Respect your kids. Too many adults DEMAND respect from kids without showing any respect in return. Doesn’t work.
– Lyle Perry
The duality of kids.
I never thought I would have a story where the protagonist is a child. Usually, I try to refrain from such a practice because I don’t feel comfortable putting an innocent child in such a dire situation. Kids are special and their lives should be filled with love, joy, compassion, and fun. No child should have to go through the misery I put some of my characters through. But, then, I got to thinking. What if I do just that and have another child serve as the hero? That simple question was how I created Childhood Lost…and Found.
Point of order, my brother felt a little weird out while reading it and I understood why. See, in our youths, we were in foster care and felt the emotional and verbal abuse of our foster parents. I already spoke about my experience with them at length and will again in a future story so I won’t get into it. What I will say is that the memory still haunts us and talking about it with each other is the cheapest form of therapy. Well, that and writing about it. Anyway, I surmise that he was finding himself reliving the trauma which was obviously not my intention. But he did tell me that, because of that discomfort, the story hit the mark.
It’s interesting because I tell my experience and go on to say that anybody that thinks they are justified to treat children like that should be locked into the deepest hole and left there for life. No one has the right to put a child through hell because they don’t feel good about themselves. Or, worse yet, because they are trying to feel a void in their life that they know deep down they will never fill. So, I decided to create a “branch” of the government that could handle those types of vile individuals.
At first, I created an adult protagonist. A female agent serving as a nanny to the victim but found that to be a bit cliché. Then, someone gave me an idea in passing about kids helping kids out of trouble. That was my “eureka” moment. The main protagonist and hero should be a kid. It was pretty perfect. Kids are always overlooked and underestimated and the government can take full advantage of that. That could be the “branch” of the government and it will have a very high success rate. Add in some child-like nature and mannerisms and I had the perfect character for the story.
I spend about a month after the story was written fleshing out the “branch” of the government because I was more focused on the character than the organization which was a reversal for me. I did that because, quite frankly, to put a child in such a situation is quite taxing on their psyche and well-being so I needed to do a before-and-after timeline so I can get his personality cemented before writing the story.
Now, the branch is written out and I do plan on making another project out of it. I just don’t when and what form it’s going to take. But I guarantee you that you will be seeing this “branch” again.
And, with that, I hope you enjoy the story.
You can buy the book on Amazon. The link is here.
You can also learn about it on Goodreads. The link for it is here.
