Sexuality in Oz

If there was one thing L. Frank Baum didn't dwell on, it was romantic relationships, particularly between his main characters.

In his first three Oz novels, he tells us of two marriages, but they are fairly unimportant to the overall plot. (Quelala and Gayelette, Jinjur and her never officially named husband.) The most prominent romances were lifted from dramatic Oz tales (Private Files and Ozga from The Tik-Tok Man of Oz and Pon and Gloria from His Majesty, the Scarecrow of Oz). Throughout the series, we encounter several married couples both in and out of Oz, so we may assume that sexuality is a thing in Oz.

There's a few definitions of sexuality, but the one I refer to here is a capacity for intimate relationships. So, no, I'm not discussing people having sex in Oz. (Though Thompson did have Prince Pompa of Pumperdink and Peg Amy have a child, so it happens.)

One objection fans raised to the film Oz the Great and Powerful was that Oscar Diggs, the Wizard himself, was depicted wooing different women. (Actual womanizing was only suggested.) And to be honest, I didn't have a problem with it. He's the Wizard of Oz, not the Eunuch of Oz. That said, by the time L. Frank Baum's stories begin, he doesn't seem to have much interest in his sexuality. In all the Famous Forty, and in all of the stories set in the same continuity, the Wizard is happily single.

Also in all those stories, Glinda, Ozma, Dorothy, Trot, Betsy, the Shaggy Man and Cap'n Bill never seem to take a romantic interest in anyone. To be honest, a little bit in Jack Snow's "A Murder In Oz" revealing that Glinda has handsome young mountain giants serve her late at night amused me because it hints at her having a sexuality.

The most complicated case of sexuality in the Oz books is Nick Chopper, the Tin Woodman. He seems to be a typical heterosexual in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, discussing how he decided to marry a girl that would be revealed to be named Nimmee Aimee in The Tin Woodman of Oz, determining to go back and marry her when he's received a heart. However, he doesn't do this. Instead, we discover in The Marvelous Land of Oz that he's inclined to be a dandy, and he and the Scarecrow share a "bromance" that begins to raise a few eyebrows, and by The Tin Woodman of Oz seems to be a bit more than that, as these two seem to be happiest with each other. Even more curiously, when the Tin Woodman finds his human head in The Tin Woodman of Oz, it appears to almost have a different personality than he does.

But doesn't the Scarecrow flirt with Scraps in The Patchwork Girl of Oz? Yes, he does. And in the Famous Forty Plus book The Runaway in Oz, Scraps becomes devoted to Popla, a plant that seems to identify as female. If these relationships are to be taken seriously, I don't think these manufactured people care about monogamy.

That brings us to the subject of homosexual relationships in Oz. (This means that both people in the relationship seem to or do love one another, and they are of the same gender, not that they've identified a sexual orientation.) Nathan DeHoff commented that given how many LGBT people write Oz stories, it's surprising that there aren't many openly queer characters in Oz stories. Isabelle Melacon wrote a piece for the Namesake website that suggests that such relationships would be a non-issue in Oz. Everyone lives forever in Oz, and are happy to be content and don't mind seeing other people content, so what would be the point of objecting to a homosexual relationship as long as the people in it are happy?

This isn't that there hasn't been Oz stories featuring queer characters. In Eric Shanower's "Abby," his adult Tom from The Shaggy Man of Oz has recently broken up with his boyfriend. In Chris Dulabone's The Fairy Circle in Oz, a vain king wishing to marry the most beautiful person he can find ends up marrying a man. Gregory Maguire has queer undertones in his Wicked Years series, particularly the bisexual Liir, but this isn't canonical Oz. Finally, in a story I recently finished for an anthology I was asked to contribute to, I took a shot at developing a queer romance in a traditional Oz setting. I hope I handled that one well...

Now, we must note that of course, Baum's books were written for children at the beginning of the 20th century. Sexuality of any type just wasn't a major plot point for children then. And anyway, Oz is more about the magic and adventure! But still, as we find characters forming relationships in the series, we will always wonder about the nature of these relationships.

Writing a prequel to Oz

So, people write Oz stories. I write Oz stories now. But most new Oz stories tend to pick up where Baum or the other Royal Historians left off and tell further adventures.

Still, there are some who go back and tell stories of Oz's past. Perhaps as a midquel, happening in between previous Oz books (often patching up what seem to be continuity gaffes), or perhaps even before The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, making it a prequel to the Oz books.

I'm actually now responsible for two prequels to The Wonderful Wizard of Oz: "The Way of a Lion," published in Oziana 2013 and "Aunt Em and Uncle Henry," a little story I posted on this blog not long ago.

Very much, both of these prequels were based on concepts I'd had for a film adaptation of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz that would flesh out the backstories of the Cowardly Lion and Dorothy. The Scarecrow tells how he was made and informed that he was brainless, and the Tin Woodman tells how he became tin, but the Lion simply tells us how he lived day to day, while we are told little information about Dorothy.

To me, what made the lion unique is that he wasn't cowardly, he simply misunderstands what courage is. According to actual accounts about male lions, they largely allow the females to do the hunting and only defend their prides when the need arises. So, it seems the Lion was actually a well-depicted anthropomorphic lion, that is, if you consider Dorothy and her friends the lion's "pride."

Since the story would start when the Lion was a baby, I had to change some things about real lions. Cubs are often raised together by a group of mothers for defense. This is because young lions are delicate and need protection, though. However, lions often live in the plains, and not in forests as lions in Oz seem to do. Thus, I assumed, given that animals in Oz speak and have come to respect each other, the danger to a cub is reduced, except from a kalidah. The trees and other features of a forest might allow a single mother to care for her cub on her own.

As one reads my story, I reveal that the Cowardly Lion is not a native Munchkin lion, but actually a Quadling. Due to a tragic point of the story, he flees to a new forest, and somehow manages to miss all other forests (I did trace his route on the International Wizard of Oz Club's map) until he comes to the Munchkin forest Dorothy will one day travel through. The main part of him being a Quadling lion was so that he actually has a story arc that begins in my story and reaches its triumph in one of the final chapters of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. So it's as if I began a story and then let L. Frank Baum finish it, except he'd already done it over 110 years ago.

