I'm having writer's block, with my blog and my ... novel career, so I thought I'd reflect on the first novel-length book I ever wrote, when I was ten years old, that caused my family to tell me I was destined for greatness. Maybe there's something there. I mean, the kid who wrote Eragon was only like 13, right? He got a movie, and I know I can, too.
This book was called Wolf Moon. It starts with a wolf pup losing his mom, Bambi-style, and the pup stumbles onto a family farm. I'll get into this more, but it is VERY vague what time period this takes place in, I was thinking something Little-House-on-the-Prairie esque but I didn't do any historical research.
So, one of the children in the Bell family, who is a ten-year-old girl JUST LIKE ME, finds the wolf pup and decides she's going to hide it in the barn and sneak out food for it. This girl is named Annetta Bell, a name I stole from an Anne of Green Gables character. Annetta is one of four children. She has an older sister named Sharon who can't walk and is confined to the upper floor of the house, because she fell and hurt her back and I think it's because she was scared by a wolf and that's why she hates wolves. Then there's the feisty younger sister, Missy, and the youngest, Benjamin, because I felt like there had to be a boy even though I didn't know how to write for boys, so I made him four.
I'm not sure how Sharon being confined to the upper floor worked, since they didn't have indoor plumbing and the family ate together downstairs, so I'm guessing they just went upstairs to visit her occasionally.
Anyway, somehow no one else goes in the barn and no one else notices Annetta sneaking food out there until Missy busts her, and Annetta claims that the wolf's name is Shadow and he's her best friend.
Now everyone knows Annetta has a wolf and he becomes their new pet, even though Sharon has wolf trauma. At one point, a different wolf, not Shadow, kills one of their sheep, and Sharon pins it on Shadow, saying he killed an innocent sheep that deserved to live. Annetta responds that Sharon doesn't deserve to live. (Sharon and Annetta hate each other.)
Over the next year, Shadow saves Annetta, Missy, and Benjamin from drowning, from a bear, and from a hive full of bees that Benjamin pokes for some reason. How did kids survive in back whenever this was, and why were their parents never around? But one of the rescues injures Shadow badly enough he retreats again to the wild. Sharon still hasn't come around on the whole Shadow thing, despite him saving her siblings' lives three times, but Sharon makes a friend, and they start practicing walking together and Sharon realizes she can walk after all and just needed the power of friendship. So, on Christmas day, she surprises the family by walking down the stairs, and that is the best Christmas present of all.
Then, one day, there's a fire at the one-room schoolhouse, and the teacher asks Annetta to go check on the boiler or whatever, and that makes the fire worse and Annetta is trapped in the burning school. Shadow senses that Annetta is in trouble, so he comes back into town and jumps through the window of the burning school to drag her out, saving her life a fourth time. The book ends with something like, 100 years later, there is still a statue of Shadow in the small Southern Illinois town.
Why 100 years? That seems arbitrary. The characters use horse-drawn carriages and children face almost certain death any time they go outside without a wolf to rescue them, so it seems like it would be longer ago. And why Southern Illinois? Are there wolves in Southern Illinois? I sure don't know! I used to go hiking there, so if there are, I guess I just got lucky I was never mauled.
My parents told me this was the best book ever, and my mom said it could be a movie. That inspired me to write Wolf Moon 2. Buckle up for this one.
So, it's two years later, and there's a terrible drought. All the crops are dying. I don't know if I ever specified what kind of crops the Bells farmed. They had sheep. Are the sheep okay? I don't know if I ever got into that. So, Mr. Bell decides he's going to go on an aimless trip by covered wagon to see if he can find a new home. Is he going to bring the family? No, just one kid, and it's going to be Annetta, which means Shadow is coming too because he and Annetta are soul-bonded.
Missy is mad that she didn't get to go on the covered wagon journey, so she decides to run away from home. She comes across a covered wagon, but it's not her family's, it's an old man named Alan Sain. People call him "Alan Insain" because after his wife died, he just started taking random covered wagon trips. He asks her about who she is, and she lies about her name, but he recognizes her from the missing child posters (????). He says they can be runaways together and takes the ten-year-old girl into his wagon.
