The Thirteenth Hour books
Joshua Blum
When I was a kid growing up the 1980s and early 90s, there was nothing I loved more than watching some of my favorite films -ET, The Neverending Story, The Last Starfighter, Spacecamp, Back to the Future, The Rocketeer, Labyrinth, The Flight of the Navigator, Some Kind of Wonderful, Real Genius, and so on. I still like all those films today, but it’s interesting looking back as to why I liked and watched them over and over again (as one does as a kid). I come from a mixed race background - not a very mainstream thing in the 80s - from a family with strong immigrant work-ethic values. Life was about frugality, working hard, preparation for tough times ahead, and grinding out the day. I learned a lot from my folks about hard work and not giving up in the face of endless adversity, but if I were being honest, I couldn’t really identify with many of the characters in those films on a personal level (as much at the time as I might have wanted them to, none of them looked like me or had a similar family background to mine). Still, something in those stories spoke to me and helped me see beyond my everyday existence. In an age before the internet, they helped a shy kid see that there was something more out there in the world - possibility, hope for a better tomorrow, and the existence of a world not necessarily bound by the limitations of the so-called adult world, which seemed grey, and imposing, and frankly, pretty boring. Eventually, I started creating stories of my own. That’s howThe Thirteenth Hourcame about - a story I’d been telling myself in some way long before I decided to write the first draft in 1998. Creating just a book seemed too restrictive when this was a world I experienced in my mind through images, sound, and motion. That’s why there are illustrations inThe Thirteenth Hourbooks, soundtracks to go with them, and toys to play with (since what kind of 80s-inspired property would it be without an associated toy line?)