Dorothy's backstory, I knew, did not need to be complicated. I cordially dislike prequels that make out Dorothy's coming to Oz as predetermined or prophesied, or that her parents were tied to Oz somehow. What I enjoy about Baum's stories about someone from the United States going to Oz is that they were no one special when they arrived, but become known for their actions. Dorothy and the Wizard are similar in this regard, except that the people believed the Wizard to be a Wizard, but then, Dorothy was also believed to be a sorceress, the only difference is that she denied it.

The backstory for Dorothy that I wrote was actually folded into Aunt Em and Uncle Henry's, because I knew they had to be tied to each other. How they met was actually based on how my maternal grandparents met. All the names I gave them were either from Baum's life or my grandparents. "Carpenter" was the married name of one of Maud Baum's sisters, so I gave it to Uncle Henry, while Em's maiden name "Stanton" was from an uncle of Baum's. Aunt Em's middle name "Marie" was my grandmother's name. "Matilda" is of course the name of L. Frank Baum's mother in law, while "Charles" is from Charles Dickens, one of Baum's favorite authors. (It's also been suggested that "Oz" came from Dickens' nickname "Boz.")

The difficult part was finding out how Dorothy became an orphan. I had decided to tie Charles' death to the sinking of the USS Maine, the event that set off the Spanish-American War. This was with the idea that The Wonderful Wizard of Oz takes place in 1900. Matilda's death was harder to decide on. I suppose I could have made it easy and had Matilda die during childbirth, thus Charles had to leave Dorothy with Aunt Em and Uncle Henry when he had to serve his country anyway, but I'd decided that Matilda would die after Charles.

My main intention was that after Charles died, Dorothy and her mother would move in with Aunt Em and Uncle Henry. Matilda would die on the farm somehow in an accident that Uncle Henry could have possibly avoided. He'd then blame himself for her death, leading to his rarely speaking in Wonderful Wizard. But there wasn't really a good opening without making him look like a really negligent farmer. I did once take a page from Baum's short story "The Diamondback" and have Matilda save Dorothy from a rattlesnake that bites her instead, except that snake venom isn't that fast acting, and surely Uncle Henry and Aunt Em could have been informed and treated it before it proved lethal.

One person suggested that a sinkhole open on the farm and Matilda gets caught in it while rescuing Dorothy. That seemed a bit much, however. So, in the story I posted on the blog, Matilda's death is left vague. I just can't seem to kill Matilda...

Writing Oz: Making Sense Of It All

I must note that this blog—discussing writing further Oz stories—is based solely on my own experience writing a few Oz stories. Other writers and authors have likely had different experiences and view points. They are welcome to mention their own through the comments or their own mediums.

There's an old saying "Scratch an Oz fan, you get an Oz book." This is very accurate as most if not all Oz fans have come up with new stories about the Land of Oz.

But when someone creates a new short story or book about the Land of Oz or its characters, they have to figure out what rules to set for how they approach Baum's beloved world.

Baum rarely set up rules for how his world worked. In the first book, it became clear that animals could talk and just about anything could live in the Land of Oz. In The Emerald City of Oz, Baum establishes that no one dies in Oz and they have a communal economy. It wasn't until The Tin Woodman of Oz that Baum gave us a bit of backstory about the country's origin.

Thus, there is quite a lot of room open for interpretation.

Later books in the Famous Forty generally create new adventures, but on occasion, Ruth Plumly Thompson and Jack Snow either set a few new rules or attempted to clarify some backstory. However, as Thompson's work is mostly still protected by copyright, the modern writer of Oz stories generally ignores it so as to avoid any legal issues or decides that it hardly matters if Thompson's work doesn't quite match up with their own. (This is not to say that Thompson's work has been ignored: writers such as Paul Dana, Chris Dulabone, Nathan DeHoff and Marcus Mebes have liberally used characters appearing in Thompson's public domain books.)

In sorting out what is and isn't important to them, the issue of "canon" arises in the writer's mind. What, from the Oz books, is definitely history? Early on, it became clear to me that there was no reason why Little Wizard Stories of Oz and Baum's Oz-related fantasies (Queen Zixi of Ix, The Sea Fairies, Sky Island, The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus, Dot and Tot of Merryland, etc.) should not be considered canonical alongside Baum's fourteen novels. The messier issue is Queer Visitors from the Marvelous Land of Oz and The Woggle-Bug Book. While these visits from Oz to America could have happened, Dorothy meeting her friends on her farm in Kansas and then Aunt Em and Uncle Henry being skeptical of her tales of Oz in The Emerald City of Oz proves problematic (not to mention that the first Queer Visitors story dates the entire series). Thus, although the writer might enjoy these tales and even take concepts from them (the Woggle-Bug's four arms and wings), they may decide not to count these canonical.

Recently, though, I have decided that there is no reason why all of Baum's works of fiction—fantasy, non-fantasy, pseudonymous, anonymous—could not all take place in the same world. However, unless there's a good excuse for a crossover, it's not really going to make much of a difference.

Sometimes, you might run into a continuity inconsistency. But don't let that get in the way of a good story! Maybe you can sort it or just decide which version you want to go with.

As seen in some of my blogs, I came up with a timeline for Baum's first several Oz books. The reign of the Wizard in my canon wound up being a brief ten years (versus the 20 or more other writers sometimes use). This was that if people in Oz were aging during the Wizard's reign, why was Ozma still rather young? Dorothy's first four visits to Oz occur within about three years, with her first trip to Oz being when she was eight and her moving to Oz at age eleven.

The writer also has to decide other elements: in The Chronicles of Narnia, trips to Narnia take up no time in "our world," but this is never inferred in the Oz books. One could interpret that Oz time runs longer or faster than the Great Outside World, but Baum's concept seems to be that the two run at the same time. (This is made clear when Ozma promises to look in on Dorothy at a certain time on a certain day, though one could say that Ozma is keeping track of Dorothy's time.) To me, anything other than what Baum indicated unnecessarily complicates Oz lore.

