AUGUST UPDATE
Hello all! It’s Norm here. Meaghan typically captains our online presence, but I thought I might take the helm of the newsletter today to tell you a bit about the secret origins of The Iron Barge.
So, Las Vegas is a city famous as a den of sin. Crime and gambling and drugs and sex. There's a reason why the city's official tourism motto was “What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.” So, of course, I got the bright idea to set an animated adventure story for kids there.
And it was a great idea. I just couldn't convince anyone else it was.
The pitch was that our hero, Presto the rabbit, belonged to an aging magician with an old-fashioned act. Sawing a lady in half, doves, handkerchiefs, all the old standbys. Which, of course, included the rabbit out of the hat. Presto loved the magician and the other animals that were part of the act. They were a family. But Vegas didn't love the magician. And his show just wasn't pulling people in at his theater in a big casino on the strip like it did once upon a time.
So the magician was getting transferred to a casino downtown, where the theaters are smaller and the money isn't as big, either. Of course, in the move, Presto becomes separated from the magician and has to try and make it across the city on his own. Not only is this a giant trek for a tiny bunny, but the variety of things he could encounter between the two locales is enormous.
Not just the casino attractions – roller coasters, fountains, gaming floors, other shows – but even the other kinds of animals he could run into. He was just as likely to turn a corner and encounter a lion or a tiger in one of the casinos as he was to encounter a city rat or rich lady's pampered dog.
So that was the story. And I loved it. But the gatekeepers continuously worried about the setting. I felt like the chaos of a bunny and his traveling companions falling from overhead onto a poker table, disrupting the game, and getting chased across a casino is full of action and comedy potential. But what are parents going to tell their kids about why those people who were playing cards are so mad at the bunny?
So I worked and worked, revised, adjusted, cheated where I could. For months and months, I tried to craft a story that made ample use of Las Vegas and its themed playgrounds as a setting, but which did its best not to address why these themed playgrounds exist in the first place.
To no avail.
And then one day, as I was trying to crack the problem, I had the simple thought, “The problem is what the people are doing...so what if there were no people?”
And the lightbulb went off. The world of the Meadows came together in an afternoon. A post-apocalyptic Las Vegas, devoid of people, where the animals who were left behind are doing their best to survive in an empty city unlike anywhere else in the world.
The Iron Barge is still a story of a small animal questing across the city, but practically everything else would change. It had to. It was something else entirely now. Something darker. Something with more substance. And all because, ironically, I wanted to tell a kids' story set in Las Vegas.
And what's even more ironic, I don't even particularly like Vegas that much.
Writing is weird.
Anyway, stay tuned here for more updates on Book 2’s production (it’s gonna be so good, y’all!) and more hidden secrets of The Iron Barge!
