The Forkin' Odyssey: Book One (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781482719727)

There are stories behind most things in life and here is the story of how my Little Forkers came to be. I did not set out one day with the thought that I wanted to create a webcomic. My Little Forkers webcomic just happened. I worked as a nurse for 12 years. In 2008 I had a minor traffic accident that gave me some time off from work to recuperate from a mild TBI, basically a nasty concussion. I developed communication difficulties, memory problems, recurrent migraines, among other symptoms. They call this Post Concussional Disorder and it would not have been such a big deal, had it not been my third concussion and, as it turns out, concussions can be cumulative. While I was waiting to go back to work, I told my friends that I was going "fork in nuts" sitting at home and, for some reason, I stuck a fork in a bowl of nuts and left it sitting on the counter. When my doctor told me that I could not return to my job as a nurse before my sick leave would run out and may never be able to return, I got "forkin' mad" and bent that fork in the jar of nuts. I felt better taking out my anger on that silly little fork, so I bent some more and, for some reason, I decided to make curtains for my kitchen with the forks hanging down. As I walked past the curtains one day, I decided that one of the forks looked like a person (a stripper). So, I decided to add arms to one of the forks, painted it and just kept bending, adding arms and painting forks. At this point, my kids figured that I was going completely "fokin' nuts." One day, the girls came home to find me sitting at a table with about 20 or 30 forks bent and painted on the kitchen table. So, what do you do with a bunch of painted forks? You dress them up of course. The next thing I know, I had a bunch of little characters. What do you do with those? You take pictures of them and turn them into greeting cards. One day, someone told me that my greeting cards looked like a comic book and, the next thing you know, the Forkin' Odyssey began. What have I learned from this experience? It is to look for the gift in anything.