Another point is where is Oz located? Like Narnia, some like to have it so that it's in an entirely different world somehow unreachable by us except through rare, magical occurrences. Others say it's on another plane of existence or an alternate reality. I, myself, go with Baum's concept of a hidden country, likely in the South Pacific. (How people get there, I addressed in an earlier blog.) While this is my idea, I find it to be less cumbersome if this idea is not addressed in the text, though making up your mind about it may help in creating Oz stories.

Finally, there's backstories for the characters. Baum wasn't big on character development, but rather defined his characters. (There are some exceptions.)This has proved a boon for Oz writers as since the characters generally stay the same, they can set their story whenever they wish. However, it may be helpful to decide the backstory for certain Oz characters. Fortunately, Baum tells us the stories of the Wizard, the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodman and Ozma. However, when deciding further details about these and other characters, that is when your imagination comes in. I'd figured out a backstory for the Cowardly Lion that I hadn't planned to write, but I eventually did anyway, and it became the award-winning "The Way of A Lion," now available in Oziana 2013. So sometimes figuring out the backstory of a character isn't just deciding your approach to a character, it can also sometimes lead to a good story!

All I'm saying here is that when you set out to write an Oz story, it's very helpful to have a complete vision of Oz in mind.

My next Oz book

I'm working on a new Oz book. It's not really a sequel to Outsiders from Oz, but it does tie in.

Here follows a spoiler if you haven't yet read Outsiders from Oz!

"Outsiders" rejects

In my first, incomplete draft of Outsiders from Oz, I was trying too hard to write in a Baum-like tone. Still, there were a few little parts that I didn't use in the final version that I still like.

The first draft did not have Ozma's journeys at all, but I still wrote the Sawhorse out of being able to help the Wizard and Button-Bright. I had originally planned to do a separate story in which Ozma and the Scarecrow would go investigate some odd occurrences and meet some very strange people, but my editor insitsted I make Ozma's tale part of Outsiders and furthermore weave the two tales together. That worked.

Here's some excerpts from that first draft. A description of the Valley of Mo for those unfamiliar with The Magical Monarch of Mo. A little of this made it into the final version, but it's very cut down and re-worked there. Very much, I had to keep my exposition to what the story needed, and I think the final version does that very well.

If you've never heard of the Valley of Mo, I suppose I should tell of it. No one dies in Mo, and no one grows older. Food and necessities grow on trees and bushes, so the people are happy and contented, having little to worry about. All animals there can talk, and are held in as much regard as the people. Sweet and perfectly flavored lemonade falls from the sky when it rains, and when it snows, the people are ready to receive perfectly buttered popcorn. There is very little water to be found in Mo, for most people drink root beer from the river, or other drinks from streams and springs.

Lest you think the people were unhealthy, let me assure you, they were not. Since all food found in Mo is natural, it is much more wholesome than the food we have in our countries. In fact, the Valley of Mo supplies Santa Claus with candy for him to give out, and this is why your Christmas candy always tastes much better than any other kind.

The Monarch and his wife had ruled Mo for many years, and no one can remember when they did not rule the Valley. While their sons sometimes wish they were king instead of their father, they have learned to be content and enjoy that they would never have to hold court.

A little bit of gOZsip going on. I really don't like how the prose reads, but I do like the joke about the Tin Woodman's vanity. The description of the Scarecrow, however, did resurface in the final version, word for word. This is from when I tried to write Ozma in by inserting new chapters before we wound up starting over again from scratch, which turned into the final version you can read in the finished book.

That evening, while the Wizard and Button-Bright prepared to leave south, Ozma was delighted to have a visit by her old friend, the Scarecrow.

A long time ago, the Scarecrow had been a common scarecrow, until Dorothy found him and took him to meet the Wizard, who gave him some brains. When the Wizard left the Emerald City, the Scarecrow was left in charge until he helped Glinda find Ozma. Since then, he had been living happily in the Winkie Country, just west of the Emerald City.

Ozma and Princess Dorothy relaxed in the parlor as the Scarecrow entered.

"Good evening, your Majesty!" he said as he entered, bowing low, then needing to be helped back up. He sat down across from the two girls.

"How is the Winkie Country these days?" asked Ozma. "I haven't visited in awhile."

"Oh, it was a big to-do a couple weeks ago!" the Scarecrow chortled. "Some of the Tin Woodman's nickel plate flaked off and he had to get re-plated!"

"Why couldn't he just get the spot covered up again?" asked Dorothy, already guessing the answer.

"He tried, but it didn't match the rest of the plating, so he had to be plated all over again."

Again, too much exposition here. I go into great detail about what the Wizard and Button-Bright have in their knapsacks when this bit of detail is going to be very unnecessary.

Button-Bright and the Wizard could not use the Red Wagon, because Ozma required the Sawhorse, so they traveled by foot. Button-Bright usually wandered, so he didn't usually carry provisions, but this time, he was wearing a knapsack filled with necessities. A magic charm could clean his clothes clean, in case he didn't have a spare change for a long time, and ever since his friend Ojo had arrived in the Emerald City, never-ending bread and cheese had become a staple for travelers. Using a similar charm, the Wizard had made a bottle of water that never emptied, because even in a fairyland, some water might not be safe to drink. Indeed, with the possibility of magic water anywhere, one had to be careful of the water they used to drink and bathe in. There was no charm to keep someone from needing a bath, except a bar of soap that Jellia Jamb had tucked in.

Finally, here's a bit I wrote about the Forest of Burzee that I wrote down, intending to have Ozma talk about it at some point. That point never came, so here it is.

"What is it like?"
"It's a beautiful, green place, where trees grow strong and healthy, almost halfway to the sky. The grass and moss are as soft as down, and all animals live in peace."
"Do you think we'll wind up there?"
"I don't know where we'll find ourselves."
"Well, it sounds like a nice place to find yourself."
"It is."

 You can see the finished story in Outsiders from Oz.

The Brass Watch

Here is the first draft of the first chapter of The Borderlands of Oz, which I later started over from scratch and eventually retitled Outsiders from Oz. For those of you that have already read Outsiders, you can see the big difference here, and for those that haven't read it yet, it does give you an idea of how the story started.

