Category: The Story Behind the Story

The Fourteenth of May

by Chris, posted in The Story Behind the Story

In The Can’t Monster, the young protagonist (Will) embarks on his ill-fated quest on “the fourteenth of May.” Objectively speaking, Will’s misadventure could’ve taken place on pretty much any day of the year. In my mind, though, it simply must take place on this specific day. You see, May 14, 2005, was the day I set out to climb what was perhaps the most daunting mountain of my life. Absent that experience, it’s difficult for me to imagine how The Can’t Monster would’ve ever come to pass. Read on to learn why.

Here, Will is depicted saying goodbye to his mother before setting out on his journey on May 14th.

My first foray into the world of children’s literature was inspired by various life experiences, some of which I’ve written about already. For instance, I first used the term “can’t monster” in an email to my wife, following a workplace meeting that went off the rails in May 2016. This led me to start brainstorming ideas for how to best capitalize on what I thought was a can’t-miss title.

My mind went in several different directions over the next few years before settling where it did. I first put pen to paper on what would become The Can’t Monster in early 2021, drawing inspiration from the rugged hills that surrounded my wife’s childhood home in southern West Virginia. I refined the story while staring out at the very hill I envisioned Will attempting to climb, which overlooked Corinne Bottom and the Guyandotte River.

Two sources of inspiration I have yet to expand on are those stemming from my time as a high school teacher and my subsequent experiences in the U.S. Army. The “fourteenth of May” provides a bridge between these two stages in my life, for it was on that day that I committed to leaving the former for the latter.

By abandoning, or at least suspending, my career in public education to join the Army, I was retreating from one Can’t Monster in order to confront another. The decision itself was life-altering, for sure, but it was neither heroic nor foolhardy. Still, The Can’t Monster would almost certainly not exist had I not chosen the path I did.

As a teacher, I became my school’s character education guru for a few years in the early 2000s (quite unintentionally, I should add). The upshot of this was that it impressed on me the educational value of character-building stories, something very much on my mind as I wrote about Will and his encounter with the Can’t Monster. I wanted the story to be simple enough for young readers to understand, while having enough depth that readers of any age could take something away from it. I even imagined how I would’ve used it in my Citizenship & Responsibility classes to teach about perseverance, courage, and personal accountability.

For better or worse, by the spring of 2005, I felt like I’d hit a wall as a high school teacher. The reasons for this for this are best explained elsewhere, if at all. That said, hindsight allowed me to see that my shortcomings as a teacher wore on me more than I wanted to admit (which is why I tended to blame external factors for my unhappiness). Moreover, I wasn’t really sure what, if anything, I could do address these weaknesses. Put simply, I lacked both optimism and resilience, enabling the Can’t Monster in my head to convince me that I was powerless to improve my situation.

It was this sense of powerlessness that led me to explore the option of joining the Army. Military service had long fascination of mine, and this had only intensified following the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States. I’d fought back the urge to join the military in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, reasoning that my place was in the classroom, not on some faraway battlefield. However, my growing discontent with teaching led me to establish contact with the local recruitment office in April 2005. By early May, I’d made a decision.

On Friday, May 13, 2005, my recruiter and I made the two-hour trip from Mount Airy, North Carolina, to the Military Entrance and Processing Station (MEPS) in Charlotte. Once there, I took the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery test and then settled into a hotel for the night. The following morning, I underwent my initial physical exam and met with a career counselor to select my job (i.e., military occupational specialty). After signing a four-year enlistment contract, I was ushered into a nondescript room with perhaps a dozen other recruits, where we all raised our right hands and took the Oath of Enlistment. By day’s end, I was back in Mount Airy, left to ponder what I’d just done, and how to break it to those I loved. The fourteenth of May had been busy day.

I didn’t ship out for another couple of months – months that were spent informing family, friends, and coworkers of my decision. They greeted my announcement with varying degrees of shock, disbelief, and concern. I also had to sell my house, reasoning that I no longer needed it, and probably couldn’t afford to keep it anyway. After saying my final goodbyes to my family and closest friends in early July, I made another trip to the Charlotte MEPS, and from there to Fort Benning, Georgia, knowing that it was entirely possible that I’d be going to war.

