More About the Bear's Son

One reason why I was interested in the Bear's Son story (other than being a HUGE myth geek) is that I had a story in mind that would involve a really strong guy who was raised by bears. I've now written it as a chapter book (and re-written it, thanks to input from my wife and my writer's group). As it turns out, it too is nothing like the actual Bear's Son story either, but that's a good thing in it's own way. No need to do another fairy tale re-write - time to write something new.

If all goes well, I'll find a literary agent for it, but until then I'd like to keep sketching scenes from it to send along with the manuscript.

If there's any interest, I'll post the first chapter on here. But first, here are a couple sketches that were very helpful in writing the story.

This first one is the big climax of the story - the Bear's Son (here named Rob) and his brother taking on the North Star (don't worry - no actual stars were harmed in the creation of this piece).

It really helps me in writing to draw things out first. I had initially meant the North Star to be some big buff guy, but in drawing this I realized that a young boy, no matter how strong, couldn't actually wrap his arms around someone that large. So I had to make the North Star tall and skinny, which actually worked out better for the story.

This one is from the beginning of the story (no actual cows were harmed in the creation... you get the idea). I wanted to show him doing something that required a lot of strength, and cow juggling seemed to fit the bill.

Unfortunately, neither scene made it as is into the final manuscript - but it did give me a lot of inspiration while writing it. I plan to do a drawing of a scene that actually is in the book, which I'll post when it gets at least as far as sketch form.