Introduction

Welcome, dear reader, to my first and [to me] greatest effort in serious novel-writing, Back to Square One. This story began in its most infantile form circa 1991, and now that it's complete... basically... I feel just a bit let down because it's so vastly different from its original incarnation. Story elements that I had firmly established long ago and held dear to my heart for years became totally unworkable--or, at best, awkward--in the actual process of scripting, and it upset me to realize my original vision was not to be. When I read the resulting novel, it's like looking at a child that has grown up into a self-reliant adult, while fondly remembering what that child was like as a baby. I feel disappointed that certain elements had to be sacrificed for the good of the continuity, but it really couldn't be helped.

That said, I'm still proud of this novel, despite its probable lack of resonance with you, the reader, and I hope you enjoy this voyage into my most personal story ever--the sum of my hopes and fears and my everything for the fifteen years of its incubation. While I may one day write something more universally appealing, this is the one that fascinates me the most, and I will treasure this story the most above all the others.

There are just a few key things you will need to understand before you begin reading. Most important, the story does not take place on Earth as you know it--instead, this is a fantastic alternate world similar to Earth [uncreatively named Terra Firma], with a mathematically-precise 289-day year, 17-day month, 4-day week, and 34-hour day. This seems unusual to us in our decimal [Base-10] standard of counting, but in their heptadecimal [Base-17] standard, it seems bizarrely perfect. For ease of comprehension, however, I've had to use a decimal substitution for approximative numbers ["a thousand years ago" would actually be 4,913 years ago in decimal, but that doesn't read as well], although most numbers presented are the exact decimal equivalent [we would write fifteen in Base-17 as F].

Also, the dominant form of life is an almost-human species of mammal--and to a smaller degree, reptile--largely because I feel more comfortable illustrating animal-people, but to a lesser extent that I feel guilty assigning totally human features to my characters, given what inevitably happens to them. I don't feel comfortable with the notion that I might draw my characters human and then someone who looks just like that will see it and say, "Hey! Why did you draw all these awful things happening to me?"

So, I apologize if this kind of story isn't to your liking, but I did not write the story with mass approval in mind as much as I did to satisfy my own desire to see the story completed for my own benefit... although I find myself increasingly second-guessing what modifications I've made, because why NOT try to make it more approachable to others? Certainly I like it well enough in its mediocrity, but I don't really want to post it if anyone reading it is going to think it stagnant and unchallenging.

Again, though, the story is completely written, merely awaiting illustration. Once these illos are finalized, I plan to self-publish it, but because I am minimally patient with art these days, compared to my capacity for churning out volumes of prose [much of it later heavily edited or thrown out entirely, I note], this will undoubtedly still be a ways off. Until that time, I would gladly field any comments or questions you may have regarding the book, care of sgppresents@yahoo.com.

In the meantime, I am preparing the next book, Sphere of Influence, which will no doubt see publication much sooner. I feel less attached to it, therefore I'm less apt to pick at every little detail trying to get it right or rewriting a portion where I thought of something really good to make it better. Funny how it works like that.

Thank you for reading. Share and enjoy,

--J.

Last update: 10:30, 1 November 2006