A Forest of Paperwork

Good morning,

We went to visit freinds of ours this weekend to take our kids to a waterpark. We had a great time, especially because it means downtime for everyone. Especially my friend who works for the WWF and works long hours for little pay (as a European I tend to think Americans are complete slavedrivers towards their employees). I have been meaning to talk with him for a long time, particularly about his experiences in the Amazon rain forest. Of course, because Simon and Sally find themselves there now and I need to represent it to some degree.

This is the challenge of writing the first book. I figured it'll be a lot easier to free up time and money and visit the places that star in our books, but only after the first book gets published and hopefully becomes some type of success. For this first book I am trapped in a lifestyle where at least one of us has to work to make ends meet, so I'm not just free to wander the earth in hopes of getting appropriate material. I have tried to plan an itinerary of sorts for our heroes, which involves mostly places I've visited before, but there are some that I just never have.

The first book will take place mainly in the German Black Forest and the Amazon Rain Forest. The former I've visited during my stint as a drafted sergeant back in '94. We went on an excursion to go see our German brothers in arms and experience the cold, forest country side of winter Germany. But the Amazon rain forest? Yikes. Although I would love to go there, I can't say I ever have. And even though I'll be spending a small week in the Malaysian tropical rain forest in Taman Negara in April, you just can't substitute one forest for the other (although I certainly will translate some of the discomforts of an urban person trying to rough it in the wilderness).

So I basically raided his bookshelves. He had tons of books about the rain forest, deforestation within and the indigenous people who live there. I'll probably use the picture books for now to be able to describe the people (Simon will be interacting with them) and then read up on interesting facts while the draft is being edited by Nancy. For now, I'll stick with what little I can find on Internet and focus on characters and story more so than descriptions and tidbits of 'did-you-knows?'