Monthly Archives: August 2015

August 11, 2015 · 2:42 pm

R.D.G.

I have discovered treasure on Netflix.

It should come as no surprise to you that I am as enamored of Japanese Anime as any cartoonist nerd-boy has ever been.

I told you already about Astroboy and the old movie The Magic Boy (1959). Now witness my newest Anime/Manga love.

If you watched the opening in that video, you will see right away the first, best reason I have to fall in love with this moving painting, this gloriously subtle Japanese art print set to motion and music. If you like that opening sequence, you have to see the first season ending sequence as well. Izumiko slowly and elegantly walks as spine-tinglingly exquisite melancholy music plays and gallery-quality scenery behind her is interspersed with unfurling fans. You have to see it to understand what I mean. I’m sorry I did not find a YouTube version to post. But you can find it at the end of every episode you watch. Wait a minute! What do you mean you didn’t watch that opening YouTube video? Don’t make such a mistake! Go back and watch it right now! Oh, you did watch it? Okay. But go back and watch it again. Believe me, it is that good.

My sister Mary, the archery coach, may guffaw at the way Miyuki draws his bow, but, hey! That’s actually the way the Japanese teach it. Everything in this cartoon show is stunningly realistic. And everything is subtly building up to a story that is wholly surreal and unbelievably touching. Look at how it combines with popular music in this YouTube highlight reel;

It is filled with wizards and warlocks, spirit creatures and Japanese nature goddesses, and a conviction that love and goodness will find a way to win out.

The story is about a young girl, Izumiko Suzuhara, who has been raised in mountainside isolation at Tamakura Shrine, an otherworldly place in a beautiful forested landscape. She has an unusual problem. She short-circuits electronic devices, burning out the school computers and breaking every new cell phone her family gives her.

A family friend visits as she is trying to make the decision whether to go to the mountain village high school or go to the Tokyo school her absent father and mysterious mother have recommended to her. The friend leaves his son, Miyuki Sagara to be her protector, though she doesn’t understand why she needs a protector, or why they have chosen a boy she has always believed hated her. He has been a bully to her in the past. But Miyuki has studied to be a yamabushi, a mountain monk, since a very young age. It turns out that Izumiko is chosen to be the vessel of a Kami, a good spirit who protects and empowers the world.

There is no way to adequately explain why this Japanese cartoon is so good and so necessary to be viewed by anybody and everybody I can put the word in with… It is one of those, “you-know-it-when-you-see-it” things.

Timeline – Finale

So how do I end this little trilogy of timeline terror? I have to fit in the remaining novel projects that are related or at least partially done. And the unrelated ones too. I have way more in the Mickian bag of tricks than I will ever have the magic-using years to actually use. The thing about wizards is that, by the time they have accumulated all the knowledge, wisdom, and arcana that it takes to do the wizardry, they are already old and near to death. How much time is left for the actual magic? I have been living this weekend in fear of imminent stroke. But I believe the random brain pain has actually turned out to be sinus problems. So here are the projects that finish the timeline and are the projects least likely to get written and published.

Connected to Catch a Falling Star is its sequel, Stardusters and Space Lizards. This is a novel I have most recently been trying to finish. I am in the home stretch at 40,000 words. It is the story of the failed Earth invaders continuing their journey to another planet, an even worse place than Earth. Galtorr Prime is the planet of the humanoid lizard people. Their world is on the very brink of extinction by global warming, toxic politics, and war. The remnants of the Telleron aliens who tried to invade Earth and their Earther-human friends not only have to make a colony for themselves here, but have to save the planet itself as well. It is a cautionary-type science fiction tale in the same comedy-young-adult-novel genre as Catch a Falling Star. It also happens in the early 1990’s (intended to mean the time on Earth which is not relevant in any case).

The next novel is Monstro, a ghost story in which the Norwall Pirates have to take on the Lonely Ones, the spirit-echoes of the crazy people of the past in a haunted farm house that awakens to feed on the living. The story is more than half written, but is looking at a near total rewrite to make it conform better with comedy young adult fiction. It is set in the mid 1990’s, around 1995.