And go to war I did, a year and a half later. I spent the intervening nineteen months training for combat, jumping from airplanes, studying Arabic, learning job-specific skills, and generally preparing for deployment. It remained to be seen if I’d made a disastrously short-sighted decision, as some believed was the case.

Had something bad happened to me in Iraq, or at any point while I was in uniform, it would’ve confirmed their worst fears. Instead, the military proved to be a very rewarding experience, and later opened doors for me to get my master’s degree in history cost-free, to enter the civil service, and to become a professional historian for the Army, which is what I do now. Whatever my win-loss record is when it comes to confronting the Can’t Monster, I can safely chalk my miliary experience up as a win.  

There you have it. Will, the main character in The Can’t Monster, stepped off on his great adventure on the fourteenth of May because that’s when I embarked on my own great adventure. Fortunately, both of us emerged on the other side, better off for taking the chance.

Me near Baghdad, Iraq, late-2007

***Order your copy of The Can’t Monster today at Amazon or other fine retailers. ***

More about Monsters

by Chris, posted in The Story Behind the Story

THIS POST CONTAINS SPOILERS FROM THE CAN’T MONSTER, SO YOU MIGHT WANT TO READ THE BOOK FIRST.

The monster in The Can’t Monster isn’t real. Will, the young boy who encountered the titular monster, realizes later in the story that the monster was all in his head. (How’s that for a spoiler?)

In a previous blog, I mentioned that the monster in my story represents the obstacles standing between an individual (or group) and his, her, or their own personal mountain. I’ll stand by that analysis, but I want to offer a corollary to it: monsters also represent excuses.

During one of my daily pre-predawn walks with Jack, our 130-pound Great Pyrenees, I recalled a conversation I had with a fellow soldier early in my Army days. This guy had tried, and failed, to become a Green Beret. He was not alone. A significant percentage of those who set out to be Green Berets, as Army Special Forces soldiers are known, do not make it through the long and often grueling assessment, selection, and qualification process. However, he had an interesting take on his own experience.

He told me that virtually everyone who washes out of Special Forces training has an excuse. That excuse almost always involves factors beyond their control. Seldom, he said, will anyone admit that they couldn’t hack it, or that it just wasn’t for them, when it’s easier to blame the cadre, the weather, their peers, an injury, or the fickle hand of fate.

By contrast, this guy offered no excuses for his failure. Instead, he moved on, made the most of his next-best alternative, and later attended Officer Candidate School. At last check, he had attained the rank of Major. He knew something about the Can’t Monster, and how an obstacle — real or imagined — can become an excuse, if you let it.

I was impressed with this fellow’s candor and maturity. It’s not that he didn’t face real obstacles, because I’m certain he did. But he did something that’s quite difficult for us humans: he owned his failure — and then he overcame it.

I should note that the process of becoming a Green Beret is so lengthy and difficult that I decided not to even attempt it, based on what I’d read about it prior to joining the Army. Fortunately, I was almost certainly a better fit for the military specialty that I ultimately selected. Still, a part of me still wonders if I could’ve made it through the course, had I possessed the guts to try.

And that’s what The Can’t Monster is about, in part: having the guts to try, and then to try again, if necessary. We all fall short of the mark at times. It’s how we deal with that failure that defines us. I have to remind myself of that on a regular basis.

Fun fact: In an earlier version of the story, I’d described Will’s father as “his Green Beret dad,” before changing it to, “his hero — his dad.”

Buy your copy today via Amazon or Barnes & Noble. FYI: the paperback measures 6.5″ square, whereas the hardcover edition is 8″ square.

Mountains, Monsters, and Metaphors

by Chris, posted in The Story Behind the Story

The Can’t Monster is a story about a boy who attempts to climb a mountain, fails, comes to terms with his failure, and tries again. Along the way, he encounters a monster that [SPOILER ALERT] turns out to be imaginary. The mountain and the monster are both plot devices with a symbolic meaning worth exploring.

