Hey everyone!
Today is a pretty exciting day for Marty and Jess fans! A brand new, never-before-seen chapter with Marty and Jess has been posted in the Wattpad Block Party – Winter Edition book!
To celebrate, I'm reposting my contribution to the Wattpad Block Party – Summer Edition six months ago. If you haven't had a chance to read this yet, enjoy, and then head over to the new chapter which you can find in the external link.
Spoiler Alert: This new chapter takes place later in time, so don't read it unless you've finished The Boy in the Woods and at least the first chapter of The Man Inside the Iron Fence. Otherwise you may be a bit lost.
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When I was trying to write something for my Block Party post, I decided I wanted to do something special for the readers of The Boy in the Woods, so I asked them what they were dying to know, and these were the most common questions I was asked.
Where did you get the idea for The Boy in the Woods?
When I was wrapping up the sequel to my last story, I was trying to think of ideas for a new story, but nothing came to me. Unlike a lot of authors, I don't have a million story ideas swimming in my head. But I had read somewhere that if you didn't know what to write, take a story you love, change all the details, and then write that story. By time you've finished, you'll have created something completely original.
I decided to give it a try and thought back to some of my favorite childhood books. One that immediately came to mind was Mandy, by Julie Andrews, the actress who played Mary Poppins among other roles.
Mandy is a young girl who lives in an orphanage in England where she has a good life and is well cared for, but she misses the things that other children take for granted. Not just having parents, but things like having her own toys and her own room, someplace that belongs only to her. One day, out of curiosity she climbs the stone wall behind the orphanage, and while exploring the estate of the rich man who lives there, she stumbles upon an abandoned cottage and claims it as her own.
Does this sound familiar yet? It should because this was the beginning idea for The Boy in the Woods. I changed the girl into a boy, gave him a family with a not very good home life (which gave him a different motivation for trespassing). The stone wall became an iron fence and the cottage became a cabin.
So now I had a character and a setting, but I needed more to fill out the story. It had to be a love story, because I can't write a story that doesn't have romance. LOL And that meant I needed a girl, a girl who would find the boy. As I thought about her, the pieces fell into place, her losing her parents and being brought to live on the estate (so she wouldn't have met the boy before), and what her new family was like.
Another element my story had to have was mystery. The Harry Potter series has been the biggest influence on my writing, especially because of all the mysteries that are woven throughout the books. I loved how it made me feel when I was trying to figure them all out, and I wanted to create that same experience for my readers.
In The Boy in the Woods, the back story of what happened before Jess was born adds some of the mystery to the story. It causes all sorts of twist and turns that Jess, and the readers never see coming. In fact, the back story was such a good story in itself, I decided to turn it into a standalone prequel
What was your inspiration for the 'boy', Marty?
As I continued to plan out The Boy in the Woods, I worried a lot about writing Marty's character. I wanted him to be a tough kid, because Marty has been through a lot in his short life and would carry a lot of scars. But the biggest problem I faced was that I'd just spent two years writing from the POV of a guy who was the complete opposite of Marty, and that was the first story I'd ever written. I honestly didn't know if I would be able to write a different kind of male character.
However, I did have someone who could help me.
When I was still fairly new to Wattpad, an autobiography about a teenage boy who was in a gang showed up in my recommended stories. I was intrigued enough to click on it, and when I read it, I was blown away. Not only was it well written, which was astonishing considering the author had only just learned how to read and write the year before, but the story he told broke my heart. His gang was made up entirely of orphan kids, found dumpster babies or infants sold for drug money, which was how he'd ended up in the gang.
Their lives were filled with violence and drugs, and very few of them lived past the age of eighteen, but the author had been lucky. His gang house had been raided when he was fifteen and he'd been placed in a gang rehab. Posting his story on Wattpad was part of his therapy.
