Pandora 2013: Hullabaloo (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781491240496)

Growing up in New York, I learned storytelling from my father. I was a shy child, marvelling at dad's willingness to regale individuals and even groups with tall tales. When asked a five-cent question, he usually provided a five-dollar answer. I soaked up his gestures and intonations, marking them down in my thoughts with permanent ink. As quiet as I appeared, I have my father's blood. There was no way out of my fate. Becoming a storyteller was going to happen to me. My quest for inspiration sent me in search of a compelling topic. I had the grandiose dream of a book series, but needed a stroke of good luck. It had to be something that couldn't be colored with a single crayon. Say what you will about the South, but no one ever moved North to retire. My parents settled into a new home in Little River, South Carolina. During a prolonged stay, I went to sleep considering what I've always thought about the area. God must really have a crush on the Carolinas, decorating it with snowy egrets and gardens of live oaks. Yet the antebellum South has a legacy of human bondage. I've never felt safe wandering around after hours, fearing the ghosts of retribution would grow from shadows of Spanish moss. When I wrote the first chapters of Pandora, I began to understand the Box as a place to acknowledge the truth of a person, good or bad, and to let the core of the character find its own reward-or tomb. I bit the cuticles off my right hand as I read those nascent scribbling to my father. I fueled up my courage, and was relieved when he nodded in approval. I like to think he was taken with the writing, but it was more likely the sense of justice the stories tried to reflect, the moral sensibility that mirrored the material I heard my dad communicate during my childhood.