Okay, fortune cookie.  I did.

Here’s an elevator pitch for The Tiny Giant, the novel I’ve been working on for nearly three years.

The Tiny Giant follows the adventures of a very small giant and a suburban boy with a big imagination, brought together to explore a hidden landscape of magical beasts and threats in a struggle to right a centuries old injustice.

Boiling the 70,000 word novel down into 40 words is an exercise in beating one sentence to death, but I’m getting close.  The Tiny Giant is a suburban fantasy, a novel set in familiar surroundings for many of us.  The lush green Pacific Northwest provides a beautiful, albeit damp, backdrop.  Imagine waking up one morning to find that you’ve been brought into a world you never knew existed, just because you planted a seed on a whim?

Dan, one of our two protagonists, is a 12-year-old boy with a fairly normal life until he meets Zeeble, the 18″ tall giant in his garden.  Everything goes a bit sideways from there.  The woods behind Dan’s house are not what they seem, and a world Dan never suspected brings him new wonders and dangerous enemies.  Exploring themes of loyalty, justice, and making up for the mistakes of the past, Zeeble must overcome centuries of inaction to do the only right thing.

As for me, I’m preparing the cover letter and other materials to submit to agents and publishers.  I’m working out what the second novel for these characters looks like, and I’m excited to start writing it.  The working title is The Unnatural Giant, and after writing about 150,000 words in total to get the first book ready for its close-up, I suspect I’ll be a little better at it this time.

I’ve had that fortune from a long-forgotten restaurant for about 10 years.  I’ve spent three years working and reworking The Tiny Giant.  I have never been more nervous about being a novelist than I am right this minute, on the verge of rejection or acceptance.  And we step off the high dive and …. see what happens.

How could anyone not write a novel set in these woods?