We’re just about eight weeks away from TAA‘s official release. (Not much more time to or on Barnes & Noble!) For those eager to find out what someone can say about taxidermy for 90,000 words, I’ve decided to launch each of those eight weeks with some outtakes.
Researching a nonfiction book is like shooting a documentary film. (I imagine?) You end up gathering way more material than you’re able to use. So at varying points in the writing and editing process, this and other stuff gets cut out. In the case of “the Animal” (can I try this, this nickname?), some of it made whatever chapter stray too far from its focus. Some of it was me indulging whims and interests no other person would ever care to follow. Some of it was just confusing and bad.
And now you’ll get to read it all!
I’ll start tomorrow, with a piece about the first-ever World Avian Challenge—a bizarre and tense side competition at the 2007 World Taxidermy Championships. Here’s, um…. Here’s sort of what it looked like:
That in the background there? That’s a griffin made from a stillborn lion cub, of course.