Behind the Story

The bare bones of The Secret of the Seal came to me quickly one day. I was writing in my journal about being angry, and that feeling morphed into an image of an Inuit boy with a harpoon in his hand, standing over a seal. I forgot my anger and instead sketched out a story of a boy who tries to protect a beloved endangered seal.
......Many threads worked into that story: the physiology of seals, which I had studied in college; my love of spending time outdoors in cold, snowy places; a long-held fantasy of traveling to the Arctic and running sled dogs (as yet unfulfilled), and a general love of nature. I adored reading animal stories as a kid (see my writing bio), so it doesn’t surprise me when animals crop up in my stories.
......Writing about a foreign culture posed some challenges. After I had a finished the first draft, I worried about portraying an Inuit boy who doesn’t kill a seal, when traditionally the Inuit relied on seals for food. Through research and interviews I learned that sometimes, when seals were scarce, Inuit hunters would choose not to kill them, so that they would be more plentiful the next year. I was relieved to know that Kyo’s choice had a precedent.
......I was also relieved when a native Alaskan man read the manuscript, told me it was “a very good story,” corrected an error in one of Kyo’s hunting techniques, and then asked me when I was going to write a sequel in which Kyo kills his first seal. I have not yet accomplished that, but maybe someday I will!