Notes from Maine - 2020/11/14
Several years ago (winter 2015/6), I decided to conduct an experiment. I wanted to see what it would be like to not leave the house for an entire winter. The self-imposed rules were simple—I wasn’t allowed to leave the property from December 21 to March 21. My preparation began at the end of October.
At the time, I lived with two giant dogs and a horse. Lots of calculations went into stockpiling everything I would need for them. The horse needed shavings, grain, hay, and alfalfa. The dogs required food and treats. I also acquired medications and first aid necessities for the animals.
For myself, I was a little more cavalier. I got a chest freezer and bought all kinds of frozen vegetables. Along the way, I was able to get a delivery of pantry items, so it wasn’t that crucial to have all of my stuff ahead of time.
I called my time alone “The Reclusion.” The experiment had some practical reasons behind it—first, the winter weather can make traveling in Maine dangerous. Second, I don’t really enjoy leaving the house. Most importantly, I wanted to see what it was like to have everything done and have nothing to do but wait. When there’s a storm coming and you have to run out to get that one last thing, it’s a great feeling to get home, take off your shoes, and just be done. I thought that I could get an enormous hit of that emotion if I was preparing for 90 days of Reclusion.
It worked, to an extent.
What I discovered was that the feeling of safety and contentment wore off relatively quickly compared to the amount of effort I had to put into planning and preparing. To sum it up, returning home is more satisfying than being stuck at home.
It wasn’t bad though.
I still had friends over on Thursday evening, just like always, so I still had some amount of social interaction. I wrote several interesting books during that time (I finished the Madelyn series, wrote Fiero’s Pizza, and I started Kill Cycle).
One thing frustrated me—pizza.
Nobody delivered pizza.
I couldn’t just, on a whim, call up a pizza place for a change of pace.
While I was calling around, I realized that my friends were actually farther away from the pizza place but for some reason their house could get deliveries. That’s when I started to write Fiero’s Pizza. I imagined them moving to town, isolated like me. One day they order a pizza and accidentally welcome a demon into their home. It’s a strange story, granted, but I think it works. I ended up dedicating the book to them and apologizing after. Terrible things happen, of course.
It served them right—how dare they be able to get pizza!
I made a bunch of choices in the telling of the story in order to cultivate a certain feel. The perspective follows different characters but maintains a little more distance than most of my books. Everything happens on their property. The rest of the world is merely a rumor in Fiero’s Pizza. You hear stories from outside, but that’s it. The book tracks time (chapter by chapter) by the age of the children. I didn’t want the timeline to be confusing and I wanted to jump around a bit, so I always list the age of the kids. There’s a small nod to a Heinlein book in there, too. That’s just for fun.
