FICTION: JUVENILEWORKS

THE BAROON SAGA
BY J. ROBINSON WHEELER

IN ONE OF THOSE bursts of creativeenergy that promises more than it delivers, in the late summer of 1987 Isat down to start writing a story. I improvised the beginning, writing somethingjust to see what would come out.

The next day, I started over again, using the same basicideas, but fleshing out more of the history of the world I had created,and ended with a "cliffhanger," challenging myself to continuewriting it serially. The very next day I sat down and wrote Part 2. Thethird day I wrote Part 3. I was posting each one as I finished it to a localbulletin board, and so there was an audience watching it unfold.I managed to sustain it for five days, when I decided (alas)to take a break for at least a day. This explains the absence of a "Tobe continued" tag on Part 5. I did write a Part 6 two days later, buttook the next day after that off again. As always happens when one interruptsa flow like this, one more day off became a week, a month, and... oh well,a decade.

The style is recognizably Douglas Adams in the first segment.At this time, virtually everything I wrote with the intention of being funnyor satirical was done using some other author's voice. However, the ideasare all my own, and some of them are genuinely entertaining.