mom. She vill help us!”

* * * * *

 “So you see…” Art tapped on the illustration he had drawn for his captors. “You’re not here, at the top of the pyramid. You’d be like one level below that.” He pointed to the middle of the triangle. “You’d be selling your product for the person on the top.”

“But how do I people sell the product?” Melvin asked, taking notes with a little pencil and pad. “Am I trained, or—?”

“No no. No training. No skills.” He pointed to the bottom of the pyramid. “You see, you bring in other people to sell the product for you, and when they do, they keep a small percentage of the money, and give the rest to you.”

“Ahh, so then we become very rich.” Mildred said, smiling at the idea.

“Well…no. You keep small percentage and give the rest to the person up here at the top of the triangle-thing.”

“Oh I see, yes. So how do I get to be the person at the top of the triangle?”

“That is the big mystery.”

“AHHH!” an ear-piercing shriek ended the discussion. Everyone turned toward the castle to see a lanky woman with wild yellow hair running toward them, flanked by a pair of blue-clad knights, struggling to keep up. “He’s here! He’s here!”

There’s more to the chapter but that’s all for now. The text highlights the absurdist-kind of humor that I was going for, especially whenever Art is involved in a scene.

One thing worth noting is how much bigger this book is shaping up to be. Already I’ve had multiple chapters stretch beyond two-thousand words. Normally, my chapters range from twenty-five hundred words to three-thousand, but with my children’s-focused novels, I was shooting more for the fifteen-hundred-word range. Not only have I exceeded that multiple times already, but I’ve even had to add a chapter to accommodate a subplot that needed more breathing room.

Hopefully the end result is as satisfying to me as writing the first one was.

So far, it has been.