Jellia Jamb swept the floor of the Royal Banquet Hall. The long, ornately decorated room had not been used in a long time, and even though it was in a fairyland, dust would still show up everywhere, and sometimes Jellia was even obliged to politely ask a spider to move elsewhere, having taken up residence in a corner.

Although there had been many royal banquets since Jellia had started to serve in the Palace, back when the Wizard was still ruling Oz, there had been none in the past few months. Ozma would take her meals in the dining room, as did Dorothy and many of the other residents in the Palace. No grand celebrations had been held for awhile, but everyone was still happy and contented, so no one minded much.

Jellia did not mind her tasks, and for someone who had held that position for as long as she had, it was quite a feat that Jellia did not tire of her work. After all, even though she was a servant, she considered Ozma one of her dearest friends, and of course she was fond of Princess Dorothy, as well as the other girls in the palace, Trot and Betsy Bobbin. These three were Ozma's very special friends, all having come from the Great Outside World, from a country called America. Of course Jellia's closest friend was Omby Amby, the tall soldier with the green whiskers, and it might be suspected that the two may have been the Wizard's only confidants while he ruled the Emerald City. Whether that was true or not, Jellia was friends with the Wizard, although the state of his workshop often bothered her. She also liked Cap'n Bill, and the Shaggy Man, and Button-Bright, the young boy who would disappear for sometimes months at a time but always return.

Today, however, Jellia noticed an ornamental cabinet that she had often seen but never paid much attention to. It was made of rosewood, with crystal windows, and inside were kept a few odd treasures. As Jellia looked at this, she realized that the legs of the cabinet placed it about two inches from the floor. She could not remember when she had last cleaned underneath this cabinet, so she moved it in order to sweep up any dust that had collected.

As Jellia did this, she discovered a pocket watch on the floor. She reflected sadly that she may have found it before had she cleaned underneath the cabinet earlier. She picked it up and looked at it. It appeared to be very old and plain. She pressed the catch on the side, and it sprung open. The clock had stopped a long time ago. The watch was very ordinary for a pocket watch. All the numbers were in Roman numerals, and the hands were elegantly formed. In the other side of the watch was inscribed the words, "von Smith."

"Who is von Smith?" wondered Jellia, "And how did his watch come to be here?" She put the watch in her apron pocket and finished sweeping.

After finishing her duties, she went to Ozma's throne room, where she found the girl ruler of Oz playing a game of cards with Dorothy and Button-Bright.

"Hello, Jellia," said Dorothy. "Would you like to join our game?"

"Not just now, Princess," replied the pretty maid. She took the watch out of her pocket and showed it to Ozma. "I found this in the banquet hall."

Button-Bright looked at the watch curiously. "It looks familiar," he said.

Without replying, Jellia pressed the spring that opened it.

"It belongs to a 'von Smith,'" Ozma noted.

Button-Bright's eyes brightened.

"That's it!" he exclaimed. "I brought it to Oz!"

"When did you do that?" asked Dorothy. "I don't remember seeing it."

"Oh, it was back when I first visited Oz," the boy explained. "I was much younger, but I had it with me. I kept it in my pocket." He took it out of Jellia's hands. "It actually stopped working when I dove into the Truth Pond."

"But why didn't you ever show it to me?" asked Dorothy.

"Don't know. You were older than I was then, maybe I didn't think you'd be interested. Anyways, I must have lost it when I was playing with some of the other children at the party."

"And that's how it got under the cabinet," mused Jellia. "I'm sorry I never thought to clean under that cabinet before."

"Do not worry," replied Ozma. "You did not mean to let it slip, so I do not think you were negligent in your duties."

"But where did it come from?" asked Dorothy, "And who is 'von Smith'?"

"I am, I suppose," replied Button-Bright. "I told Trot once that my full name was Saladin Paracelsus de Lambertine Evagne von Smith. The watch belonged to my father, and one day, I took it out to our backyard to play with. I tried to wind it up, but suddenly, I found myself under the tree where you found me, Dorothy, although you didn't show up until much later."

"But wasn't your father cross with you for losing it?" asked Ozma, who was interested in her young friend's story.

"He was," admitted the boy, "but he wasn't too angry. I'd been missing for a few days, and he told me I was worth more than a hundred watches, but he was sorry the watch was gone all the same. He said it had belonged to a great-great-grandfather. Maybe it was the same grandfather who had the Magic Umbrella that took me to Sky Island."

"So, it could be a magic watch?" asked Jellia, who had given the watch to Button-Bright.

"Maybe," replied the boy.

"I would like to know more about this watch," continued Ozma, "especially since it seems to be magical. You may keep it, Button-Bright, as it is yours by right and I trust you. I only ask that you be careful, as you know my feelings about magic in Oz."

"I will, Ozma," he promised, pocketing the watch.

Ozma was thoughtful for awhile.

"I'm going to send you and the Wizard to see Glinda," Ozma decided at last. "They can analyze the watch and discover its magical properties, if any."

"Now, if we can continue our game," said Dorothy, "It's your turn, Ozma."

"It isn't an Oz story without her."

One of the most popular characters in the Oz books is without question Dorothy Gale. She is the first character introduced in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, and not only goes on a wonderful adventure, she also serves as an audience surrogate. Baum tells the reader Dorothy's simple thoughts and concerns throughout the journey, reminding us that she is just a little girl who has been taken from an ordinary, mundane world to a fantastic one.

When Dorothy reappears in Ozma of Oz, she is less of an audience surrogate. Rather than get into her mind, Baum lets her speak for herself, even using some baby talk. (Girl slang of 1907.) Dorothy graduates to a leading role in The Road to Oz, but when you've been reading the books in order, this progression feels natural.

In later Oz books, Dorothy fluctuates from lead character to secondary to minor. Virtually every writer of the Famous Forty Oz books used Dorothy as a lead character once, except for John R. Neill.

When you venture into pastiches, Dorothy does get used often, but some writers decide not to use her. Sometimes they want to use other characters or create new ones.

