Too anxious to wait until March 1, on the evening of February 28, I pulled the trigger on launching the Kickstarter for “Unfinished Stories: The Art of Stephen Groves.”
While most of the action regarding this book will be taking place over at Kickstarter (that’s https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/115465592/unfinished-stories-the-art-of-stephen-groves, if you want to know the exact address), I will nonetheless add the odd tidbit here on the website.
Today, I thought I would post a quick note about my thinking behind the name I chose for Steve’s book: “Unfinished Stories.” (The other part – “The Art of Stephen Groves” -should be self-evident, and if I need to explain that part to you, there are bigger issues afoot).
The “Unfinished Stories” part of the title, too, may seem self-evident. However, I like to think myself clever and choose to explain anyways.
Steve had a lot of story ideas. Perhaps he had the whole story stored somewhere in his head, but as far as I can tell, almost none were completed anywhere that anyone else could experience them. He left us a lot of partial stories.
Porcelain gazed out the window. The sheds and the barn were falling apart, as they had been for ages, and the ground was bare, awaiting the inevitable snow.
It was a rather dreary day that day. It was as though she was staring at a black and white photo of the view she usually took in. The sheer lack of any motion added to it. The animals were all gone, as were most of the trees. Everything had just dried up and drifted away.
That’s what mama said happened to papa. Then everything else just up and followed him as the days and months went on.
Porcelain had been lonely for a long time after that. Mama was getting sicker and sicker, and papa never returned with the doctor like he said. She was scared that mama was going to dry up and drift away, too.
An excerpt from a file entitled “Peaches and Pears,” last edited September 2016
Steve also left us all sorts of characters. Maybe they had a place in a story somewhere, but I suspect they were often characters in search of a story. One such character was Gish. All I know is what he looks like.
“Gish,” created December 2013
Then there were stories that had much more content, but still left unfinished. I am thinking of Steve’s opus “Winds of Balmorgan” on which he worked for at least 15 years, if not much longer.
And story arcs from his comics strips “The Grove” and “The Dumb Guys” that left readers hanging.
I suspect Steve had many more stories in him than any of us realized. And, of the ones we have evidence of, the vast majority are unfinished.
That’s the obvious part. Now for the self-proclaimed clever part (and, really, it’s not that clever)…
Steve’s own story… the story of his life… was cut far too short. A man of many talents, there is no telling what kinds of projects may have flowed out of him in the future. And that is tragic.
Unfinished Stories: The Art of Stephen Groves is now live on Kickstarter. I encourage you all to participate.
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