None of my Hometown Novels will go beyond the 20th Century. Monstro is ostensibly the last of the novels.

I am a science fiction writer as well, though. The first book I ever published, Aeroquest, is set more than three thousand years in the future, at a time when the Orion Spur of the Sagittarius Spiral Arm of the Milky Way Galaxy (where Earth has its street address) is largely colonized and thoroughly inhabited. As the novel now stands (a sorry mishmash that no decent publisher would’ve ever printed) it is in need of a total re-write and make-over. It is a novel that I humorously say is about teachers in space… though I do realize that “humorously” has to be qualified as a big bald-faced lie.

So this is run-down in time order of all the stuff I want to do as an author. How much gets done in reality is anyone’s best guess. Who knows? I may live another twenty years and finish at least one novel every year.

Timeline – Part 2

You may remember that yesterday I was giving a run-down of my various Home Town Novel projects according to the order they supposedly happen in real time (measured in years). Here is what I went over yesterday;

Superchicken, set in 1974, the first Home Town Novel that I completed.

The Baby Werewolf (also possibly titled The Wolf in the Attic), set in the Fall of 1974, not yet completed.

The Forever Boy, set in Spring 1975, not yet written in manuscript form.

Sweet Pickles, set in the Fall of 1974 and Spring of 1975, half written, but possibly too graphic to publish.

Under Blue Glass, set in 1977 and not yet written in manuscript form.

When the Captain Came Calling, is set in 1983-84, the manuscript is currently at 25,000 words and being worked on.

And the novel I am editing for publication this week, Snow Babies, set in the Winter of 1984. Snow Babies is the story of how the small town survives the raging blizzard and faces the prospect of freezing to death. Valerie Clarke, in the picture above, is the central character in a large cast trying to avoid being the one the snow spirits have come to claim.

The second generation of Norwall Pirates, the boys’ club of dreamers, goofballs, and liars, have come to be led by a girl, Mary Philips and Valerie is the second girl ever to join the club.

The next novel has undergone two transformations. It started as a book called Little Boy Crooner. It is about an orphan from France who comes to live with ne’er-do-well Iowegian relatives. Homesick and deeply troubled, the boy has discovered a natural talent for karaoke, and has a voice that people come from miles away to hear. Then, the clowns of the Dreamlands began invading this story and had to be renamed. It is now called Sing Sad Songs… with Clowns. I may, however change the name to just Sing Sad Songs.

Sing Sad Songs and the next novel in the series, Fools and Their Toys, happen at the same time in 1985-86. They not only share a setting and many of the same characters, but they share a villain and many of the same plot-shaping events. They are, however, very different stories.

Fools and Their Toys is the story of autistic Murray Dawes. Because he has never really been able to communicate before, his turning point comes when a new member of the family, an adopted little brother, makes for him a ventriloquist’s dummy in the form of a zebra. He calls it Zearlop and uses it to unleash the hidden intelligence that was there through all those years when other people thought he was retarded. Unfortunately, just as Murray is blossoming, a serial killer comes along, targeting young boys. More unfortunately still, some from the area believe Murray may be the killer.

Leadership of the Pirates is passed from Mary to Valerie. And in 1988 I have set my current contest novel The Magical Miss Morgan. Valerie passes the leadership of the Pirates to her highly imaginative and extremely annoying cousin Timothy Kellogg. Tim is a the second most important character in the story of the teacher, Miss Morgan, who loves to teach. Miss Morgan is the sister of original Pirate wizard, Milt Morgan. Because of her brother, she inherits responsibility for a local war between good and evil fairies, while at the same time trying to save her job from evil principals, parents, and school board members and teach a lesson or two worth remembering forever. This full manuscript novel is currently being judged for the contest, and will be submitted for publication after.

