The impetus for Duck Boy started many years ago when I was in middle school. I found middle school years were the toughest I’d ever known. A lot of the difficulties I had during those years I carried around for a long time. Then, I discovered writing. Writing’s kind of like the story of the miller’s daughter in Rumplestiltskin. She was forced to spin gold from straw. Writing is like her spinning. With a little work, I can take bad experiences (straw) and spin them into stories (gold). Duck Boy, in this sense, is my attempt to spin gold from straw. Which is a kind of alchemy, and alchemy is critical to Duck Boy, too.

Over the next little while, I’m hoping to blog about the experience of writing the story, and how it finally became a book, including the wonderful process of working with Bitingduck Press. Where else would a story involving a mallard be published?