They're almost everywhere these days; some you catch sight of just on the edge of your vision lurking under some shrubbery while others can be seen frozen in the act of crossing the lawn. On occasion you'll even see them standing stock still with a lantern raised in one hand, peering frozen into the night at whatever spell it was that snatched them out of time.
Their garments show a uniformity, if not an inclination to conformity, as they are of the same cut and all made from the brightest of the primary colours. But no matter how similar their garments might be, clothes are still the only way to distinguish one from the other. Identical beards, hair, hat, and features would make them look to be the largest egg split on record or the smallest gene pool in the world.
I'm talking about garden gnomes of course, those ridiculous statues that are the butt of so many practical jokes in movies and in life. But what if there were actually garden gnomes who existed, whose life work is to tend to gardens that us Big People don't seem to be able to cope with?
Parker Owens has written a book based on that what if, called Gnome Harvest. Will is your average gnome with a bald spot on his head, invisible to humans, and obsessed with the garden assigned to him ever since his parents disappeared.
He lives his life according to the dictates of the mysterious assembly known as the Gnome Council. It would probably be more accurate to say that he lives his life in fear that the Gnome Council will find out about the rules he's broken, or that he won't live up to their standards.
And well he should; he flagrantly disregards the Council's edict about association with rabbits, as he has a type of friendship with a neighbouring rabbit named Roddy. Roddy has bigger things to worry about than what the Gnome Council might have to say about his association with Will — staying alive for one thing, recovering from the loss of his mate and kittens for another, as just the year before they were killed by the farm dog.
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