During the considerable lulls in the publication process, I found myself pondering the significance of the symbols I employed in my story. I wondered if anyone else would pick up on them, or if they’d just take the story at face value. After all, The Can’t Monster is fundamentally a children’s book, not a contender for the title “Great American Novel.” Also, when it comes to the use of symbols, I’m not exactly Herman Melville (although, unlike Moby Dick, my book can be read in a matter of minutes, not over the course of several fortnights). Still, it’s worth discussing what the mountain and the monster in The Can’t Monster represent.

Here’s my take: the mountain is the thing to be achieved and the monster is the thing that stands in the way of achieving it. In the story, the mountain is a mountain. In life, a mountain can be a major life goal (a college degree, for example) or a lesser pursuit (a hobby, an adventure, a significant purchase, a project, etc.).

As a teenager, two friends and I ascended to the top of nearby Pilot Mountain from its base (as high as legally allowed, that is). It felt like quite the feat at the time. Today, that quest seems like a fairly leisurely hike. It’s not that I’ve climbed steeper or taller mountains since, because I haven’t. I’ve just accomplished things that are a lot more meaningful to me. Along the way, I’ve encountered many monsters.

In 1990, Pilot Mountain, a famous landmark in northwestern North Carolina, was the “thing to be achieved” for me and two of my buddies.

Most recently, the process of publishing a children’s book represented a mountain. I wouldn’t exactly consider it my own personal Mount Everest, since my livelihood doesn’t depend on its success, and my investment of time was relatively modest (compared to most book projects), but this doesn’t mean that I didn’t run into a few monsters along the way.

The first of these was the submissions process. Not all book publishers take unsolicited submissions. Those that do tend to respond only when they’re interested enough in the project to offer a book deal. Would-be authors typically don’t get rejection notices…they just wait, wait, and then wait some more before giving up. I went through this with The Can’t Monster and am currently going through it again with a follow-on project. The late Tom Petty spoke for all authors and prospective authors when he said that the waiting is the hardest part.

Once I found a publisher, new monsters appeared. One of these was the process of trying to determine what the monster in the story should look like, given that it didn’t really exist. Limited to communicating with the illustrator through an intermediary at the publisher, I quickly grew frustrated. We went through four of five iterations of the monster before arriving at something I could live with. Getting some of the other illustrations right presented lesser, but still noteworthy, challenges. Eventually, I made peace with the idea that, for the book to ever see the light of day, I had to make some compromises. The great, it turned out, was once again the enemy of the good enough.

This early rendering of the monster didn’t exactly fit my vision, nor did the next several versions.

The monsters mentioned above were not enough to deter me from reaching the top of this one metaphorical mountain (i.e., publication). Had I allowed these obstacles (among others) to deter me, then The Can’t Monster would have won. If so, my unpublished story would hold a uniquely ironic significance for me, and for me alone. Fortunately, in this case, I successfully stared down the monster.

As Will discovers in The Can’t Monster, most of the monsters I’ve encountered throughout my life have been in my head. I’d like to be able to report that I’ve prevailed in each of these confrontations. The truth is that my track record remains quite mixed.

I suspect that yours might be, as well. That’s how life tends to be: to avoid the monsters, we end up avoiding the mountains. The Can’t Monster prefers it that way. Don’t let it win.

Buy your copy of The Can’t Monster today via Amazon or Barnes & Noble. FYI: the paperback measures 6.5″ square, whereas the hardcover edition is 8″ square.

To My Chagrin

by Chris, posted in The Story Behind the Story

Merriam Webster defines chagrin as “disquietude or distress of mind caused by humiliation, disappointment, or failure.”

It’s a useful word, to be sure, but it doesn’t seem to belong in a children’s picture book. Yet, that’s the word I chose to describe my protagonist’s emotional state, following his failed quest. Why?

It’s pretty simple, really: I needed a word that rhymed with “again.”

For context, it helps if you understand that The Can’t Monster is a rhyming children’s book. There’s no good explanation for why I chose to go in this direction, except that’s how the first stanza of the story flowed from my sleep-deprived mind in early 2021.

