Bunnicula Meets Edgar Allan Crow

EDITOR’S NOTE

It was with a heavy heart that I entered my office that Friday afternoon in December. After the holidays, I would be cleaning out my desk one last time—not because my publishing house was moving to a new office but because I was moving to a new life. I wanted to believe that I’d made the right decision. After all, I’d yearned to take up sheep farming for as long as I could remember. Still, when I opened that door and beheld the shelves overflowing with books; the framed photos, plaques, and awards covering the walls; the sharpened pencils with their worn-down erasers; and the half-read manuscripts and half-eaten candy bars littering my desk, I couldn’t help asking: Could sheep bring me anywhere near the pleasure I’d found in the company of authors?

As I sank into my Dusty Mauve Naugahyde Chair Ergonomically Sculpted with Lumbar Support Curvature—a bonus I’d received as part of a recent job promotion—I felt myself sink into a dusty melancholia as well. I picked up a copy of the latest self-help bestseller written by one of my authors, Dr. Bob’s Grab Yourself Some Happiness, Even If It Makes You Miserable, and flipped to a random page, hoping to find reassurance that I was doing the right thing.

Finding nothing on that page or any other to offer me answers (I began to wonder how the book had ever made it onto the bestseller lists, but felt it best not to pursue that line of thinking), I reached instead for the handle of the top right-hand drawer of my desk. I hesitated. What I kept in that drawer was there only “in case of emergency.”

Slowly I pulled the drawer open. I couldn’t find what I was looking for at first. I’d carefully hidden it from the eyes of my assistant, a former circus clown who liked to sneak into my office on weekends to reorganize my files and leave little balloon animals on my desk as a Monday morning surprise. But then my fingers touched it. I pulled the desired object out from under a legal pad and asked myself if I really wanted to do something so drastic. I had just come from the office holiday party, after all. I was full of eggnog and seven-layer cake. But the rich aroma of dark chocolate was too much to resist. I loosened my belt a notch and slid the bar from its wrapper, peeled back the foil, and was about to take my first bite when I was overcome by despondency.

To eat chocolate . . . alone . . . behind a closed door . . . had it come to this?

I let my gaze drift to the door, my mind a whirl-wind of chocolate and sheep and balloon animals, when suddenly I heard a familiar scratching. Could it be? Was it possible? After all these years and with no thought that he would write another book?

I bolted to the door, yanked it open, and beheld him: a sad-eyed, droopy-eared dog carrying a large, plain envelope in his mouth. I nearly wept for joy. Harold! Here to save me from eating chocolate alone! Here to present me his latest manuscript, and with it my opportunity to go out in glory! I could think of no way I would rather end my publishing career than editing one of Harold’s books.

I broke off a piece of chocolate, offered it to the canine author, and sat down to read the letter clipped to the top page of the manuscript.

My dear friend,

With the publication of my previous book, I had thought my writing career was at its end. But while a writer’s career may end, a writer’s life goes on. How does one close one’s mind to experiences that practically cry out to be recorded? And once recorded, how does one resist the temptation to share them with others?

Once again the events of my life were transformed from the mundane to the mysterious by strange circumstances—and even stranger strangers. I hastened to write them down, the result being the manuscript you now hold in your hands. I know that my books can only aspire to the bestseller status of Dr. Bob’s, but I hope that you will find my words worthy of publication nonetheless. They may be the last to find their way into print, for though I say I “hastened” to write them down, the pace of the writing itself was painfully slow. Arthritis has worked its way into these old paws of mine, and the words themselves don’t come as quickly as they once did.

Still, I felt compelled to tell this tale of writers and writing, of muses and the bemused, of crows and creativity. Oh, and did I mention terror? There is terror in this tale as well. It is, after all, about a bird named Edgar Allan Crow.

Yours sincerely,

Harold X.

I felt my pulse quicken as I reached for my trusty No. 2 pencil and turned to the first page of Harold’s book. Little did I know that his words would do far more than entertain me. For here, in these pages that you yourself, dear reader, are about to enter, I would find the answers I had been seeking.