Timothy Jones: Tibtarnitallimardarian

Dedicated to Chris,

without whom this book may have never been written

and

To Maria,

who kept me going, writing through the final pages

The idea for this book popped into my head in 1979 as a title, general concept and quickly sketched (on graph paper) map. Two things were hugely popular at the time: Dungeon and Dragons , and J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings . And it was these two things that inspired me.

I never played the game beyond a few tentative times with "beginner" friends, but through the last two years of high school I watched obsessed friends and acquaintances play it endlessly. Every break between classes, expected study periods—anytime they could find they huddled in corners with graph paper (to map dungeons) and dice of numerous shapes, whispering and rolling and searching out dungeon levels. It was wild to see, and for those so totally obsessed with it, a little creepy, too… It was like the game had taken over their lives.

When it comes to The Lord of the Rings , a new box set of the trilogy, plus The Hobbit , was published, and I snapped it up. I read The Hobbit and The Fellowship of the Ring fairly quickly, but in my youth reading all that background material at the latter’s end was too much for me, ending my continuing of the series. It would be years later—a lot of growing up—before I completed the series. Be that as it may, what I read of J.R.R. Tolkien’s masterpiece at the time inspired my book idea.

I thought it would be hilarious to take a High Fantasy adventure and fill it with goofy characters and a touch of reality. Oh, I knew the idea was a good one, but time and again during its development I stumbled. Something was missing! And my full speed imagination simply could not create it. Believe me, I really tried, but I just was not up to the job. So the great idea, the High Fantasy comedy I felt certain would be a laugh riot floundered.

Then one day I visited my friend Chris…

What can I say about Chris? He is intelligent, creative and one of the funniest men I know. He could have you rolling on the floor laughing at the drop of a hat.

While I was developing a comic takeoff on the literary end of the two obsessions, Chris had been developing a comic takeoff on the game end. This came in the form of creating hilarious types of dwellers to fill his dungeons, and as he read them to me I laughed—and realized some of these just might fit in my book idea. I brought the idea up to him and he loved it, and thus a writing partnership was formed.

In one night he and I created a story from my general concept, inserting those of his creations that fit and adding a few new ones that came to us along the way. The question now was: How do we write it? It was decided each of us would write a version, which I would then unite into a single manuscript… Chris turned out to be a quicker writer than I, giving me his version before I had barely begun mine. There is no denying my writing pace at the time could have been left in the dust by a snail.

Little did either of us know at the time disaster awaited our partnership.

That disaster came in the form of a drunken teen driver who plowed into the side of my car one July night in 1980. I suffered a severe head injury, broken neck and right forearm, along with other cuts, bruises and abrasions that come with being thrown from a car and drug down the street…. The teen walked away unharmed.

I will not take you through the year plus of my time in the hospital after the Doctors who saved my life patted themselves on the back for their good deed done, with the addendum: "…but I’d hate to live the hell his life is going to be." Leave it to say, I was fortunate to recover fully from my head injury, yet I was left a quadriplegic facing a new life. And that life was far from the "hell" the Doctors predicted all because I had loving Parents who were determined to give me the best life they could. They sacrificed their lives for me—and that makes me forever grateful for their undying love and sorrowful for their loss of…well, freedom.

Anyway, when I finally came home from the hospital my Parents bought me a typewriter (this was a scant few years before the PC age), as I was a would-be writer and wanted—needed to write. One of the first things I wanted to write was this book. That was when I discovered the situation behind it had changed. Not only had Chris' version of the story been lost in moving boxes during my recovery, but my friend had moved on with his life, which took him beyond our co-writing endeavor. Yet he was enthusiastic for me to carry on with the project, offering me background material for creatures he brought into the story, and so I did.

It was a struggle to do it on a typewriter, but eventually I pounded out a draft of the story, which turned out to be novella length. I was not happy with its shortness. But I had finished it!

When I read a chapter or two to Chris and other friends they laughed, which made me happy. My idea, bolstered by Chris' invaluable input, was becoming what we dreamed it would be. Yet it was too short. It was supposed to be a book, not a novella. In my inexperience as a writer, I did not see the two things missing that would have lengthened it into a book, so I turned to another avenue to beef up the story into book length. Originally I had thought of making it a trilogy like what inspired it, and after we plotted the book out Chris and I had tossed around a few titles for future stories, including for the trilogy. Well, I took up the second title— The Baby —and developed it into a story, and I wrote it, adding a short entitled In Between to fill in what occurred between the two stories. The second story was a novella that put me closer to book length… Instead of taking up the third book of the trilogy, however, I was inspired to pound out a side story entitled The Strange Little Adventure of Tarl Bimbo , with plans to work on the final book of the trilogy after.

Sadly, it was not to be.

The silliest of things led to disaster. Remember, back in the era of typewriters prolific writing meant stacks upon stacks of paper. Well, I had my fair share of them—tall stacks indeed. And they resided on my "typing table," a place I thought safe for the future…. Then came the need to replace the carpet, which my wheelchair tires had done a bad number on, and that meant moving all the furniture out of the room. That also meant my stacks of papers needed to be put in a "safe place." I was not worried, though I should have been.

Upon refurnishing the room, all the furniture made it back safe and sound, but when it came to my stacks of stories, not all were found, and amongst the lost stories was The Strange Little Adventure of Tarl Bimbo . My heart was broken. My desire to continue working on this story and its sequel, which had been found, just was not there. I had so many stories, ideas and poems lost. Besides, I just was not up to writing much of anything for a while. Yet my Muse would not let me remain idle for long. After a few days of pouting, I started over again, and boy, did I! All types of new ideas flowed out of me so fast that I ended up creating even more stacks of incomplete stories. It was amazing.

Then in 1984 I joined the computer age when my Father introduced me to a Leading Edge PC and printer. A \$1,500 leap I nervously made, thinking how great it would be to write without creating stacks of paper. I also saw it as a blessing in my journey through The University of Alabama where I had to transcribe recorded notes from class, which I had been doing via the typewriter. I entered my studies in 1982 and completed them in 1988 with a degree in Communications emphasis on Film Production and minors in Human Resource Management and Creative writing. That is six years of writing term papers, etc., and yes, the PC was a blessing indeed.