Beginnings blogfest

It's January 9th and therefore time for L.G. Keltner's Beginnings blogfest - for me, the first blogfest of the year! The idea behind this blogfest is to write about some sort of beginning in your life. It doesn't have to be about you, but the way I see it, it should be something meaningful to you. For a better idea of L.G.'s concept, check out her post over at Writing Off the Edge.

As for my beginning? Well, I really do love the story of how my SQUEAKY story got started, so here it is:

It was 2007, and I was at work, wrestling with the library management system. After yet another thing went wrong, I made a litte squeaking sound - the faint chitter of impassioned consternation, I assure you. At that very moment, my colleague turned to me with raised brows and spoke these fateful words:

"What are ya, a mouse?" 

My immediate response: "Yeah, I was a mouse in a former life. And my name was Squeaky McLean." 

And so mouse detective Squeaky McLean was born. And he was just the beginning of a wacko crazy ride (which is still far from over). With the invaluable assistance of my colleague, I began to jot down silly little Squeaky plot points, mostly ludicrous names for characters we didn't even know, and lines they might utter in plotlines that didn't yet exist. We had a lot of notes even before we had a first sentence.

But then things got serious, 'cause NaNoWriMo 2007 was rolling around. It seemed only natural that I should attempt to write Squeaky during that month of madness and mayhem. And that's exactly what I did. The result was a complete Book 1.

Fast forward to November 2008, and the Squeaky universe was still alive and very well in my heart. On November 1st I kicked off book 2, and by November's end I had hit 50k once again. I haven't finished book 2, but I will, and someday soon. Because even now, 6 years later, I still love the Squeaky-verse. To absolute furry little bits.

Thank you for reading my "Beginnings" story. I can't wait to read all of yours as well!

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On another topic, I got a couple of comments relating to my blog's current background image, and I wanted to show you exactly where it came from:

I took this photo on the walk back to my car from work one day, and I used bits of it (flipped, cropped and mirrored) to form the background image. Unfortunately this kind of thing takes me way longer than it should, because I rely on Paintbrush to get things done. Still, it does the trick in the end.