Tim Kellogg is one of two main characters in the next novel, The Bicycle-Wheel Genius. Orben Wallace, the inventor, is the title character who may have accidentally created a time machine. The novel is set in the years from 1988 to 1990, and it is about how the genius’ old inventions come back to haunt him as he tries to solve the problem of having invented a time machine, having worked on mysterious government projects, and having helped to fight off an alien invasion. This novel is also complete and merely awaiting the proper time to get published.

Catch a Falling Star is the published novel that started this blog and my dream of making it as a novelist. It is set in 1990 and tells the story of when the Telleron alien empire of frog-like fin-headed aliens fail to invade Norwall, Iowa because they hadn’t reckoned on meeting the Pirates.See Catch a Falling Star on Amazon here.

I guess I leave it here for today. It seems there is enough more to fill another blog… Part 3.

3 Comments

Filed under aliens, characters, clowns, humor, Iowa, novel plans, NOVEL WRITING, Paffooney, publishing, Snow Babies, writing humor

Tagged as bad novel writing, humor, Paffoonies

August 8, 2015 · 3:13 pm

Timeline

Editing my novel Snow Babies has led me to realize that I need to align the events and character progressions in all the related Home-Town Novels. So here is a feeble attempt to make sense of the wealth of crap that this whole project has generated.

The first novel in the series is called Superchicken.

This story is about a boy who comes to live in the small town of Norwall, Iowa and struggles to make friends and fit in with a close-knit and inter-related group of sixth, seventh, and eighth graders. It contains the origin story of the Norwall Pirates, a boys’ gang and liars’ club who cause most of the chaos in the story. It is intended to be an Iowa-River version of Tom Sawyer, a picaresque novel where the main character uses his natural instincts to try and gain the recognition of the world that he exists and has worth as a person.

The second novel is not completed yet. It is a story called The Baby Werewolf. It is about the Norwall Pirates pursuing an encounter with a very unusual child shut away in the attic of an aging house by the harried adults in his life.

All of these stories are humor novels written for a Young Adult genre audience. This one, however, also introduces elements of the horror genre.

Three more unwritten novels exist between this set of Norwall stories and the next set which introduce a whole new group of Pirates. Of the original Pirate stories there is an encounter with immortal beings who are somehow more than human and include a villain who is secretly an un-dead Chinese wizard looking to kill and consume another immortal who has taken refuge in Norwall. This novel does not yet have a name. The working title is The Forever Boy. Another novel involving the Pirates is called Sweet Pickles. It takes up the story of a girl nicknamed Pickles who is desperate to be loved and joins the junior high football team to impress boys. The novel includes the sexual awakening of more than one member of the Pirates, and though it is half-written, it may never see publication. I am not a pornographic writer, but the issues of this book have become so explicit, that it would have to be gutted and rewritten completely to be acceptable to my chosen genre. A more likely story is Under Blue Glass, the story of the Pirates handling their teens and high school and the excitingly horrible prospects of leaving home.

The next set of Pirate novels cover the 1980’s. The Captain Came Calling is about the reformation of the Pirates with Mary Philips, the story-teller’s little sister, taking on the daunting task of leading the Pirates through a new decade. South Pacific island magic brings the cursed Captain Noah Dettbarn to a farm town about as far away in all of North America as you can get from any ocean. The captain is cursed with invisibility and has to get to the bottom of a terrible family secret to cure it. Meanwhile, another terrible secret is destroying the family of Valerie Clarke, the main character of the novel.

Snow Babies is actually the second novel of this group, although it is the second novel being published. I will talk more about it as the process goes along and it actually reaches a state of publication.

After that comes a group of unwritten novels that are nebulously plotted out. I am thinking I probably need to declare halftime on this post at 600 words and do the second half of this timeline tomorrow.

