About five years ago Bera arrived out of the blue. It was a pretty low period in my life and I was finding myself unable to do much drawing at the time. It pains me to admit that because I'm pretty proud of how much I draw. But I didn't draw for some time. Not much anyway. So I wrote, at that time I found writing easier. And there was Bera. Bera is a troll that lives in Nova Scotia, a sort of sad and diminished forest spirit. A spirit of drifting snow and spindly branches. She also is shy and has a warm heart. It was Christmas eve and I was in church when the story came to me all at once. I didn't have any paper on me, so I wrote what I could on that little piece of paper you get when you give the Salvation Army your change using that pencil stub that you always find in pews. In a few days I had a one hundred page story done. The first draft anyway. One evening I was writing an essay on Canadian landscape painting and it's symbolism. I was staring out the window watching the snow drift down in a half lit evening through clawed branches at the bottom of a hill when I first realized what she looked like. I could picture her out there. Hunched deeply over, covered in furs and treading heavily but noiselessly between the trees. Maybe humming.Later I wrote another book about her. I don't know if either are good enough to publish. Recently I started a new Bera story. This one has foxes in it and crooked key that looks like the moon. I think this story might turn in to something. It's done as a comic book and i finished a few pages. This is before Henry arrived and before it seemed that Harry and Silvio might get published so I guess I'll have to wait to work on the Bera story. I'll tell you two things about her. she is always accompanied by an owl and children and she talks to the dead.
I'll try and get a few pages of the story up soon.