The thing that struck me the most as I got to know him, in spite of all the terrible things he'd been through, he was incredibly caring, with the biggest heart of anyone I've met. He was also super smart and funny. I'm sure this sounds familiar to a lot of readers of Boy. Over time, we became good friends, and I was able to put a lot of his personality into Marty. I think that's what helped Marty be such a wonderful and rich character that many readers have fallen in love with.
In case you're wondering whatever happened to my friend, he was able to turn his life around thank s to the dedicated staff at the gang rehab. He's in college now and doing really well, just like Marty. Sadly, he had to leave Wattpad, but I'm glad I could honor him and our friendship with such a great story. As I said in the chapter dedication where Marty is introduced, if it wasn't for my friend, there would be no Marty.
Why did you decide to set the story in the 1950's?
In order for the plot to work out the way I wanted, I needed to place it in a more innocent time. In today's world, kids are a lot more knowledgeable and get involved with the opposite sex at a much earlier age. Since family secrets play a big part in the story, it wouldn't be told in the present time and be realistic. People are much more open with each other now and aren't ashamed of things that back then were considered scandalous. Also, it was helpful for me to place the story in a time when women and children didn't have as many rights and protections.
The Boy in the Woods takes place prior to when I was born, but I have a log of memories of what it was like to live with the same technologies that Jess and Marty lived with: land line telephones, record players, television with only a few channels available, no internet. That helped a lot when I was writing, because I could imagine what life was like for Jess and Marty. But I still had to do a fair amount of research to make sure the little details were accurate, things like clothes, slang, food, etc.
How did you choose the cast for your story?
Normally I wouldn't cast a story so readers can imagine whoever they like as the characters. But having specific people 'play' the parts is helpful for me when writing physical descriptions, especially faces.
I had an image of Jess in my mind for a long time, but it's wasn't until a few weeks before I was ready to post the first chapter of Boy that I saw a picture of Mary Badham as Scout in To Kill a Mockingbird. She's exactly how I'd always pictured Jess, small with brown eyes and short brown hair. Mary Badham didn't find many roles as she grew into a teenager, which meant there were very few pictures available, so I switched to Natalie Wood to be able to imagine and write an older Jess.
For Marty, I chose the young actor I'd had a crush on for most of my childhood years watching TV westerns – Johnny Crawford who played Mark McCain in the Rifleman series. A bonus was that he wasn't classically handsome. I've always like my main male characters to have flaws and not be perfect , handsome boys. I think it gives them more depth and keeps them humble.
Jess's cousin, Doug is the opposite of Marty, rich and devastatingly handsome. He's the golden boy in the story, the one who seemingly has everything going for him. Ricky Nelson, who was a major TV star, teen heartthrob, and singer back in the 50's was the perfect choice to play him.
Can you tell us more about Marty's family?
Marty's dad grew up in a home very similar to Marty's, and sadly, he continued the cycle when he had his own family – poverty, abuse, and alcoholism. Marty's mother married him at the age of sixteen, pregnant with Marty's oldest brother, Raymond. Stevie came not long after, and then Marty. Life for her was very hard, especially being married to Marty's dad, but in spite of that she was a caring mother to her boys. She got cancer at a young age and died when Marty was seven.
After she was gone, all the boys struggled with grief. Instead of turning to each other for comfort, they tried to tough it out on their own, which was what was expected of boys back then. Marty had the hardest time of the three because he was the youngest, and he'd been close to his mother. The year he lost his mother, he stopped attending school which caused to have to repeat second grade.
As soon as the oldest brother, Ray was eighteen, he enlisted in the military to escape his dad. He'd always intended to come back to get his brothers when he had a home for them, but their dad refused to let Stevie and Marty go. Neither of the younger brothers knew that Ray had tried to help them. Stevie ran away from home at fourteen after a bad fight with his dad. It was an impulsive decision on his part and he would have returned home the next day, but he disappeared that night. He was picked up while hitchhiking into town and no one ever heard from him again.
