Do. Fir Inspiration My inspiration for the story was the Darfur conflict. I earlier wrote a one page "story" using actual pictures from Darfur, and quotes like the one from Emperor Haile Salassie of Ethiopia from other famous historical figures. I did lots of research, and since it was a page, I decided to draw it myself. It is still not done, as I can't draw well, take too long when attempting to draw, and am a perfectionist and really demand what is probably too much of my limited (and wholly untrained) ability. But the research and the obsession was planted, as well as the feeling of helplessness that comes from trying to do something that I couldn't. So that was bouncing around in my skull one day when I went to sleep, and the word Darfur just kept echoing. And my brain just formed this picture of a street sign from an inner city, Do. Fir [an admittedly awkward shortening of Douglas Fir]. And suddenly it was something I could wrap my brain around. It was suddenly something my American, urban-centric worldview could do justice to, and, hopefully, that would strike a chord with my similarly brained fellow Americans (and hopefully Europeans and maybe beyond). And with the seed firmly planted, I went about researching the hell out of the Darfur conflict, trying to tear down my own preconcieved ideas, and build a more thorough and thought-out idea of the conflict as a whole. And what I came upon was basically that the corrupt, dictatorial leader of Sudan was abusing a minority section of his people because they dared rise up against him when he was obviously giving them a smaller portion of resources and representation in his government. And because they dared rise up (and actual kick the crap out of his military), he encouraged militias to burn down the towns and villages where these revolutionnaries lived (or might have lived). Throw into this my own juvenile conviction that janjaweed militias to me always sounded like an unclever cover up for ganja weed drug dealers, and you've got the basic idea. So I started with the dialogue. Dallaire was my angry gut reaction. The Governor was his quiet, political counterpoint. Khalel was the intelligent, researched and most importantly freedom-obsessed part of my psyche. And Marley, for all his emotional wonder, comes from the actual reformed janjaweed militant "Ali," who came forward and gave several interviews describing the horrible things he had done and seen when he was with the other janjaweeds. But really, I suppose, I could have answered the question with this question: what if this was happening here? And I'm almost positive that was more information than you wanted. But that's what happens when you flatter an author with questions about where his ideas come from (and yes, half-dreamed stupor is a common element in that). Nic Back