first draft

January 1985 arrived with a sense of accomplishment as she typed the last page of the novel Patty talked her into writing. Done. A four-letter word that represented feelings of astonishment, pride and doubt. Done, but only the first draft. Done, but how many times does it have to be rewritten? Done, but now what? What is a writer supposed to do with it? One step was clear: register it for copyright protection. 

A copy of the 253-page manuscript was mailed with a registration form and payment to the U.S. Copyright Office in Washington, D.C. A few months later, copy registration was confirmed. 

The Ills of Saardu

Registration # TXu000197171

Copyright May 17, 1985

Written by Carma Y. Gagne

Co-Created by Patty Sovic

Synopsis: A human girl creates a new home for those in her spaceship who are sick, with the help of telepathic animals, a primitive genius and his lost love.

Two hundred and fifty-three pages representing afternoons and weekends of laughter, typing, and brainstorming. 

"What if they..."

"Yeah, maybe, or they could--oh--wait!  I've got an idea!"  

Furious typing to capture a string of words that made her feel capable, powerful, brilliant. She marveled at her own brain. Where did such notions come from? 

Carma was born in Los Angeles in 1958. Before she started Kindergarten, she rode on a train to Salt Lake City with her mother and siblings. Her father, Earl Dillon, the one who ran away a few months later, must have driven the car loaded with their belongings and probably pulling a small trailer with some furniture. Hence, her formative years were in sunny SoCal, with visits to beaches, the wonder of the endless ocean and its enticing waves, flowering trees and shrubs everywhere...all that beauty and warmth offset the poverty of a family of seven living on the wages of a traveling salesman. 

Where did such wild notions come from? Carma was not raised with an appreciation for the arts and literature. She was not educated at museums or through stage plays. Mud is her earliest memory, her favorite childhood toy, to this day she loves the look, feel, and earthy scent of mud. She is happiest when it rains. 

Where did such fantastic places and crazy plot twists come from?  Patty and Carma shared a love of the natural world. They marveled together over the tiniest details of a bug on a flower.  They would have conversations such as, "What if a bug could talk?"  "They can!" Carma would insist. "We just don't know their language!" 

Where did that come from?  Haiku.  Mrs. Dunn, her seventh grade English teacher, taught her students about personification through the poetic art of Haiku. Their assignment was to write one Haiku, and the teacher loved Carma's. "Winter trees are hands..." The lessons of the Japanese tradition and concepts of personifying nature stayed with her like a seeing-eye dog. She would have been blind to it had she never learned the art of Haiku. She would never have heard the bugs.

cricket clocks her jaw
lunch hour ceases to exist
she enters its zone