When I was writing Outsiders from Oz, I decided not to use Dorothy as a lead character. I wanted to focus on Ozma, and Dorothy's presence would change the dynamic I wanted. In any case, my plot left virtually no one to act as Ozma's regent while she'd be away, and Dorothy needed to fill that role, I thought. (I actually came up with this before reading Jack Snow's The Magical Mimics in Oz, and was a little surprised to see the same thing happen there.)

In any future Oz stories, I don't really have any plans for Dorothy. I'm sure she'll show up, just as she did in Outsiders, and that will require that she be in the next book I plan.

It's probably just me, but I don't find Dorothy that interesting to work with. Her character has been delved into quite thoroughly by Baum and even further by others. There are things in her past Baum didn't flesh out, and I, for one, think it's best that he didn't. People who wonder about Dorothy's history are welcome to try to work it out, and I've even done so, though I doubt I'll use it in an Oz story.

Rug

Everyone who's read the Oz series, at least up to Ozma of Oz, knows the Nome King. At least, Roquat the Red. Unlike the Wicked Witch of the West, Baum gave the villain a name as well as a title.

When Baum wrote Ozma of Oz, he had a contract to write more Oz books, and he decided he would write four more. Ozma was the first of these four, and has been identified as some fans as being the first book of the series, meaning that it was written with a series in mind, unlike The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and The Marvelous Land of Oz. We have a villain set up, and at the end, Dorothy is given a secondary home in Oz and given an option to return.

Roquat returns in the final of the four books, which Baum intended to be the last Oz book. Angered by his treatment by the people from Oz, he begins to plot revenge, and, under the guidance of his new general Guph, allies himself with dreadful warriors outside of Oz. In the end, though, they invade Oz, but are so thirsty by tramping through a dusty tunnel (thanks to magical interference by Ozma), they drink from the Forbidden Fountain of Oblivion, causing them to lose their memory.

The Nome King reappears in "Tiktok and the Nome King," a picture book in the "Little Wizard Stories" series. It is revealed that despite losing his memory, the Nome King still has a rash temper. His more proper return is in Tik-Tok of Oz, in which he has captured the Shaggy Man's brother, and Queen Ann of Oogaboo attempts to conquer him. Also, Baum reveals that he had forgotten his name (though in Emerald City, Ozma does tell him his name), so he took the new name Ruggedo.

In Tik-Tok, Ruggedo is relieved of his duties as king of the Nomes, succeeded by his steward Kaliko, because he broke a commandment of Tititihoochoo, the great Jinjin. While he was initially going to wander the surface world, Kaliko allowed him to stay in the underground Nome Kingdom.

Baum used Ruggedo one last time in The Magic of Oz, in which he allies himself with a young boy who has learned a magic word of transformation. He has apparently been exiled from the Nome Kingdom again. However, when the magic word gets flung about too much, the Wizard of Oz manages to learn it and uses it to defeat the villains, and later, Ruggedo's memory is wiped again and he is allowed to wander the Land of Oz.

That was how I decided I would approach the character of Ruggedo when I decided to include him in Outsiders from Oz. Initially, I decided I would either intend for it to take place between Baum and Thompson's books, or I would just be ignoring Thompson entirely. However, after reading Thompson's books, I found it impossible to try to say that her stories would be nonexistent in my Oz, so I have a brief mention of Jinnicky, letting my readers know that my Oz is the one in the Famous Forty, not just Baum's books.

Still, I thought Thompson wasn't kind to Ruggedo at all. In Kabumpo in Oz, she reveals he's taken up life underground as a petty thief, befriended by a rabbit named Wag. Using some magic he discovered, he turns himself into a giant and carries off Ozma's palace on his head! In the end, Ruggedo is restored to his proper size and exiled from the Land of Oz.

In Thompson's The Gnome King of Oz, he manages to return to Oz and cause trouble, but his plot is foiled by new boy hero Peter. He is struck mute and given another bath in the Fountain of Oblivion. Later, in Pirates in Oz, he manages to find the kingdom of Menankypoo outside of Oz and is later restored to his old self. He allies himself with some pirates, convincing them to invade Oz, but when he almost succeeds, Peter, assisted by Pigasus and Captain Salt, manage to defeat him again and he is turned into a stone jug.

Ruggedo made his last Famous Forty appearance in Handy Mandy in Oz, in which the Wizard Wutz disenchants him, but later Himself the Elf turns them both into cacti.

There have been various stories restoring Ruggedo to his original Nome form. Some even have him reform or have him "done away with." (One has him turned into a liquid and poured into the ground.)

I decided I wanted to do a more character-based journey with Ruggedo in Outsiders. I was inspired by reading Alexander Volkov's The Yellow Fog and reading about Urfin Jus, who is comparable to Ruggedo in that he makes serious trouble for the Magic Land in the series. In The Yellow Fog, though, Urfin is roaming through Magic Land after being subjected to the Sophoric Waters (sic), which is basically the Water of Oblivion, except the memory loss is temporary, but it does allow one to be taught new behavior in the interim.

Urfin is shown great kindness by the people he meets in the Magic Land on his way back to his old home, and when he is tempted (more than once) to cause more trouble for them, he rejects his old ways and begins a new, peaceful life, and in this and the final Volkov book, he even serves as a great ally to the heroes of the series.

So, I wanted to handle a Ruggedo with no memory and have him go on a character based journey. I don't want to spoil what I do with Ruggedo in Outsiders, but I do maintain that the character doesn't reform at the end. What he says about himself near the end is exactly how I perceive it.

Still, the loss of memory made for a fun character. Ozma gets to take care of an old enemy who doesn't even realize that he considered her his enemy. I also avoided calling him "the Nome King" as he wasn't the king anymore, except at one important plot point where it needed to be said.

One thing that popped up while writing was "why isn't Ruggedo a cactus?" I came up with an idea, but my editor suggested I just have Ruggedo pop up in the story with no explanation as to why he's a Nome again. When I explained this to Eric Gjovaag at last year's Winkie Convention, he agreed. (Eric, if you don't remember this, don't worry. I do!)

