About the Author

Hi, my name’s John Denison. I’ve been in book publishing for over 35 years. Watching the Brave New World of Books emerging is rather like being in the middle of an explosion. The book world I knew is flying away and whatever’s next is arriving like a subway train. Hop on or go home seem to be the only choices.

Occam’s Razor is my attempt to hop onto that subway train. As well as wanting my story to be a daily serial I also wanted it to have a Wiki element. It’s about a comic book world after all and I wanted the pages of my book to come alive with artwork , music and videos from folks from all over the world. You can help with that. Sign-up, be a contributor ‐ it’s free and a lot of fun.

I live on a farm near Erin, Ontario. I see wild turkeys, deer, foxes, raccoons, chipmunks, herons and dirt bikes. I’ve planted 25,000 pine trees so I’m carbon neutral.

About the story:

When I was a kid Bob Dylan wrote a song called A Hard Rain’s A- Gonna Fall. It’s a great song full of strange disjointed lyrics like: I saw a newborn baby with wild wolves all around it; I saw a highway of diamonds with nobody on it. Dylan said he thought the world was going to end – this was the height of the Cold War – so he put all the lyrics he’d been playing with into one song in case Hard Rain was the last thing he got to write.

Occam’s Razor is a bit like that. I was playing around with an idea for a comic book where the creator wants to retire. At the same time I had in my mind these five English kids living in America – the Spoil Kids – having adventures out of their dad’s junkyard. Then the idea of a series of nightmares came winging in and somehow all these ideas melted together into one story. I enjoyed writing it and maybe, at the end of the day, that’s what it’s all about.

Originally, the manuscript was full of the word Occam, but it’s one of those words that nobody knows how to pronounce (auk-am), so Major Occam for the most part became the Major which I liked better anyway. I wanted her to be a kick-ass female with attitude and brains but more than a super-hero I wanted her to be human too with feelings and problems and questions.

The fun part was suddenly dressing Veronica, Chester Newport’s daughter, in the Major’s uniform. Her dad had the uniform made so she could accompany him to his inauguration into the Cartoonists’ Hall of Fame as Major Occam. But where the Major in the comic books is brave and reckless, Veronica is shy avoiding the limelight that spills over from her father. Now suddenly she finds herself hurtling into the no-holds-barred comic book world dressed as the Major and her life changes forever: “If I get real again; if I get my dad out of this mess; if I get back home; I am going to be fearless. I am going to fill my life with passion and creativity and adventure and caring and involvement and I am NOT going to be that shy, timid girl I used to be. I am going to be - the Major!”

I hope you like Occam’s Razor. If you do try my other books: Booger, Fartboy and Hanna the President’s Daughter. Buying one of those will help keep me on the farm.

Acknowledgments:

One person can write a book but it takes a bunch to get it out there.

I’d especially like to thank Nick and Sally Forse, Ryan, Trevor and Josh at Forsefield, my web designers. They got the idea for Occam’s Razor right away and ran with it. I’ve been trying to catch up ever since.

Tina Kilbourne and Jason Dickson, both in Muskoka, kept me going when my laptop was up in the air and headed floorward. Gill Stead and Noel Hudson always have good advice.

Adam Christopher and Angela Yuqi Guo did a great job of supplying the first artwork. Ruth Taylor edited an early version. Kirk Elliott and Jane Lewis helped with music.

And of course Family and Friends – filed under Long Suffering – thank you for your unwavering support.

And to my Major ‐ Marie ‐ you’re my super-hero!