Dr. Eric Haseltine

Who is not a nice character.

No.

No.

Kind of like Iago in Aladdin, right?

Kind of like that kind of character.

And Walter is this genius parrot.

And if you think about it, humans can be geniuses relative to other unions.

Why couldn't an African gray parrot be a genius relative to other parrots?

And where would that take you?

So that's what you have in Walter.

And then there's this other creature we won't say too much about, who's the kind of the villain, who's a fascinating study in what we are not.

That's a possibility or maybe not.

And, you know, really any story is about a person who sets out to do something they want only to discover that what they need is something very different and to confront and overcome their own limitations.

And this is what the story is really about.

It's about this paleontologist who starts off in deep trouble.

He's been fired from his job at UCLA.

He's got no money.

His mother has got a severe chronic illness.

He lives in the way back of beyond Trona, which is where I was born and near where I grew up.

So I'm very familiar with what it's like to come from nothing in that part of the world.