Before Marty met Jess, his life was quite lonely. He was ostracized at an early age at school, and is often the case, he was never able to overcome it. While Stevie was still at home, it wasn't as bad because Stevie looked out for him, but after he disappeared, Marty was on his own. He was always the outsider, the kid no one wanted to have anything to do with.
His teachers never expected anything from him, and without any motivation to do well, he gave up on school. Even though he failed his classes each year, he was passed to the next grade by teachers who didn't want to have to deal with him. If he hadn't met Jess, he probably would have left school as soon as he could legally quit.
What is the story about Jess's family, and how did her parents die?
Before she lost her parents, Jess had a very good childhood. She was blessed with loving parents who were determined to raise her differently than they were raised. They moved from their small town where everyone would know her because of the prominence of the family, wanting her to have a normal childhood. And they used the new methods for raising babies that were just starting to become popular, thanks to Dr. Spock.
I know it may seem weird, but it was always firm in my mind that Jess was a child who had never been hit or spanked by her parents. Instead, they showered her with lots of affection, which used to be discouraged back then. That had a big impact on the kind of person she became, and ultimately her ability to deal with everything that happened to her after they died.
Jess's parents were out on a 'date night' when their car was struck head on by a teen boy who'd been drinking. All three of them were killed in the accident, primarily because none of them were wearing seat belts (Always wear a seat belt!). Jess was home with their housekeeper, Cora, who was babysitting her at the time.
She was devastated when she realized her parents were gone, but like many children who suffer a loss like that, she didn't show it in ways we would expect. When Uncle Jonathon arrived and it was clear she was going to have to leave her home and go live with him, she appeared stoic, but on the inside she was in a lot of pain. That's how Jess seems for a lot of the early part of The Boy in the Woods. She's able to smile and have fun, but her grief is always just under the surface.
What did Marty think when he first met Jess?
Marty's first reaction to meeting Jess was fear. He'd just been caught trespassing, and he knew what the consequences would be because of her uncle's terrible reputation. But his fear turned to anger almost immediately, as it does with a lot of us. That's when Marty tries to intimidate Jess, to scare her so she won't tell anyone about him. He also felt despair. He knew he could never return to the cabin now that he'd been see, and the cabin meant everything to him. It was the only place he felt safe from his father and the outside world.
Even though Jess tried to reassure him she wouldn't tell anyone, he didn't trust her at all. And he definitely didn't want to have anything to do with her either. However, Jess was so lonely by that time, she couldn't stay away and kept trying to befriend him. I love how she handles him while he's so prickly in the early chapters, and how all his attempts to get rid of her don't work.
One deliberate choice I made about Jess's character was that she appears to be much younger than her true age when she meets Marty. I decided if she looked like a child, she'd be less threatening, which would help him trust her. If she'd looked like a teenage girl, he would have had a much harder time believing she would keep quiet. Plus the sexual dynamic between them would have been completely different. Once he did trust her, her being older might have been too intimidating for him to be able to get close to her, or it might have rushed their relationship.
Will you write a sequel?
I did consider writing a sequel as I was finishing Boy, but when I began to think about what was going on in the United States in the mid to late 1960's, and what I'd need to do to make it a compelling story, it was clear it wouldn't be a happy one to write. First of all, I don't think you can write a story about a happy couple that's interesting. At least I don't think I'm a good enough writer to pull that off. There has to be some kind of conflict for it to be a gripping read. Usually the conflict comes from the couple being kept apart, which meant I'd have to break up Marty and Jess.
As a storyline came together in my mind, I had the perfect way to do that – Marty would either choose or be drafted into the army to fight in the Vietnam War. When he returns, he suffers from PTSD, which threatens their relationship.
And that's where I stopped.
Call me weak, but I couldn't put either of them through that kind of pain. After everything Marty and Jess have gone through in The Boy in the Woods, I'd much rather imagine them living a happy and healthy life together.
So that's it! I hope you've enjoyed learning more about The Boy in the Woods and my creative process for writing it! Let me know what you think in the comments below!