Aside from the Famous Forty, so many other Oz stories using Ruggedo have been written, and not only does not explaining why he's a Nome again allow my readers to use their imagination to fill in the blanks, it also allows them to fit my story in with a continuity consisting of their other favorite Oz pastiches. Even Chris Dulabone commented that he doesn't see why my story couldn't fit in with the books he's published. (Though he is curious as to where it would fit on a timeline, to which I have no idea.)

I want to work with Ruggedo again, as I do want to explore how his life will go after his adventures in Outsiders. There might be a straw hat involved.

To see how I handled Ruggedo, go ahead and get Outsiders from Oz in hardcover or paperback!

Her name was Lola

Jared: You ever seen the silent Oz movies?
David Tai: No.
Jared: Baum brought in a weird looking character called the Zoop. Always wanted to put it into a proper Oz story.

---

Jared: I'm trying to get the Lonesome Zoop established as a character before I write him (or her?) in. I'm going to make it an animal that can dig.
David Tai: All righty. So, why is it lonesome?
Jared: Because it doesn't know what to do or who to trust. It's desperate.

---

Jared: I know exactly where the Zoop where go. The Zoops live in Orkland with the Orks in a peaceful coexistence.

---

Jared: I need to name the Zoop.
David Tai: Betty Zoop.
Jared: Well, I don't refer to its gender, so it could be...
David Tai: Letta Zoop
Jared: Lyla Zoop.
David Tai: So it's a girl!
Jared: So, lead male characters, 5. Lead female characters, 3.
David Tai: How goes it now?
Jared: I think I will call her Lola.

And that is how you might develop a character. Or, in my case, redevelop. (I cut some spoiler-y stuff.)

The Zoop was a strange beast appearing in the Oz Film Manufacturing Company's films. For some reason, people seemed to be afraid of it. The Magic Cloak of Oz has it say that Nik the Mule is in its part of the forest, so perhaps it likes its privacy. The Patchwork Girl of Oz, however, has a man run away from it after it seems to playfully wag its tail by him, so maybe it's actually not a really bad beast.

Years ago, I was writing a story that would reveal the mythical Fountain of Youth was in Oz, but the story just wasn't working at the time. The Zoop was in the story as the Fountain's guardian. The story had a few good ideas, but overall, I'm glad I abandoned it at the time. I just really wasn't ready to write an Oz story.

While I was developing Outsiders from Oz, I remembered that old story and thought to redevelop the Zoop for the story. As you can see above, we decided to make the Zoop a girl. In the films, it seemed to come off as male, but since I established the Zoops were a race and not a single creature, it would make sense that were also girl Zoops.

Another reason why I made my Zoop a girl is because of how I wanted to approach the character. When we meet Lola, she's not having a good time, and if I made a male character do this, it would be an awfully whiny or angry. But a female characterization would make the character a bit more fluid in her emotions.

I decided I wanted the character to have a name beginning with the letter L to tie in with it being the Lonesome Zoop (Lola is pretty lonesome when we meet her). The name "Lola" has always struck me as a funny name, so I decided to give it to an Oz character, rather than to make up a name. Plus, it began with the first two letters of "lonesome." So, Lola it was.

Some elements I rewrote made it sound like Lola had a special bond with another character. Who it was, I think my readers can guess, but I never expected that character would get a potential love interest! Anyway, it didn't feel right for Oz, so I revised it.

That being said, I wound up liking Lola quite a bit. I think I'd like to write about her again, should the opportunity arise...

If you want to find out how Lola's story unfolded, go ahead and get Outsiders from Oz in hardcover or paperback!

Getting an Illustrator

So, how did I get Shawn Maldonado to illustrate The Outsiders from Oz?

To be honest, he offered. A long time ago, he tweeted on Twitter that if Nathan DeHoff or I had something to be illustrated, he'd do it. And I warned him I might take him up on it.

Not that he was actually my first choice. I asked my Scottish friend Al Cook if he'd be interested, and he was, since he enjoys drawing Oz characters but rarely has a reason for it. However, we had a snag: I was still writing the book and didn't want an illustrator to draw something I might change or remove later, thus wasting their effort. Since he was unable to schedule it and had other illustration jobs coming (plus concepts for a morbid webcomic in his head), Al eventually declined.

I also asked Sam if he'd be interested, but since he hadn't done any professional art, he wasn't sure he could do it. However, I later asked him to do "decorations," so he provided chapter headings and a design for the table of contents.

But that came after Shawn agreed to do it. I had just about always had him in mind, but considering his cartoony style for Oz, I wasn't sure if he'd be appropriate for my story, which, while it isn't a dark story, does have some heavy stuff in it. (Or at least, I think so.)

The first completed picture for the book I saw Shawn posted on his blog. I had to ask him to revise how the Wizard looked, but it looked all right. Still, it was the first chapter, which set up the two alternating plots throughout most of the book. I wasn't really sure if Shawn's work matched the tone.

In late May (Shawn was working on two other illustration jobs at the time, and I know he just finished one of them, not sure about the other one), I saw another picture. This one featured Button-Bright, who was one of the principal characters. I had previously indicated to Shawn that I wanted an "older" Button-Bright from what he'd drawn for other projects, such as "The Ransom of Button-Bright" in the 2009/2010 Oziana. I'd expected Shawn would have Button-Bright based on his look in Sky Island and The Lost Princess of Oz.

So, imagine my surprise when I got a boy with neat but shaggy hair, a t-shirt, and khaki shorts. But, for some reason, I liked it. Yes, the classic Button-Bright was a favorite of mine, but I was able to embrace this new version as well. In my writing, I was not specific as to when the story took place, willing to let the reader make up their own mind about that, if they so chose. It was definitely post-Baum. Shawn's illustrations put it in more modern times.

So, I like where Shawn is going with the illustrations, but at the time, I didn't know if he could pull off the tone I needed.