A young boy named Will
gazed up at the hill
that loomed beyond Ol’ Muddy Creek

He said to that hill,
“Climb you, I will,
And view the whole world from your peak.”

With those words, I was off to the races. The first draft of the story was full of iffy, and sometimes forced, rhymes (among other problems), but the specific conundrum that led me to use the word “chagrin” didn’t happen until later, after I decided that Will’s father should return in time for the story’s climax. The father would demonstrate empathy with his son by telling Will that “he knew this Can’t Monster too, [and] faced him too often to mention.”

In an earlier draft, I attempted to rhyme “misadventure” with “mention.” Needless to say, that didn’t work. I had no luck in my attempt to find a suitable stand-in for either of these words. Once I realized that I’d used “mention” a few stanzas earlier, I knew it had to be replaced. Unfortunately, there isn’t a lot that rhymes with “misadventure.”

I substituted “again” for the duplicate use of “mention” and was satisfied with the result, but this didn’t get me any closer to a workable rhyme. Consequently, I spent a fair amount of time on the website RhymeZone.com — to no avail. Then, for reasons I’ve since forgotten, I decided to look up the definition of chagrin, finding the one provided at the top of this entry.

Not only did it work as a rhyme for “again,” it captured what I wanted to convey perfectly. Will was distressed and humiliated by his failure. However, I couldn’t help but wonder if early readers would know what this word meant.

They almost certainly will not, but I’m rolling the dice that this will not present an obstacle to understanding or enjoying the story. Readers young and old may be able to deduce the meaning of chagrin from context, or they might just blow right past it. Either way, they’ll end up in the same place — which [SPOILER ALERT] just happens to be at the top of a hill that looms beyond Ol’ Muddy Creek.

I’ll only regret my decision to use “chagrin” if, for whatever reason, it’s the reason someone doesn’t finish, or enjoy, the book. As unlikely as that seems, it would certainly be to my own personal chagrin if it did work out that way.

Chris

Buy your copy of The Can’t Monster today via Amazon or Barnes & Noble. FYI: the paperback measures 6.5″ square, whereas the hardcover edition is 8″ square.

Will, I Am

by Chris, posted in The Story Behind the Story

Will, the protagonist of The Can’t Monster, is based on me…sort of. Allow me to explain:

The Can’t Monster isn’t a true story, and yet it’s a story that is very real to me. My various attempts to climb mountains, more figurative than literal, have tested my courage, my perseverance, and my resilience. Along the way, I’ve succumbed to fear, frustration, and a sense of powerlessness (futility, for the sake of alliteration) more times than I’d like to admit.

Fear — the fear of failure, in particular — has kept me from trying things that could have been rewarding. Frustration, a near-constant companion, has convinced me to give up on ventures great and small. The recurring thought that I’m too small, too weak, and/or too unimportant to affect meaningful change has prevented me from reaching my potential.

All of these are common, and sometimes justifiable, feelings. However, a resilient person can deal with them and keep them in perspective. When the Can’t Monster is calling the shots, perspective is lost. Even minor obstacles begin to seem insurmountable. Hope wanes, and self-confidence falters.

“If things are bad and can’t get better, then why keep going?”

“Why try, if you’re destined to fail?”

“Why fight, if you know you can’t win?”

I’ve heard this voice too many times. The Can’t Monster wins when “fight or flight” is reduced to just flight. Giving up is not just the best option, the monster says, but the only viable one.

At a critical juncture in The Can’t Monster, Will listens to this voice. Soaked by the rain, fatigued by the climb, and pricked by briars, he decides to turn back. Most of us would, too, if in his shoes.

But when he gets home, he doesn’t want to own up to his own failure. Instead, he relates a fantastical tale of a menacing monster who compelled him to give up his quest. Admitting that we’ve been overcome by adversity, or that we just fell short of the mark, is tough.

This makes Will relatable. It really doesn’t matter if Will truly believed he saw a monster, or whether he just made it up. The important thing is that he blamed the monster for his decision to turn back.

