I thought it would be a fun exercise to share with my readers just what went into the making of my new novelette that I self-published on Amazon: "Ginger & Klaus: A Christmas Adventure." This brief article will detail how the story came together as well as other storylines or ideas I explored when coming up with the plot. Needless to say there are significant spoilers ahead!
To make this even more fun, let's do this in bullet points instead of prose. I'll begin with some questions I have either asked myself or wondered if readers pondered:
- Why a gingerbread woman and a mouse of all the possible combinations?
- This actually came down to a matter of practicality. The illustrator of the book, Jessica Hines, happens to work with me in a financial office, and we began discussing the idea of doing a story together in September of 2023. The first question that came to me was, "What sorts of characters would kind of align with Jes's experience and interests?" She had been successful in publishing a couple of coloring books about beansprouts, and her characters were very cute. So I knew that in the story we would be working on together, the characters needed to be cute, drawable characters. I wanted the story to be ready by Christmas, and a gingerbread cookie was fitting for the season. The idea of the cookie befriending a mouse came to me a moment later. Don't ask me why!
- Why were Ginger and Molasses brother and sister rather than husband and wife? After all, aren't they supposed to evoke the image of "Adam and Eve"?
- I did consider making them husband and wife, but because Eve is no more the "villain" than Adam in history, it would not have made sense for Molasses to be Ginger's husband. (And remember, Molasses is Ginger's main villain in the story.) I do not believe it would have felt "true" if Ginger were meant to represent Eve seeking to stop her wayward husband, Adam. As I wrote the story, I only saw similarities of Ginger and Molasses to Adam and Eve insofar as they were the first of Mr. Theo's creations to have the "breath of life" and in that they succumbed to the temptation of the evil one.
- Why didn't Ginger have a sister instead of a brother, or why weren't their roles reversed?
- This was an easy one for me. In the novel that I am still working to get published, "The Hero of Farlenas: A House Divided," the elder brother is pitted against the younger brother. The elder brother has more of the moral compass and the younger is wayward. I didn't want the first "Ginger & Klaus" story to be "The Hero of Farlenas" with a new sisterly coating of paint. Having two sisters would be a very similar story to my novel with two brothers. And I knew it would be worthwhile for the lead character to have a female perspective on things, since "The Hero of Farlenas" is told solely from male perspectives.
- How did the characters get their names?
- "Ginger" is a female name and seemed an obvious choice for a gingerbread woman, and "Klaus" rhymes with "mouse." When I told Jes that I was considering giving Ginger a brother and wasn't sure what his name would be, she said, "It would be funny if his name was Molasses! Because you use molasses when you make gingerbread cookies." I chose "Mr. Theo" because "theos" is "God" in Greek, and I chose "Tanas" as an anagram for "Satan." "Horace," "Ingrid," and "Arthur" got their names simply because I wanted the mice to feel as though they were of an older and more respectful or honorable generation.
Let's continue with some fun facts about the story:
- Originally, there was no plan for a battle to take place in chapter four. My most basic outline for the story was that Ginger would look for her brother, find a mouse companion to help her in the search, and that she would find and confront Molasses. There were two main reasons this changed. Firstly, I am very sensitive to pacing and character development, and I felt that there would not be enough time to develop Klaus's character or his friendship with Ginger if I skipped straight from their meeting to the confrontation with Molasses. Secondly, and this again is a practical reason: the chart on Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing site showed a printing discount for a longer book. Since I am prone to writing longer stories, anyway, that gave me the excuse I needed to lengthen it.
- The scene with the reindeer cookie and the letter came to me quite suddenly. I knew that there needed to be a fourth chapter before the confrontation with Molasses, and I was beginning to think that "Ginger & Klaus" would be a series rather than a standalone title. Also, I wanted to paint a picture of the fact that within every human being is sin, and having more cookies in the story with the "wicked rosemary scent" helped me paint that picture.
- I flirted with the idea that maybe Ginger would fail in her task of convincing Molasses to turn from his evil ways. However, this was quickly abandoned for two reasons, and both had to do with J.R.R. Tolkien. Firstly, I didn't want the end of Ginger's discussion with Molasses to conclude with a "the ring is mine" moment. I envisioned Molasses taking his arm out of his satchel and casting the poisonous powder on the cookies, and I felt it would have been too similar to Frodo's claiming of the ring. Secondly, J.R.R. was a firm believer in the "eucatastrophe," which was his word, to put it all too briefly, for a happy ending. The goal of the story was to rescue Molasses and stop him from committing his evil deeds. To have Ginger fail at that would have given the story an unhappy ending. I also thought that kids might be drawn to this story, and I wanted to show them that good will win in the end, and that change is possible--but only through God.
- Finally, and perhaps most hilariously, I seriously considered having Klaus fight Molasses in the final chapter. I thought that Molasses, upon finding that Ginger had survived the battle outside the house, would go berserk, and that Klaus would dash forward and tackle Molasses. The reason I did not go with this was that chapter four already had physical action, and now it was time for the dialogue to be the action. Molasses would not be won over by violence, but by hearing about his sinful condition and his need to be changed by Mr. Theo. Furthermore, the idea of having Molasses be an ally rather than an enemy in future stories opened up the door to so many more possibilities.