Meanwhile, there's a forest fire, because drought and all, and Mr. Bell and Annetta have to take off without Shadow so they can outrun the fire, because that's something you can do in a covered wagon, and they outrun the fire but they assume Shadow is dead.
Meanwhile, back at the Southern Illinois (?) homestead, Sharon is again confined to the upper floor and unable to walk because she has not been eating food or drinking water, so there will be food and water for her mom and her younger brother. I get the feeling they don't like Sharon. I get the feeling they don't care about Missy too much, either, but they at least put up posters ... somehow. Then, six-year-old Benjamin realizes he is the man of the house when his mother collapses and goes into labor! No one had realized she was pregnant. Benjamin thought she looked kind of fat but didn't say anything about it because he's a good son. So he has to load his pregnant mother and his by now comatose sister into the horse-drawn carriage and get them to the hospital! Don't worry. He manages to do it, and the baby is fine. And also ...
The drought finally ends, but it's in a torrential rainstorm, and this results in Annetta hanging off a cliff about to be swallowed by a waterfall. Luckily, Shadow (who miraculously survived) recognizes Annetta is in danger and comes to save her from the waterfall. Seriously, Annetta is too stupid to be alive if she didn't have a wolf with super powers.
So now that the drought is over, Mr. Bell and Annetta just turn around and go home. I forget what happened to Missy. When they get home, Mr. Bell realizes he has a new baby! And that's not the only new baby. Shadow jumps out of the covered wagon along with a girlfriend he met on the road, Scarlet, and their I forget how many puppies! So Mr. Bell and Annetta were in a covered wagon with two full-grown wolves and one of them gave birth during the trip.
I was eleven when I wrote this one. Forgive me.
I don't think anyone in my family read Wolf Moon 2. I actually doubt they read the first one, they were just impressed by how long it was for something written by a ten-year-old. So I didn't get much feedback on this one, but I still felt like I had a Wolf Moon 3 in me.
I never finished this one. It was going to be even worse than the second one. Annetta is off adventuring with her presumably 10 wolves. Shadow, she had raised since he was a puppy, but Scarlet was a random wild wolf, but obviously this twelve-year-old girl proved to be the alpha somehow, so now they are all her pets. This was wish fulfillment writing by a girl who loved dogs.
As for the rest of the family, well, Missy is probably dead or married to Alan Sain right now, I forget whether I killed him off in the second one, and the parents went to get something for the farm, so Sharon is left to care for Benjamin and the baby. That's fine, because she can walk and go downstairs again in this one. But then - some bad guys attack the farm! And Sharon and Benjamin have to put together a plan to survive. What will they do, without any wolves around to save them? Well, nothing, it turns out, because I never finished this book. I finally woke up to how bad this was.
ALL THIS SAID
I think Wolf Moon can still be a movie, and I'm ready to pitch it.
I'm going to tweak some things. In order to get around the historical ambiguity, this is going to be in a dystopian future, or possibly on another planet. And I'm going to age up the characters. I definitely want Zendaya to play Annetta. Also some Handmaid's Tale elements, because this family obviously does not like the non-Annetta daughters, and Mrs. Bell couldn't tell anyone in the family she was pregnant with her fifth child until she was literally giving birth. This actually might be a dystopian musical. Zendaya will totally rock her mournful solo when she thinks Shadow died in a fire. Shadow will be played by Jonathan Bailey in a wolf suit. The wolf puppies will be CGI because I don't really want to work with young children. I don't really have a role for Pete Davidson, sadly, so I might need to write in another character or make Sharon a guy.
Anyway, I'm off to Hollywood. Please tell me, on a scale of 1 (I will watch it as soon as it comes out on streaming services) to 10 (I would cut off my right arm (or my left arm, if I'm left-handed) to come to the premier of the first Wolf Moon movie) how hyped you are.
