The Christopher Tyson Adventures are a series of science fiction books for children (10-12 years+), based around the adventures of a young boy and his friends, as they discover a hidden underground base, a secret destiny, and fly to different worlds full of excitement and danger in order to save Earth and the galaxy.
So how did it begin? A few years ago, I took the somewhat drastic decision to cease work on the novel I was writing. I had been been working on it for so many years, that I realised it had become a millstone. It was no longer my ‘big chance’ and had become an unwieldy barrier to progress. I felt like I was getting nowhere.
I do intend to come back to it one day. It’s over one hundred thousand words of thoughts, dreams and ideas that I have no intention of ditching. However, it needed to be put on indefinite hold. My greatest fear was that, having not completed that novel, I might do the same with the next.
It’s all too easy to start something fresh when you have a great idea, but it is often to the detriment of your half-finished work. ‘Should I do it?’ I asked myself. My lack of major progress in the past few years made the answer simple but no less daunting. How do you put away such a large amount of work to start on something else from scratch?
As some of you reading this will know, my mother passed away in 2011. At her funeral I reacquainted myself with an old friend. When I was about eleven or twelve my family moved to Scotland, but my friend and I maintained contact on the phone and through letters (No email back then!). In amongst those letters, we drew and wrote stories of our ‘alternate’ reality. We intermingled our real lives with a science fiction world of adventure in which we were the heroes.
Having been reminded of those stories, it all fell into place in my mind. My mother used to encourage me in the writing of those tales. Some became primitive comics, others I wrote by hand with occasional illustrations. It seemed fitting that my literary ‘fresh start’ should be a children’s adventure story using the core of those dreams and fantasies that she encouraged. My hope is that, since it clearly appealed to me at that age, it will appeal to modern children as well.
Once the decision was made, the rough structure flowed out into my notebook in a mass of scribbling over two days. A plan for six novels in a series, a chapter-by-chapter breakdown of the first book, characters and creatures….
Since then, I have been writing (and painting) like mad. My characters have grown, taken on lives of their own and frequently dictate their own paths regardless of my opinion. The story is there, the first adventure is now complete and I am only the last chapter away from completing my final round of edits. I’m also working on concept art to go in an accompanying book, whilst book two is already into its fifth chapter.
What does the future hold for ‘Christopher Tyson’ and his companions? Well, of course I know what happens to them… The real question is will children enjoy reading the adventures as much as I enjoy writing them? Only time will tell…
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I have decided that it’s about time I started a new blog. “Oh gawd…” I hear you say. “Every one and his dog has one of those! And this is disturbingly similar to the home page…”