Sometimes you still gain something when things fall apart.

A few years back a friend and writing peer approached with a prospect: An anthology featuring several writers taking on the reworking of a popular fairy tale character. Our choice: Peter Pan.

Seemed easy enough. Reworking popular childhood tales is quite popular across various mediums right now, so it seemed a safe bet to garner interest and spotlight the writing of several authors. I naturally chose dieselpunk/dystopia because the idea immediately struck me to have Pan cross paths with Mick Trubble, the titular main man of my Troubleshooter series. While fairy tales and dystopian noir may seem an odd couple, I was convinced I could make it work. And in short order I had the first draft of Little White Bird, the title an ode to the original Peter Pan story.

Unfortunately, things didn’t work out the way we planned.

When you collaborate with others, there is a lot of control that goes out the window. You’re bound to the schedules and life circumstances of others. Suffice to say that time rolled on to over a year without our collaborative team completing the anthology. Then the originator of the whole idea had to drop out, leaving the rest of us in a jam. No blame, simply life and how it works. Sometimes things come together without much of a hitch. (See the Alvarium Experiment) And sometimes they don’t.

After a few attempts at rebooting, we decided to let the idea go. Of course that left me with a perfectly serviceable story and nowhere to go with it. Well, until now.

I won’t be able to publish a full length Troubleshooter novel this year, but I can release a couple of shorter works, starting with this one. It’s a wild and fun romp stamped with that Troubleshooter flavor that readers have come to recognize. I truly hope the fans enjoy it, and get a kick out of how I punked the Pan mythology with a sci-fi twist.

Little White Bird is available for purchase now at Amazon. Check out the amazing cover, spotlighting work by Stefan Prohaczka featuring Mark Krajnak of JerseyStyle Photography as Mick Trubble. Now that’s retro cool, folks.

My name is Bard Constantine, and if you’re reading this you already know that Bard Writes Books.