Once Upon a Caveman

by Cassandra Gannon

  I leave a lot of books unfinished. Far, far more than get actual endings. I have to actually write something to know if it’s going to work. Sometimes it takes me eighty thousand words to realize its crap and I toss it away. Other times, I wait for a while and come back to it with fresh eyes. (I had parts of Cowboy From the Future untouched for two years before finally completing it.) For some reason, I always knew I’d finish Once Upon a Caveman. I even knew most of the characters names, which are primarily based on fossil sites or other archeological finds. It was the rest that I was still sketchy on, so I decided I needed to do some “research.”

  It was pretty informal. If I was in LA, I’d take a side-trip to the La Brea tar pits. (Amazing place, by the way.) If I was in New York, I’d visit the American History museum to look at the mammoth displays. If there was a PBS special on the Ice Age, it got DVRed and scrutinized. Heck, my sister and I even practiced Ice Age spear throwing at a mammoth site in Hot Springs, South Dakota. (It’s way harder than you’d think.) I knew I was going to write this damn book sooner or later, so I was casually gathering up information.

  I set the story in another world so I could play a bit fast-and-loose with the geological landscape of the island. I have always been more interested in history than science and I make no claims about the accuracy of the volcanic activity on the island, aside from the very basics. Any references to historical eruptions like Krakatoa and Vesuvius are true. But could an island sink into the sea? Probably not on Earth. It could get blown apart, though. I leave it up to the reader to decide what happened to Rhawn’s island.

  I’m by no means an expert on the Ice Age either, but the facts that Lucy relates in the book are true, to the best of my knowledge. There were no dinosaurs in the Ice Age. I just tossed a plesiosaurs because I thought it would be fun. (I also made up bogas, but that’s about it.) Wooly rhinos existed. So did dire wolves and armadillos the size of cars. Animals were larger then and glaciers covered the northern part of the globe.

  With so much water trapped in ice, a land bridge was exposed between Asia and Alaska. This is the most accepted theory as to how people first found their way to the North America, although there is also evidence to suggest that some cultures were capable of building boats. These were not stupid people. They had art, music, language, and technology to make their daily lives easier. The more you learn about “cavemen” the more you see, they’re not so different from us.

  All over the globe, humans lived side-by-side with creatures so bizarre it’s hard to even imagine them. Rhawn’s plan to hunt the mammoths is one theory of how human groups actually killed them. Humans used their tusks to make huts, their skins to make blankets, their bones to make art and tools… Mammoths were a vital part of their culture. But I can still sympathize with Lucy’s horror at the idea of killing something so amazing. There are few things weirder or more awesome than Pleistocene mammals. If you look at some of the cave paintings people left behind in Europe, you can catch a small glimpse into their world and its beautiful and terrifying wildlife.

  Anyway, about a decade into my half-hearted, start-and-stop research, my family took a cruise. It was a “boutique” ship, filled with an ever-present staff trained to subdue all resistance with all-you-can-eat sorbet and afternoon shuffleboard. My sister Elizabeth is probably the worst person in the world to stick on a cruise ship full of people who like sorbet and shuffleboard. A battle of wills began. The more the staff urged her to participate in show tune charades (true story), the higher she cranked Johnny Cash on her iPod and ignored them.

  Our cruise director was a man named Tony, who might just have been genetically engineered for his job. His perpetual grin and orangey tan were meant for a life on the lido deck. There was no way he’d survive in any other environment. He was also overly, aggressively, patronizingly cheerful and my sister… isn’t. Conflict was inevitable. And funny.

  “Tony the cruise director hates you.” I informed my sister after one of their more entertaining encounters.

  “Whatever.” She said, not caring about her onboard popularity. And then she added, with the randomness that I love about her, “Hey, that actually sounds like the beginning of a cool book, though.”

  And that’s how Once Upon a Caveman was finally born. My sister’s snarking, plus a probably-replica skull of a sabretooth cat, plus a decade of do-overs and wrong turns. …And maybe too many rewatches of The Breakfast Club. Honestly, I’m not sure where the idea of the class reunion came from. The book is about becoming the person you always wanted to be, so reevaluating your life through a lens of your high school self just seems to fit.

  In any case, I hope you enjoyed Lucy and Rhawn’s adventure. It took a long time for me to get it right, but I think they’re finally both happy with their happily ever after. If you have any questions, comments, or concerns about this book or any other please let me know at starturtlepublishing@gmail.com. We love to hear from you!