It took me a lot of years to finally decided to write a story about me and my grade school teacher and my friends and the adventures we had as kids in that small town somewhere in the wide open farms and fields.
Around 2011 a decided to finally write something about the Emperor of Mars and slowly I began to use a lot of things in my mind on those years way back around 1961. And now I could use the Martian around this year, even though it was five years ago.
So I started simply with the Martian voice from the radio when a kid much like me listened to the radio. He was Matthew for my purposes. And then I built around his home and mother. I also decided that his father died in the war. I wanted the boy to have only a father even though I had one.
Then I took apart the town piece by piece. I used characters that I knew around me, good, bad, unknown and especially the teacher. She was here at our school for her first job.
So you can see how I build things, stuff that connects to other people. Everyone in town would be either nice or not nice. There was a bully and not nice. And so far you can begin to see what I'm building.
Each of the characters were really built on most of them, so it wasn't so hard, I just had to build more of them. They had to be real. Meaning that you try to really make them from yourself from what you find and then imagine more things from the people you start to create.
It sounds hard but not really that much if you go deep into what your friends are like. And there's also a character I created, an older man who works in a grain elevator. This was something that would figure into the story.
So you can see how to develop stuff and how to create characters. One of the boy's characters is an overweight boy. Everyone had an overweight kid in school. Bullies are easy to create and to change sometimes.
Then - the Martian speaks on the radio. We never really see the Martian because nothing really happened. But this is what begins to happen in terms of the rest of the story. I had to take Matthew to adventure somehow create action.
I remembered another old town that people used to say disappeared on the mountain about five miles away and nobody knows what happened. This really happened for me, so I created a martian thing. Then I put in some more mystery. The town people disappeared and nobody ever saw them again.
Once again, I used something around me.
Then there were sparks flash around the big grain elevator. The boy saw that and knew the Martian was coming there. The older people laughed of course. And I needed a bully who would scare Matthew and his friend. And I still have the school teacher.
I gave her a background, she came from a town a hundred miles way. That made her maybe a little bit mysterious too. But I needed more mystery.
So the old man comes into the story when both Matthew and he both see sparks in the field and that connects them. A lot of these things are stolen from the movies I saw. But every writer steals.
Then there's the older people in town argue about a martian coming to the town. This causes a lot of anger between old and young.
Now I was coming to the end and I didn't have an end. I didn't have an idea for it at all. I had to work around some things so that there was something impressive.
A Martian lands?
Then, one of my writer friends said "a fire". I had grain elevators. Huge elevators.
What me meant, a fire happens. Still now sure though. But finally I had an idea. Yes. A fire in the grain elevators and that could seriously make a spectacular image. Remember the old guy and Matthew both saw.
I was trapped for a week and finally find something about the grain elevator that has a mystery to it.
Finally everyone has come to the grain elevators to see or to laugh at what Matthew and the old man made a circle where the alien will appear. But nothing appears. People laugh and joke and start to walk away...
Then, something did come down. Just not real.
The bully. Most of them didn't think anything of a balloon.
Yes, the bully in a big balloon
Then I added something else. The balloon exploded and the bully was trapped way up on the grain elevator but nobody can go up to save him. Except the old man runs into the elevator inside and Matthew both enter.
The townspeople are shouting and scared for both three people in the elevator. But inside the old man saves the bully and grabs Matthew also as he brings them down in an elevator but fire is around them.
Then, something really happens. The old man takes the two kids in his arms through the fire and save them. Matthew looks at the old man who smiles as he reaches safety on the ground about fifty feet.
Then the old man dissolves to the boys, impossible. But he's gone.
The story slowly dissolves until the elevator is mostly burned. Matthew appears to see where he and the bully saw the old man. Then his teacher appears, tells him that nobody knows where the old man was. He wasn't anywhere around. Teacher leaves him.
Lastly, Matthew looks around up where Mars twinkles. And Matthew says something like.
"Maybe I'll see you again".
