Big dreams for the Brothers Grinn

Neither David nor I write humor for its own sake, at least not for a long time. We get tired of the jokes and witticisms, and can't help wondering if they're really that funny anyway.

What we do enjoy is communicating Truth and truths through what we write, humor that bites or makes a point. To do that, we need writing that is good, original, and thoughtful. And in order to get Truth consistently, we believe a thoughtful, Christ-centered writer is necessary. On top of that, the whole process can take three hours a mailing, depending on its length and subject matter, and it pays zilch. Zippo. Nada. See the trouble in getting people to help us?

We're pursuing a couple agencies to help us publish a collection of Chicken Soup for the Soulless that uses several of our recurring characters, some unpublished material, and a recurring motif to tell a story that stretches across more than 100 years, but that's a process that could take a while. When that's done, we want to turn our efforts toward our more serious fantasy writing and have no idea, quite frankly, how the list will change. Right now it's pure dissemination of our material; Smirkov wants to turn into more of a promotional tool, to draw attention to our other writing and products.

Beyond that, God knows what's in store. I've been toying with the idea of a Brothers Grinn Bible, and there are other useful applications of humor, to teach history, organic gardening techniques and who knows what else. Anything really big would require some money in our company to hire writers and editors to oversee the quality of the work to make sure it's consistent what we want.

David has done the bulk of the illustration as he is much better at it than I. He did commission a few pieces out of pocket for our Civil War 2000 section and for Smiley's Last Resort, both of which were done by Earl Oxford, whose name is just about all I know of the guy.

His feeling is that his strength lies more in writing than in illustration, and it's also where his passion lies. He does a pretty good job, I think, and I've done my best to encourage him with the drawing, but I can't tell him what he should do with his time.