The Can’t Monster provides a convenient excuse for our failure, or for not even trying something in the first place. It takes more than a little maturity to acknowledge that the Can’t Monster is in your head — and mine.

I don’t judge Will for giving up. Rare is the person who has never been overwhelmed by circumstances or deterred by obstacles. For most of us, quitting is a part of life. It just shouldn’t be allowed to define our lives.

Where we can all be inspired by Will is that he didn’t sit in his room and cry. He reflected on what had happened that day. By doing so, he realized that he’d lost his nerve…his will. I’ve been there.

Then, with help from his father, he did something about it. That’s the difficult part, and it’s one of the reasons I was determined to see this project through. We can all benefit from the reminder that the Can’t Monster only wins if it undermines our willingness to try –.and then to try again, and again, and again, if necessary.

Chris

Buy your copy today via Amazon or Barnes & Noble. FYI: the paperback measures 6.5″ square, whereas the hardcover edition is 8″ square.

Who Needs Parents?

by Chris, posted in The Story Behind the Story

Note: This post contains spoilers.

Some of my favorite illustrations in The Can’t Monster show Will and his mother. She sees him off on the day of his adventure. She’s waiting for him on the porch as he slinks home, dejected. She embraces him once he’s safely inside their home. She’s at his bedside when he begins to realize that the monster he saw, “was no monster at all.”

Will’s father is equally important to the story. One of Will’s motives for undertaking his quest is to prove to his father, who is away at the time, that he can do it. When his father returns, he comforts Will by telling him of his own encounters with the Can’t Monster. With his father at his side, Will finds redemption.

Will’s mother and father are absolutely integral to the story. — so much so that it’s quite difficult to imagine the story without them. Yet, somehow, that’s how it was at first.

As initially written, the parents were present only for the interrogation scene that takes place after Will returns from his adventure. They do not show any obvious sympathy for their son. Instead, they pepper him with questions in an attempt to figure out what their son really saw out on that hillside, if anything.

One reason I decided to include the parents as separate, distinct, and sympathetic characters was to help me resolve a nagging question I had about my own story: Did Will just head out on his own, or did he get his parent’s permission? If the latter, then why did his parents agree to let him go?

This is where the military dad comes into play. His absence provides motivation for Will to undertake his quest, but it also explains why his mother allowed him to do it. She “knows the pride he will feel” if only he can tell his absent father about his adventure. This was as far as I got in the second draft.

Then, I realized that, if the father returned, he could help Will work through his emotions by demonstrating empathy. Originally, the lesson of the Can’t Monster was explained by the narrator. Instead, I thought, why not let the father do it?

Finally, in a moment of inspiration, I decided that, if the father really wanted to help his son overcome the Can’t Monster, then they needed to climb the hill. And climb it, they did.

Upon finishing my first draft, I’d thought I’d written a poignant story about a boy who learned to deal with failure. By the final draft, I felt like I had a far more robust and compelling story, due to the addition of the parents. Will still deals with failure, but he has a much better support system in place.

Buy your copy today via Amazon or Barnes & Noble. FYI: the paperback measures 6.5″ square, whereas the hardcover edition is 8″ square.

What’s in a Name?

by Chris, posted in The Story Behind the Story

By the time I’d finished drafting the story that would become The Can’t Monster, it seemed impossible that my protagonist could be named anything other than Will. After all, the word “will” effectively describes the traits the character embodies.

Of the various definitions of “will” provided by Merriam-Webster, these seem most fitting:

Noun:

  1. used to express determination, insistence, persistence, or willfulness;
  2. used to express capability or sufficiency

In fact, near the story’s end, I use the common expression, “where there’s a will, there’s a way” because it tied directly back to the main character’s name. I like the fact that, if someone asks what my book is about, I can say it’s a “story about will,” knowing that is an accurate statement in two respects.

The irony is that I did not the select the name “Will” for this reason. Instead, I chose Will because in rhymes with “hill,” thus completing the first couplet of the story. I could’ve just as easily have selected Bill, Phil, or Jill (among others). The story would’ve followed the same arc if I had, and arrived at the same climax, but it’s almost unthinkable, in hindsight, that Phil would’ve stood atop the hill, triumphant.

