Who’s in Charge?

Zoe, of Wausau, Wis­con­sin asks, “Why (in Pop­py) did Rag­weed have to die?”

To answer this ques­tion, Zoe, you need to know how I wrote the Pop­py series. I wrote Pop­py first, fol­lowed by Pop­py and Rye, then Rag­weed. Then came the rest of the series, Ereth’s Birth­day, Poppy’s Return, and Pop­py and Ereth. The point is, when I began to write Pop­py I did not intend to write a series. Pop­py began as a stand-alone. That book deals, in the main, with the strug­gle between two char­ac­ters, Pop­py and Mr. Ocax. As I saw it, read­ers need­ed to know that Mr. Ocax was a very dan­ger­ous crea­ture, that Pop­py had much to fear from the owl. There­fore, I briefly intro­duced a minor char­ac­ter, Rag­weed, whose death by Mr. Ocax pro­vides the book with lots of tension.

How­ev­er, as I began to extend the story—as the series unfolded—the char­ac­ter Rag­weed seemed to creep into all oth­er books, until I felt I had to write a book about him, who he was, where he came from, and how he got that ear­ring. It is that ear­ring which sparks, so to speak, the last book, Pop­py and Ereth. In short, though Pop­py and Ereth are the main char­ac­ters in the series, you might say Rag­weed is just as important.

The truth is, Zoe, writ­ers do not always know what they are doing. Sometimes—if the writer is lucky—the char­ac­ters are in charge.