Some of my story was derived from plot elements in Baum's Oz-related The Magical Monarch of Mo, which had been illustrated by Frank Ver Beck. In fact, the Monarch of Mo himself does appear in the story. Ver Beck's illustrations showed the Monarch as a dumpy silly character. One of the next illustrations Shawn showed was the Monarch, based on his appearance in Mo, but he was tall and stout rather than squat and dumpy. It was a excellent mesh between the Mo Ver Beck showed us, while working within the world we know from John R. Neill's illustrations.

Still, the tone. Early in the story, the Wizard and Button-Bright find themselves among some ruins. On June 17, my birthday, I got an illustration of this part of the book. Shawn's picture presented a gloomy landscape with Button-Bright and the Wizard looking for a way to leave it. Perfection!

As I've assured folks, Shawn is working hard on the illustrations and he wants to complete it soon. He's been busy and 2011 wasn't kind to him at all. Unlike John R. Neill who didn't take more than a month to illustrate an Oz book, he doesn't get paid that type of salary. While I intend to compensate Shawn for his amazing art somehow (in fact, there's a few pieces of art I may offer to buy from him), it's fact that we Oz fans write our stories and create pieces of art out of a love for Oz rather than a desire to make money from it.

Writing Oz: What not to do

My editor has pestered me to write blogs about how I wrote Outsiders from Oz. My intent is to wait for this until the book is available. I hope that will be soon, but until then, I'll tease you with a few things I learned not to do.

Don't overwrite
Unless your story requires it, a lot of exposition is not encouraged. In the first draft of Outsiders, I spent many paragraphs talking about Jellia Jamb. None of what I wrote was bad or anything, but it was all eliminated in the final version. In fact, I'd rewritten the first chapter from scratch.

The reason why was because Jellia only appears briefly in the book. This was always the intention for the story, so why spend so much time on a character who isn't in the book for very long? Jellia does get a brief introduction, but that's the key: it's brief.

Exposition should be kept on a strictly need-to-know basis. Of course, I also advise against breaking the momentum of a scene for exposition. I set up a little mystery for the characters in Outsiders, though I'm very sure my readers will piece it together quickly since they get both sides of the story. By the time the story came to the conclusion, everything was ready for a fast paced finale.

Don't drag your story out
While you want your story to fill a good number of pages, if you find yourself slipping in visits to Buxleyburg or Whoozywoozyville for no purpose than to make the story longer, it might be better to reconsider how long you need your story to be. I had intended for Outsiders to be 20 chapters, like most of Thompson's books, but wound up being 16.

If you find yourself adding in filler material, try to rework it to work with the plot. Since Outsiders follows two separate parties for a large portion of the book, I found myself needing to fill some time between when the two parties would meet up. So, I came up with an additional episode that would introduce a new little creature to Oz's zoology. However, I wound up making them part of the story's conclusion.

And that was much better than the original version of that chapter where they literally sat and talked around a campfire. That was just too tonally different from the rest of the story.

Don't throw in everyone
We all have favorite Oz characters, and when you write an Oz story, it's almost a no-brainer to grab from that list of characters. However, this can easily become a difficulty: once you have a character in, what are they going to do?

There is one character in Outsiders that I wonder if people will mention when they review or comment on the book. He is one of the main characters and one of the most-loved, but even I had to look at him at the end and realize he didn't do much. However, considering what I'd already written, I could neither drop him or expand his role in ways that wouldn't feel out-of-character or absurd.

One Baum case of too many characters I remember quite well is in Glinda of Oz. Many, many characters go to the island of the Skeezers to rescue Dorothy and Ozma, but it could easily have been pared down to just the Wizard, Glinda, the Scarecrow and Scraps. Another case is having all three formerly American girls in Dorothy's search party in The Lost Princess of Oz. While this was Baum's intention to have an adventure with these three and Scraps, the girls don't have much of a chance to do much with all of their companions and Dorothy's magic belt.

So, yes. Consider your plot and which characters work best for your story. Also, remember that a common occurrence in Oz books is new characters. In addition to keeping the old characters in character (and build on, if that's what you're going for), you now have new ones to develop. Less characters allows you more room to have your characters grow. That's not to say you can't have cameos, but these should also be worked in relevant ways to the plot.

In Outsiders, I chose against creating many new characters, considering the number of Baum characters I was already using. There are a few new ones, but I spent more time focusing on developing the characters established by Baum, some of them not having appeared in new adventures in over a century. At the end of the book, there are a few cameos, including Betsy and Trot, and a couple other who I don't say who they are. (All in good time.)

"I spent my better years as a goat"

Mr. Nathan DeHoff recently reviewed Oziana 38, including my first short story (and first published Oz story), "Bud and the Red Jinn." (The clever subtitle "Don'tAlways Look a Gift HorseGoat in the Mouth" was a title suggestion by the editor, and I suggested it be a subtitle instead.)

As I wrote when I reviewed the issue, I was familiar with the characters, only needing some extra basics on Jinnicky. However, one character proved to be an odd one to tackle: Prince Bobo of Boboland.

Bobo was introduced in Rinkitink in Oz, spending most of the story as a surly goat named Bilbil. When the Wizard meets him, he's able to see that Bilbil is the enchanted Bobo and the Wizard and Glinda restore him.

Bobo humbly begged Rinkitink's forgiveness for having been so disagreeable to him at times, saying that the nature of a goat had influenced him, and the surly disposition he had shown was a part of his enchantment. But the jolly King assured the Prince that he had really enjoyed Bilbil's grumpy speeches and forgave him readily. Indeed, they all discovered the young Prince Bobo to be an exceedingly courteous and pleasant person, although he was somewhat reserved and dignified.

Sounds like he might be a nice guy, right? But at the end, Baum gives us a bit that suggests all might not be what it seems with this handsome prince:

And Bobo replied with a smile: "Like all your songs, dear Rinkitink, the sentiment far excels the poetry."

Hmmm... Something could be up there. Like he's masking his true feelings. Anyway, however you want to interpret this, it's all Baum ever wrote about Bobo, and the character never resurfaced in the later Famous Forty +.

When the editor and I were plotting my little story, we built up the story about Bud and Jinnicky meeting at a party held by Zixi and a guest would arrive with the worst gift you could give the Queen of Ix. I just randomly said "Prince Bobo of Boboland," and he was in, and I quickly came up with the idea that he was "attempting to re-establish diplomatic connection." In our plotting, he remained very much the nice guy Baum left him. He'd be an unaware antagonist.

