Moving Through a Strange Wood: A Guest Post by Celia Krampien

Celia Krampien’s debut, The Bellwoods Game, combines middle-grade scares with stunning illustrations. Our Monthly Pick author has penned an exclusive essay for us on the inspiration for this novel, her experience as an illustrator and how it felt to write her first book, down below.

There’s a rhyme at the beginning of The Bellwoods Game, and, strangely, that’s how it all started. It popped into my head one day, almost ten years ago now, pretty much whole and as it appears in the book, complete with the name of the central character, Abigail Snook.

I was living in Oakville, Ontario back then, the town where I’d gone to college to learn how to be an illustrator. I remember feeling a bit stuck back then, struggling to make a career in freelance illustration sustainable. I’d been working with a few newspapers and magazines and trying to break into children’s books but without much luck. I was deep into research about kids books and was probably starting to look at the world through that lens, so maybe that’s where the rhyme came from. I’m honestly not sure.

It happened while I was out driving, on my way back from running errands. My route home took me through this picturesque part of town where the train bridge passes over Sixteen Mile Creek. It was Autumn and the trees up on the cliff overlooking the creek were looking sparse and kind of magical. Suddenly, my brain conjured this image of a girl standing among the trees and a bizarre rhyme floated into consciousness.

My brain kind of seized on the random little rhyme, repeating it over and over. I eventually googled Abigail’s name, thinking my brain had regurgitated it after hearing it somewhere. But beyond a few unfamiliar LinkedIn pages, I came up with nothing. I started wondering about Abigail. Who was she? Why was she up on that cliff by the train bridge?

Abigail lived at the back of my brain for a long time. In the time since I first imagined her I’d moved twice, started working with a wonderful literary agent, published my first picture book, and gained a pretty solid foothold in children’s books as an illustrator. Eventually I found myself in a time and place where it felt right to start exploring her story.

The experience of creating The Bellwoods Game was, in a lot of ways, like moving through a strange wood. There was a lot of feeling my way along, deliberating between paths, facing down fears and doubts that sprang up (and there were many). Like the kids in the book, I sort of followed Abigail into the woods. I’m still not sure where she came from but I’m really grateful that she led me to this experience.