Humor Without Insults

I am not one who can stand to watch Republican debates. I know the clown car is full to busting, but I can’s stand the idea that one of those narrow-minded, fact-free, duplicitous Bozos could end up being the next president. (Or fascist dictator, when you consider what “fascist” actually means, and what former President Carter has said about the U.S. not being a democracy any more.) If one of those clowns wins it, the true power will once again reside with the unseen ring master, like it was with the rodeo-clown George W. Bush and his secret puppet-master, Dick Cheney. And I pay enough attention to know that Donald Trump was so insulting to women during the debate, that Democrats can pick Beelzebub to run as their candidate and women still won’t vote Republican.

I watched the final Jon Stewart Daily Show instead. Stewart is more liberal than I am and uses a lot more bad words than I ever could, but his humor and politics are far gentler and kinder than anything coming out of the mouths of name-calling conservatives. They uniformly say terrible and untrue things about President Obama and Hilary Clinton. They don’t hold back from calling even their own Senate leader a liar (a la Senator “Slappy Happy” Ted Cruz.and Senator Mitch McConnell). The Donald is a master of the crude and inappropriate slam. Look at the unfounded claims he made against Mexicans and the cowardly way he impugned the honor of Senator John McCain. Jon Stewart mocks them by taking their own actual statements and putting them beside the verifiable facts to show the absurdity of their political beliefs and goals without casting insults. Yes, I love his turtle voice for aping Mitch McConnell, but there is a gentleness to his wit that shows affection for his subjects rather than laying waste to their psyches with crude insults and unfounded accusations.

I had to learn the kind of humor I’m extolling here as a classroom teacher. You cannot believe how fragile the little animals can be when you resort to calling them names. A growing, developing, vulnerable psyche cannot take the random bash and cruel cut the way an adult can (though even an adult shouldn’t have to). You have to learn to be funny by the surprising imagery you use, the comparisons with funny things, and the flat out absurd. And self-deprecating humor is the only kind of insult you can actually get away with. (I even learned that when a student grows to love and respect you too much, even insulting yourself to make a point is out the window.)

Humor definitely has its uses in the classroom. This classroom poster was used both to teach students how to write a quatrain of twin couplets, and also to teach them that classroom discipline was a matter of teaching them how not to be like cockroaches. I am not directly calling them cockroaches. Instead I am telling them that if they choose to use the thoughtless and rather dumb behaviors that are against classroom procedure, they are choosing to be like roaches. Of course, there is always the classroom clown like Steve-O Whoopsadoodle (not his real name, but a name he called himself) who glories in being like cockroaches. You also have to learn to laugh at them politely and give them their few minutes of fools’ fame.

So, to sum it all up, humor is a very useful thing in running the world and teaching things to others. It is why I always go for the joke in my writing. The place I am at doesn’t always have to be the happiest place on Earth, but it is a lot funnier and happier without the cruel and biting insult. (Sorry about earlier, George, you old rodeo clown). And if we can just be a little nicer to each other when we make fun, it might turn out to actually be fun. (You are welcome to find all the gaffs and mistakes I made in the old drawing above. I was still learning my craft in 1980. But please don’t call me names over it. I have had all the blue I can handle for one week. I used up the last of it in this last Paffooney.)

7 Comments

Filed under humor, Paffooney, writing humor

Tagged as artwork, humor, insults and humor, old drawings, Paffoonies, teaching, writing humor

August 6, 2015 · 1:52 pm

Making Mickey Happy

I have to admit to being a little blue yesterday. Not “literally blue” because most days I look nothing like my Paffooney portrait here to the left. I said a little blue, as in slightly depressed. Not weeping and roaring with sorrow depressed… more like needing to softly sing to myself sort of depressed. I wasn’t depressed for valid reasons. I was mistaken about the writing contest results. The dental insurance also covers more of what we are going to owe for the privilege of having teeth than I was at first led to believe. So my deep blue hole yesterday was imaginary and all see-through-y if I had been sane enough to look properly. But, Mickeys are like that sometimes, getting all bothered about things they really shouldn’t get bothered about.

