I’m excited! Progress at last.

This week I got a hit on one of the books from my Google alerts. It led me to a blog and a post about The Wolf & The Wild.

This person said they read their father’s copy when they were a kid (which I agree would be completely innapropriate. That book was DARK) so I’m hoping against hope that either the blogger or their father still has it, and if they have one Ackerly Green book, perhaps they’d have more!

At this point though, I feel like I’m swimming upstream. The business of getting the other two books back have been a spider’s web of companies that no longer operate and disconnected phone numbers. I would love for this to be the one that turns things around, but I can’t help but feel there’s something more I should be doing.

I’ve been trying to get to grips with the direction the company (I’m all official and incorporated by the way!) and how that relates to the family. To me. I get the sense that the Ackerly side of things was quite serious and, dare I say, a little on the dark side. The tone of the books to date just seem to reflect that and that doesn’t fit with what Mr Wallace and everything else is telling me about my dad, or his dad for that matter.

I also get the sense that AG was meant to be one thing, ended up being another, out of fear or mismanagment, and when my dad took over the reigns he couldn’t quite pull it back to where it was meant to be. I mean, we’re not talking a disastrous direction, but clearly it wasn’t successful, otherwise the shops would still be filled with their titles, wouldn’t they? It’s interesting that the company logo is Herman too. A hippocampus. A hybrid – fish and horse. I definitely get the feeling that the Ackerly family are the horses in all this. A working animal: dedicated, proud and elegant. And the Greens, well we’re obviously the fish. Fast, a little frenetic perhaps, but free and in flow.

I’m choosing to believe that my dad would want more fish in this world. Nothing wrong with horses of course, but I feel he’d want to inject a bit of that freedom into the books. Like the life he lived after he walked away from it all. That’s kind of what I want to do. That spirit of travel, exploration and adventure. A whole ocean of wonder to swim in. That sort of works for how I’m feeling. I need more of that in this crazy messed up planet that others are trying to control. We need more moments of fantasy, not to escape but to learn and grow. We need to be more… fish.

#bemorefish LOL!

Right, I’m going to post a message on this blog and see if I can get this next piece of the puzzle. Maybe this next piece will be the one that finally helps me see what I’m actually putting together.

DGx