A note from the author

[Please use the links in the Table of Contents to the right to access the story]

Unlike David Fisher, I am going to tell you a thing.

The dramatic version of Shadow Bay was performed six times in the spring of 1992 at the West Bank Theater Bar in New York City. At that time the play had no ending. I fully planned to figure out the conclusion in the play's next production. But the play has never been performed since.

Instead it was optioned by Hollywood and spent the next eight years in various stages of development but never made it to the screen. I tried several different endings to the story but none of them truly satisfied me.

The play, the screenplay, Shadow Bay sat dormant from 2000 until early this year when I decide to write the story as a crime novel. In the prose form I finally found a through line to the ending. But the novel was on the short side (45,000 words) and lacked a sense of place. It needed something.

I was re-reading Brian Selznick's amazing illustrated novel "The Invention of Hugo Cabret" with my two boys when it occurred to me that the prose version of Shadow Bay needed an illustrator. I asked around a bit- looking for help in finding someone who had worked on graphic-type novels, but I was told most graphic novelists do their own illustrations.

In the late spring of this year I was at a party held in the studio of my friend Bill Ayton. I was already an admirer of Bill's acclaimed series of political paintings but less familiar with some of his drawings. On the wall of his studio was a picture of a haunted hooded face on a beach. I realized that was exactly the look Shadow Bay required. I asked Bill if he would be interested in working with me on Shadow Bay. I was thrilled when he agreed.

We started working with drawings of the main characters- to find what their faces looked like. More importantly Bill came up with a view of the world the characters were going to inhabit. Rosehill took on the look of a slightly foreign arid place. It reminded me of the setting of Camus's "The Stranger" a novel influenced by James M. Cain's "The Postman Always Rings Twice" a book that had inspired me to write Shadow Bay in the first place. Slowly the process developed, trying to fit the drawings with the text. When we finished the first chapter we decided to put up this blogspot. The site is completely Bill's design [note from Bill -- this is mostly a Blogger template with minor changes by me.]

Our hope is as we add chapters and the plot thickens we will draw you into the world we have created. Please let us know what you think, and if you like what you read and see, please pass the word.

Donald.