Silverville - Where Anything Is Possible

Silverville -- it's a weird world, and that's why we love it.

The place where the whole series takes place operates under its own set of alternative rules. After all, the

disclaimer on every book cover reminds readers, "Silverville - Where Anything Is Possible."

Whatever explanation we're willing to supply about these rules (and yes, we know what they are -- at least, we know most of them) we always try to put into the mouths of questionable or easily discredited characters. For example, in Little Greed Men, we use Brother Martin, the religious nut from the Church of the Holy Grail, to reveal that odd events in Silverville may have something to do with all the converging ley lines.

But while you wait to gather those character revelations in the various books, here's a quick guide to some of the major rules we follow:

1. Anything is possible.
   Of course it is! But that's not our fault; it's because of those darn ley lines. So we can start with a
   
   premise like "What if Silverville drew the attention of ET?" (Book One, Little Greed Men); or "What if a triple-prong curse launched telekinetic bread, inspired singing Tourette's, and stirred chicken festishes in the local denizens?" (Book Two, All Plucked Up); or "What if locals discovered a time portal just outside the city limits?"  (Book Three, The Magicke Outhouse); or "What if a rift in dimensions drew the Spirit World down on Silverville?" (Book Four: Colorado Boo(m) Town)
2. Coincidence is Queen.
   It's simpleton Howard Beacon who reveals Silverville's affinity for synchonicity -- Carl Jung's notion of "meaningful coincidence" -- and we decided to make that concept an underlying principle for all the books. It's why Earl Bob Jackson, so unwittingly instrumental in Denton Fine's childhood tragedy, ends up going to Silverville in Little Greed Men. It's how come The Three Fools search for 
   
   protagonist Pleasance Pantiwycke but only encounter her when they randomly call a sex-phone service in  All Plucked Up.
3. Dark humor is required.
   We can't help it -- it's the way we write. When Little Greed Men's Howard receives an important message from aliens for all the world, he can't remember what it is and so he has to improvise. Our humor is the reason April Schauers inadvertently accompanies a paying time-traveler into the past in  The Magicke Outhouse, only to return to the present with a zombie instead of the dignitary she started with. And it only seemed fitting that we should give ourselves cameo roles in All Plucked Up as failed authors who once wrote a story about Silverville.
4. Expect the unexpected along the way and at the end.
   We love twists and reversals in what we read, and we try to emulate that same experience in our own writings. If you've not yet read Book One, we beg you, please, please don't read the last page first! We save the best twist for the very last sentence of the novel, and it changes everything you thought
   
   you knew about a certain key rivalry that develops through the course of the story. We do something similar in Book Two, but exponentially so, since the last 20 pages or so work hard to pretzel the story through several unexpected twists that make the characters and (we hope) readers just a bit dizzy.

(Hope you caught we revealed the working title and premise for Book Four in the rules above.)

We can hardly believe that we almost didn't take the detour that first led us to Silverville. Fortunately, we've learned our lesson: It's those spontaneous stops along the journey that lead to the real spice of life. It's certainly provided the seasoning we needed to settle in and savor what keeps us coming back. (Oh my, did we just mix our metaphors?)

And, of course, we hope these inexplicable rules encourage Silverville fans to plan their next reading vacation in this little ol' Colorado mountain town, where anything is possible.