EXPLORE BELOW HOW THE BOOK CAME TO BE
ThE E-FUZZY began life as a story that I wrote as a youth leader at a children’s summer camp back in the 1980s. However, it wasn’t until 2007 that I finally plucked up courage to write to Claude Steiner to ask him if he would like to collaborate on a sequel. This is what he kindly wrote back:
Dear Marc:
I am working on two other tales: One on lying and the other on power abuse but I have not thought of writing a sequel to the WFT. You are free to publish the one you wrote (good concept I feel) providing that you give credit for its source.
Good luck with your project and keep me informed.
Fuzzies
Claude Steiner
I did send him a couple of drafts, which I sincerely hope he enjoyed, but I never got to send him the final version, as unfortunately he passed away on 10th January 2017. His final words were “love is the answer” and then “I am so lucky”. A very special man indeed.
When I first drafted the story, I called it the Electronic Fuzzy, and the one I had in mind was very much the TV. However, over time things have moved on and Digital, Virtual or E-FUZZIES come in all shapes and sizes. PCs, laptops, game consoles, tablets, smart-phones, virtual reality headsets, wearable ‘tech’ and portable digital devices of all kinds. You name it, it will be on a screen. Now, as the book says, the E-FUZZIES aren’t in themselves bad but some of the behaviours that they create can be. What is needed is a more balanced approach ... a golden mean so to speak. A way where technology does enhance our lives without taking away the beauty of human companionship and the simple physical pleasure of friends playing in the park - not to mention the healthy exercise that promotes too - and just helping other people. Constant exposure to screens is certainly changing the way we all think and see the world, but not necessarily always for the better.
First of all I sketched out some of the page layouts roughly. I had scoured for source photos and, at the time I was intending to make the final illustrations mixing watercolour and computer graphics for the E-FUZZY, as I liked the idea of the juxtaposition.
I went through a few iterations of some of the layouts for particular pages, as I just wasn’t happy with them. Some pages stayed the same from original concept through to the final work, such as the poor WARM FUZZY under the horrible laser (right). Some changed radically. Then I drew the layout in pencil on nice watercolour paper ready to paint and ink. The water colour illustrations were nice. Some worked well and some didn’t.
Over the years I became unhappy with the results and I didn’t like the style anymore. As a result for several years
I had 7 illustrations left to do.
Always 7.
Did I mention there were 7.
So eventually I grasped the nettle and started again so they would all be in the same style. I also decided to move to a bolder outline for the sketches using a brush pen and then to fill with five gradations of grayscale tone.
It fit better with the slightly longer story the original tale had now become and was similar to an approach I had recently used successfully for my book the
Dot on the Ot (in honour of my late nephew Nadav). It worked, but more importantly it gave me the impetus to finally finish! And, I did - some 34 years after I wrote the original version.
My thanks to also to children’s author Jordan Stratford for his comments on a draft that wasn’t quite right, and I knew it, but needed someone else to tell me to get back to my original ideas.
My thanks also to my son Aryeh who worked with me, some time ago now, to move the idea of the E-FUZZY from my head and onto ... yes, a computer screen. I'm also well aware that I have produced an epub and a free PDF version as well as a print book, but they are channels that people do expect and the internet is a wonderful tool used properly.
See, E-FUZZIES aren’t all bad ... just misunderstood.
