There’s something so very American about rooting for the little guy who’s dreaming big.

Kirk Werner, aka Unaccomplished Angler and children’s book author, certainly seems to be one of those guys. [Insert joke about height here.] Ignoring what he might think of me, I consider him to be a shade more than a passing acquaintance, definitely a friend in the fly fishing fraternity, and now role model when it comes to unbridled ambition.

Kirk’s launched a campaign he hopes will lead to one or all of his books based on the character Olive the Woolly Bugger (also a little guy fly) being made into an animated movie. He might just have a shot. Just not for the obvious reasons.

It’s right there in his chosen moniker: Unaccomplished Angler.

Reading Kirk’s blog you’ll see that he’s certainly endured enough heartache at the fins of taunting trout. Though he doesn’t appear to display overt signs of depression, he’s suffered for his work like many a better-known author; possibly putting him in the company of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Samuel Clemens, Virginia Woolf, Robert Louis Stevenson and, fittingly for a children’s book author, Hans Christian Andersen.

And, in my humble opinion, the Olive books — to use industry buzzwords — offer nice pacing; quirky, likeable characters and interesting plot twists.

So, being sucked into Kirk’s delusion of grandeur, I’m not only dropping a little image into the side bar supporting Kirk’s efforts in the hope, but offering public words of encouragement.

It never entered my mind that there may be a commission if this all pans out.