D. Fierst

Like most authors working to make a breakthrough, there’s that one story or character that refuses to leave your brain and is always whispering, “My story belongs on a bookstore shelf.” That’s Tiger Boat for me. Well, not just Tiger Boat as a character, but the full world that seemed to create itself. It’s almost like it was always there, hiding behind a thin fog.

Tiger Boat is exactly that: a half-tiger, half-sailboat being who is a mature 10 years old. A clever name, I know, but I promise there’s a good reason for it. Same as his counterpart: Captain Goat. Also very cleverly named, being a captain that is a goat. Mind-boggling, I know.

The two work in a very specific way, exploring three main topics:

1. Maturing and personal growth in identity during the middle-grade years.
2. Cultivating a sympathetic world and cultural view via empathy building.
3. Learning the ability to see things through a perspective that is not your own and building a positive, yet critical analytical skill set.

Yup, all that in a big, fun fantasy-adventure.

The first book is complete (and what I am currently pitching to agents), the second book is getting to the halfway point of being finished, and the final and third book is currently sitting as a detailed outline and chapter map. They follow the main settings of sea, land, and air but work as a continuous story-line.

In a nutshell, each book has a main conflict where the livelihood of the inhabitants of the settings are threatened by a distinct force. It’s up to the team to set it right. But, in all cases, things are not as they seem. As the stories unravel, they hint at mysteries that unwind as the characters explore their settings, those they meet, and expand their understanding and views.

For instance, Captain Goat is actually a Princess from the ‘Grasslands,’ first disguised as a captain to run away. Through her journey, she later grows into the role of captain, leader, and ultimately herself, Lucille Goat.

Another example is in book one. The main ‘bad guy’ is a bat posing as the Pirate King and steals the colors from the Seven Seas. He was also the force behind Captain Goat running away and steals her well-intentioned invention, turning it into something devious. However, as the books progress, we learn he is not alone, as there is a full community of bats, and furthermore in book three, the bats were actually acting out of a revenge plot to rise up against their suppressors: the Tiger Boats of the Skyways. Our main heroes learn to adjust their perspectives based on their expanded understanding and change their course of actions.

So, why write these stories? Why me? Honestly, I can’t fully answer that because, in many ways, they feel like they were pre-made, and I only needed to carefully snatch them from the air.

The start was common enough. When my son was younger, I started reading him books, and having studied art (be it ages ago), I naturally thought, ‘I can do this.’ And that little lightning strike came, and somehow Tiger Boat came into my mind. I started making sketches and writing picture books about Tiger Boat on the seas. Once Captain Goat came into the mix, the more adventure-driven aspects came into view, and I started playing with the idea of a continuous picture book series where each book was an episode of the adventure on a different color sea.

I worked and worked and worked on that idea for years. I was in critique groups, went to book conventions, but somehow it wasn’t clicking. It wasn’t until my son got old enough that we moved onto chapter then middle-grade books that it clicked. This story was too big and mature to fit the format of picture books. Once I “admitted” that, it was a surprisingly easy step to take the picture book series and smoosh them together into one book. From that point, it was clear this was working much better and allowed for that age group to explore more themes in more detail, and the story and character possibilities exploded.

As for myself, well, there are three personal reasons I am writing these stories:

The first being as an American expat, I’ve been outside of my original culture for a long time and have gained what I feel is an outsider’s view on it. In the same respect, for as long as I have lived in Germany, I will never be fully ‘integrated’ and stay in a kind of strange limbo between the two, not fully belonging to either. In writing about characters who leave their home and need to navigate new settings, finding they partially agree with and disagree with their discoveries, it is a way for me to navigate the same topics. It’s almost like drawing my experiences in a graph to study them and pull out some analytics from doing so.

Secondly, being a parent, I try to teach my son about things in as honest a way as possible and try not to make any topic taboo. Even if I feel something is too “mature” for him, I try to explain in a way why it is (but, Papa, why can’t I watch the horror movies you like? If they are not good, why do you watch them?). In a lot of media, especially for kids, I feel (critically speaking) they are treated and presented stories, characters, and themes in a way that does not give them enough credit. I do think and am trying to present more mature themes and ideas within the context of a fantastical world via adventure. My best guiding example is the first time I read through the Harry Potter books (I was already in my 20s) and there is a point that in the context of the story, it was very easy to understand how the media of that world was being manipulated to say Voldemort was not back, even though we as the readers knew it was true. I thought then, and think now, how very clever to explain such a complicated yet important topic to kids in a context that they can clearly understand and later relate that understanding to the real world.

Finally, the third reason. It’s a product that I am making and trying to sell. I won’t split hairs here (all creative and artistic blah-blah-blah’s aside), I am making a product and want to sell it to be able to make more of that product to sell more of it. Sounds a little cut-throat, but I would not pursue the writing, illustration, research, pitching, social media, etc., if I didn’t think strongly this could be a catapult into being able to make a living (even if partially) off things I create and control. It wasn’t my first intent, but as time went on and I gave more and more time and energy, I had to make a choice of its worth and concluded to go for it. All in (or as much as I can muster between and around everything else).

There you have it. What is a Tiger Boat? For me, it’s an awful lot of things, but mainly a vehicle to represent and achieve many goals for both myself and potential readers… he’s also incredibly cute. Did I mention that? I mean, what’s cuter than a big, bushy cat on a high-seas adventure with a spunky partner? I mean, jeez.