Harpur Diggins

Rather than talk about editing today, I want to introduce you to someone who is very special to me. I first met Harpur Diggins some 15 years ago. He didn't look anything at all like he does in the magnificent portrait below back then. At first, in fact, he was just a name that seemed to have randomly popped into my head one night just as I was about to fall asleep.

The following morning, I had quite forgotten about him, but later in the day his name drifted back into my consciousness and lingered there while I puttered about, doing whatever it was I had to do. Harpur Diggins... It was an odd name; a name that meant absolutely nothing to me, but would not leave.

Eventually, I tried to imagine who Harpur Diggins might be. The first image that came to me was of a tall, handsome--in a Matthew McConaughey way--adventurous man with a free spirit and an arsenal of snappy comebacks at the ready. He must, I thought, be a character in a book.

I tried offering him parts in several short stories, but he stubbornly refused to take any of them. In time, I began to think of him as a bit of a diva, and attempted to evict him from my mind. Just as stubbornly, he refused to vacate. But rather than reveal his story, he just hung around, haunting me at night from behind a thick veil of mystery.

When COVID hit in 2020, and I found myself suddenly unemployed with tons of time on my hands, I revisited a book I had started a couple years earlier. The working title for this would-be novel was The Fool's Journey. It was inspired by the Tarot and was meant to have 22 chapters (one for each of the cards in the Major Arcana). I developed a detailed outline for it and, after deleting what I had originally written, began re-writing the story. By chapter 3, the outline got tossed. The story had taken on a life of its own and I decided to give it free rein and see where it took me.

I was having trouble coming up with a name for the dragon though. I tried using one of those online, fantasy name generators, but the results were extremely unsatisfying. I kept writing, leaving blank spaces for the dragon's name, convinced that it would come to me eventually. And one day it did.

I was merrily writing some dialogue between the dragon and Sok, another main character, when Harpur Diggins decided to take matters into his own hands--or talons, if you will. Subconsciously, I typed his name into the dialogue, and before I even realized what had happened, Harpur Diggins started telling me his story. From that point on, the book practically wrote itself.

In his human guise, with his violet eyes and his trusty walking stick, Harpur Diggins is a powerful wizard, a loyal friend to Arthur, Sok, Anayah, and Elder Dhonna. He always has a plan, even though they rarely work out the way he wants them to. But he never gives up!

Harpur is now a dear friend. He no longer haunts me at night; he watches over me. In his own irascible way, he encourages me. And when things get heavy, and I feel like giving up, all I have to do is close my eyes and he transforms into the magnificent purple dragon he was born to be, and we fly together over the Kingdom of Epoh until the heaviness passes. Or we sit together in his lair and I listen to tales of things he's done and worlds he's visited. He won't let me give up either. But he's yet to let me take a memento from his hoard.

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