I suppose the lesson learned is that sometimes it matters what’s in a name.

Young Will, the protagonist of The Can’t Monster, is seen here wading across a nearby creek early in his adventure. Things only get harder from here.

Order your copy of The Can’t Monster at Amazon.com or at https://olympiapublishers.com/book/the-cant-monster.

Why “The Can’t Monster?”

by Chris, posted in The Story Behind the Story

The Can’t Monster resulted from numerous streams of inspiration stretching across many years. The title of the book, however, was the product of a single moment in May 2016.

I spent several weeks in the spring of 2016 developing a proposal that I believed would improve the efficiency and productivity of my office. I bounced the ideas off a coworker and then shared it with my immediate supervisor, finding him quite receptive. He arranged a meeting to discuss the proposal with our entire team. The day of the meeting had arrived, and I expected the worse.

The night before, I’d mentioned to my fiancée (now wife) that I was dreading the meeting. I’d only been a part of the team for a year and a half, but that was long enough to get a feel for my coworkers and the overall power dynamic within the office. This knowledge led me to expect resistance to my proposal from one, if not more, of my colleagues.

Much to my surprise, the meeting started off quite well. All but one of my teammates were present, and all in attendance seemed amenable to my ideas. Our discussion was both amicable and productive. You could’ve knocked me over with a feather.

About forty-five minutes into the meeting, the one absent member of the team arrived. He stood in the back of the room and peered across the conference table at the large digital display on the far wall. Then he spoke. Within seconds, he’d confirmed why I’d been dreading the meeting since the moment it was scheduled.

Lacking any context for understanding what he was looking at, having missed the preceding forty-five-minute discussion, he emphatically pronounced the plan unworkable. The next ten minutes or so were a blur. The team leader, an Army officer, and a few others mounted a full-throated defense of my handiwork. I was not one of them. I knew that nothing good could come from it. I just wanted to hide under the table.

Once the meeting was over, I returned to my desk. I found an email from my fiancée inquiring about my day and, specifically, how the meeting had gone. I explained that the discussion had been unexpectedly positive, right up to the point that the latecomer arrived. After that, everything went downhill (and fast). I concluded with something very close to the following, “I really like [this coworker], but he’s the Can’t Monster.”

Her reply: “There’s your million-dollar idea.”

We’ll see about that, but she was right that I had a promising book title, and perhaps the beginnings of a book concept. After a few false starts, I finally started making headway almost five years later, in February 2021. Two long years later (and anyone who has ever published a book knows how slow the process can feel), and nearly seven years since the moment of inspiration, I’m proud to announce that The Can’t Monster is now for sale (preorder, that is).

Buy your copy today via Amazon or Barnes & Noble. FYI: the paperback measures 6.5″ square, whereas the hardcover edition is 8″ square.

Almost Heaven

by Chris, posted in The Story Behind the Story

I had a difficult time selecting a header image for this website. I knew that I wanted to feature a mountain scene, since my story is about a young boy who endeavors to climb a mountain. The problem was that I had too many of these photos saved on my laptop to pick from. Here’s why I chose the one you see above.

This particular photo was taken from the driveway of my wife’s childhood home in Corinne Bottom, West Viginia. Her father was fond of sitting behind his house, watching birds and taking in the natural beauty. It’s easy to see why.

These rugged mountains provided inspiration for my first children’s book: The Can’t Monster. While visiting my father-in-law, I’d look out the window and see these steep hills rising in any given direction. I knew that, had I grown up there, I’d have found the urge to climb them irresistible. That impulse gave birth to Will, the main character in The Can’t Monster.

I wrote much of Will’s story from Corinne Bottom in early 2021. By that point in time, my father-in-law was sick. We were there to both visit and take care of him. He lost his battle with cancer that July. In doing so, he traded his quiet slice of “almost heaven” for the real thing. The Can’t Monster is dedicated to his memory.

Chris

Buy your copy today via Amazon or Barnes & Noble. FYI: the paperback measures 6.5″ square, whereas the hardcover edition is 8″ square.