However, when I was writing it, it struck me it would be more interesting if Bobo had a bit of an attitude. I mean, given what happens in my story, anyone might get upset at someone telling them they couldn't give someone a certain gift, and then not being able to give them a reason. But to play that up a bit more was irresistible, and I made it part of my take on Bobo. I did tell J.L. Bell about my story at Winkies a bit, and said Bobo was "a jerk," but that might be a bit much.

Bobo as drawn by John R. Neill

Anyway, that was just my story alone. However, my story is being incorporated into the first volume of the upcoming trilogy Royal Explorers of Oz by Marcus Mebes, Jeff Rester, and myself that will explore Bobo's character further. (It's mainly been written already.) I got to rewrite the first chapter that had my story in it, and got to work with Bobo a bit more and then added a small part later in the story. Bobo is one of the main characters, along with other Oz favorites like Captain Salt, Ato, and Tandy. And given more time, I do believe Bobo being called "a jerk" might be just a bit too nice...

Anyway, after I'd written and edited and sent in my story, I began to think how the characters would look. I knew I would want the Queen Zixi of Ix characters to look like how they do in Fredrick Richardson's illustrations for that book (I'll say it again: Neill's Zixi is ugly compared to Richardson's). Jinnicky's look was already established by Neill and it was impossible to think of him looking any different than that.

But what about Bobo? Neill had only drawn him once, and it wasn't much to go on. However, as I tried to visualize the story even more, Bobo suddenly grabbed a face that was in the back of my mind.

For you Doctor Who fans, yes, that's Francesco from the episode "Vampires of Venice," played by the amazing Alex Price.

I was excited that Anna-Maria Cool was going to illustrate my story, so I sent that first screencap as a suggestion for how I thought Bobo could look. This is what she came up with:

So, looks I had a pretty big hand in defining a character for Prince Bobo of Boboland and his look as well!

David Tai on "Executive Decisions"

As a side piece to last night's blog, David Tai wanted to share his own take on writing his first Oziana story.

I blame David Maxine and Jared Davis for "Executive Decisions," let me explain why.

It began, basically, with Jared's "Borderlands"... what he now is calling Outsiders from Oz. He'd asked me to review what he'd written. So naturally, I'd said that Dorothy was being overused for these kind of adventures, and why not, for once, leave Dorothy home? (Jared note: Dorothy was never going to go on this adventure.)

Naturally, then, I suggested he use the opportunity to make a secondary plot out of that if he wanted to write a novel. He chose, instead, to merge it with a different secondary plot. But that left Dorothy sitting around the Emerald City doing nothing, and that left me sad that something wasn't being done with that.

Around the same time, Jared wrote a blog entry about The Lost King of Oz. In the comments, David Maxine discussed how wildly out of character Ozma was, which led me to wonder, just, if there was a way to make the seemingly out of character attitudes make sense.

Why would Ozma so casually execute a witch?

And at around that same time, I'd been talking to Kim McFarland about her own work, A Refugee in Oz, and talking about how she should consider, for a new project, writing about the girls of Oz. She returned that a) she hated cute girls and b) she didn't see much distinction between the girls. So breaking down Trot, Betsy, and Dorothy turned out to be a fun exercise. Putting all that together, naturally, I had to use Betsy and Trot to help illustrate the difference between how each girl would approach a situation, and especially to highlight the decision that Dorothy would have to be making.

So naturally, first, why would Ozma execute someone she'd vowed to take care of?

Answer: she wouldn't.

But how the heck would she manage to do that? Looking again at Lost King, I couldn't help but note that they'd not shown the body, only brought back her shoes... and the answer was pretty obvious after that. But why spoil it? Read for yourself!

"Executive Decisions" is available exclusively in Oziana #38.

Question for writers

When you work with a classic Oz character, do you create a back story for them that you might not refer to that helps you keep in mind how you interpret that character?

I do sometimes when Baum didn't give us enough to go on. One example is the Cowardly Lion. I'm not exactly sure if I want to keep this back story, but it does make a nice character arc that is finished in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.

The Lion was born in a Quadling Forest, but when he was young, just before he could be taught the ways of a lion, his parents were killed by a giant spider, and he fled to the Munchkin Forest, far from the spider's reach. There, he grew up in fear, without the knowledge of how to hold his own against other animals. (However, he guessed nearly right by trying to scare them with his roaring.) And then one day, he attempted to leap out and scare some travelers who were going by the road of yellow brick, but we know what happened next.

In my opinion, it makes more sense than, say, he rode in on a balloon from Omaha...

The importance of an editor

I've said it before, I'll say it again: if you're writing an Oz story, or any story, get an editor on board.

Remember sometime back when I said I was puttering away with my own Oz story? Well, after sending the first several chapters to a proofreader I lined up, I asked him if he thought I'd got the characters right. He held nothing back in telling me that were parts of my story that just didn't flow right.

As I have now started re-writing, I'll tell you that part of it involved Jellia Jamb finding an item that got lost about the time of The Road to Oz. The proofreader felt that after I had described Jellia as being responsible and dexterous, it was not in keeping with her character to have her miss something for over presumably a century. (I never specified when the story took place, but some readers might see it that way.)

But instead of just telling me that these points were no good, he suggested ways to improve character and plot development. In fact, it was his suggestion that I combine my ideas for two Oz novellas: one in which Button-Bright and the Wizard have an adventure, and another in which Ozma and the Scarecrow have one. According to the current plan, the Scarecrow will not journey with Ozma, but instead take part in something that might be interesting to look into in a chapter.

Anyways, sometimes starting over is a good thing, especially when you got someone on board who knows what they're talking about.

And no, I'm not going to tell you when to expect this story, or who will illustrate it, and I'll tell you right now, I don't think it would make a great movie. All I want to do is write an Oz story that will be fun to read. Oz books should be fun, and if you get so caught up in Oz, it's not fun anymore, you might as well quit.