How I happened to write Shadow Walkers

When I was ten, I told my father that I wanted to write a really good Hardy Boys story, and he said, as any parent would, "Why not write something of your own?" The normal reaction to this well meant advice was to write nothing for the next 40 years except school papers, sermons, computer instruction manuals, and articles for library journals.

I daydreamed through high school in the easy going 'fifties, but I still thought I could write if I'd wanted to. However, as a sophomore at Rutgers, I had Paul Fussell for English. The future Professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania, author of scholarly studies, and of popular works such as the Dumbing of America, soon disabused me. What I've learned of writing since, I learned by composing those guides and manuals for a boss who demanded clarity.

My father and I discovered J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings in 1954. I read it several times, most recently to my son when he was six. What I particularly enjoyed in the Rings was the down to middle earth hobbits, fond of comforts, food, and gossip, and armed against monstrous evil with humor, kindness, and good sense.

When I knew I couldn't read the Rings again for a few years and found nothing else quite like it, I decided to try some writing in homage to Tolkien and his wizardry. The rats may have stemmed from a Scientific American article which presented them as a highly intelligent and cooperative species, or from seeing rats at the Glouscester, Massachusetts waterfront at dusk. ("Hey, look at all the really big cats...") Wherever they came from, they became my hobbits, characters who didn't need to be drawn in the confusing detail that humans require, but who could embody generosity and humor, intellectual curiosity and respect for the natural world.

I filled two spiral bound notebooks with the rats while riding on the Chestnut Hill Local in the mid-1980's. Then I bought a word processor. After I read the first chapter of the Waterrats to my son, he demanded that I read to him from the computer screen every evening what I had written that morning from 5 to 6 am. The story begins on Cape Cod and moves to an alternate world, with a topography and population to suit my fancy.

When the Waterrats was finished, there seemed to be no reason not to try to sell it. I had sent a letter and sample chaapters to fifteen publishers when Scribners Books for Young Readers asked to see the full manuscript. Scribner's said, encouragingly, that I had created "an engrossing imaginary world" with the Waterrats, but that a 700 page rat epic was too long for them to publish. They might, however, be interested in something of around 200 pages.

I wrote Shadow Walkers over the next four months. The action takes place a few years before that of the Waterrats and is a less fantastic tale of small adventures on the rats' native Cape. I think of it as my Hobbit.