Jason Deeds

Wow our Sixth installment of Behind the Words! Today we talk about “The Boy Between Worlds,” which turned out to be my first Gloaming Gap story.

Where did the idea come from?

I had originally started working on The Boy Between Worlds before I had ever even talked to Jeff about Gloaming Gap. Originally the story was going to be about a boy who suffered from Sleep Paraylsis. As someone who suffers from it personally I had wanted to write a piece that explains the tramia of Sleep Paraylsis on tween aged children.

Obviously that’s not where the story went. Once I started putting words to the page I knew it wasn’t going to follow the intended path. I had written about three paragraphs before I meet Jeff and was introduced to the world of Gloaming Gap.

When Jeff told me about this weird little town I feel in love with the idea of writing for it. That was when the idea of Timmy’s story exploded in my head like a deepth charge searching for a Nazi sumbermine.

About half way through writing the story I knew it was going to be two stories told from Timmy and Chance’s perspectives. 2400 words later I had a the first vampire story.

2400 words? that’s not flash fiction!?

Yeah this was also my first introduction to massive editing. Jeff sent me  very polite email explaining that Gloaming Gap stories were generally always flash fiction near 1500 words. OH CRAP. I spent the next two nights cutting as much as I could from the story. Taking out nearly 700+ words. Jeff was gracious enough to roll with the story even though the length was still far longer then most stories on the site.

Timmy, Tamra, and Paul where did the characters come?

There is a little secret here. When I started fleshing out the friendship between these three I drew from my High School days with my best friends, Jason Paul Kurinko, and Kirsten Tamara Deeds (Malkowski) Timmy was the name of one of my invisable friends when I was a little kid.

To this day “Boy Between Worlds” is one of my favorite stories I’ve written. I think there is so much more to this story that I may have to work on someday…

On our fifth installment of “Behind the Words.” We are going to talk about the Gloaming Gap story “One Stake or Two.”

Where did the idea come from?

While writing “A Boy Between Worlds” I realized that these two brothers were so connected that I had to tell Chance’s side of events. In my mind Chance and Timmy are two sides of the human experience in Gloaming Gap. Timmy believes everything is supernatural, and Chance believes or did believe that it was all explainable with rational thought.

So I came up with this idea of telling story that started with Timmy, but allowed him to have interaction with Chance and create a starting point for the second story.

The whole point was to create an interweaving story of two brothers that would show one world from two very different perspectives.

Why is Chance such a goofball?

I think chance’s constant acting like a goofball is just that, an act. I think he has some idea of what is really going on in Gloaming Gap, but it’s like with wild animals if you show fear they kill you. Chance plays dumb so he’s not a threat to anyone in Gloaming Gap. Maybe he’s done it so long, that the act has become part of him. You can only wear a mask for so long before you forget what you look like under it.

Did you know ahead of time if Chance would kill his Timmy?

I wanted Chance to have to make that decision that none of us want to ever have to make. Sorta like if you were in the Zombie Apocalypse could you kill a loved one you knew was infected.

When I finished the story after the first draft in my mind Chance had killed Timmy. After talking with, my wife, Kirsten and fending off her anger for killing off yet another character I decided to leave it up to the reader really, until we decided to use Timmy in later stories.

What’s up with Chance and Bella? 

For that I’m going to say, just wait and see. This Friday 04/06/2012 read Nean Burkholder’s Story and see what is written in the stars for Chance and Bella.