So, today, determined to still be sad for a reason, I began to list other things that I could conveniently be sad about. There was school news about an 8-year-old boy in Kentucky being handcuffed by an officer in school and crying because it was hurting him. That social media outrage led me to an article about school discipline. “Schools as Punishing Factories” Reading that made me bitterly depressed. I have witnessed the truth of that article in Texas where teachers can get in trouble so easily when they try to advocate for kids, especially black and Hispanic kids. I have seen talking back to the teacher, throwing spitwads, and disrupting lessons become reasons for students to be escorted away in handcuffs. I like to pretend it is because principals and policemen and community businessmen can be rather stupid sometimes, and not because there is a concerted effort to use the school experience as training for black and Hispanic, as well as poor kids to prepare for the second part of their life, the life they will lead inside prisons for profit. As a teacher who loved kids, even the bad ones, I am truly depressed about this trend in America. I have white friends in both Texas and Iowa that want to tell me that I am the one who is wrong, not the system. Their conservatives beliefs are stronger than any eye-witness evidence I can give them. So… even darker blues and more depression. My contest novel is about a teacher like me trying to fight the way things are and teach the way teaching should be done. I must comfort myself by telling myself that my book will change peoples’ minds and make the problem get solved. If I just lie to myself hard enough, like those friends who tell me “throwing money at the problem of failing schools will not fix the problem” lie to themselves… a lie I know is false but want desperately to believe anyway, then I can make it true.

So, how do I make Mickey happy? Well, luckily Mickey is goofy. I went to Walmart and finally found the doll on sale that I had been searching for. I bought Operetta. the daughter of the Phantom of the Opera to add to my Monster High collection for only $9.95. And Mickey is seriously addicted to doll collecting. It makes him happy and turns him away from despair when other things probably can’t. I am not forgetting about the education fight. Oh, no! Mickey’s dander is up on that. And he will bombard you with his writer wrath about that another day. But forgive me. I need to be happy a little right now. And Mickey needs to play with dolls.

6 Comments

Filed under doll collecting, humor, Paffooney, teaching

Tagged as discipline in schools, doll collecting, education, humor, paffooney, photo Paffooney, teaching

August 5, 2015 · 1:46 pm

Mickey’s Blue Summer

Okay, this is not going like I had hoped. Medical bills are overwhelming. Impacted molars are going to cost my family over three thousand dollars when we still can’t afford bills of bigger than 50. And I got word today that I did not win in the Chanticleer Book Reviews novel-writing contest. I was beaten out for the prize by Elisabeth Hamill’s book Song Magick.

I am bummed out. It is not that I expected to win that contest, but Magical Miss Morgan is a better book than Snow Babies, and that one at least made the list of finalists. I seem to be getting further away from the goal. If I placed, or got a prize in that contest, I would at least get the attention of literary agents and big publishers. Perhaps it is God’s wish that I remain an unknown novelist who makes no money at writing. It is consistent with His divine sense of humor. The angels get a good laugh whenever I fall on my figurative face for wishing too hard for money and success. God wants people to be happy being poor. Right? That’s what Republican politicians in Texas keep saying.

But if I keep playing the same sweet-sad songs and singing in the lonely darkness… at least I can make a melody or two that lifts the souls of my fellow dwellers in the dark.

But, wait a minute… something is not right here! Why are the winners the same ones they told me about a couple of months ago? Ms. Hamill’s book is also listed on this… 2014 list? Did I jump the gun? Look at this list for me; Dante Rossetti Awards

Am I wrong, or does that say these are the 2014 winners? There’s the due date by which I sent in my novel for the NEXT COMPETITION in 2015! That means I won’t actually hear about my novel until next summer! Hang dang it! Both bad news and good news in one fell swoop. So, I am not out of the running yet. Perhaps there is time to do more and be more and write more after all!

6 Comments

Filed under humor, Paffooney, self pity

Tagged as adventure, humor, Magical Miss Morgan, novel writing, Paffoonies, self pity, writing contests

August 4, 2015 · 2:06 pm

Psoriasis, the Disease of Choice for Sith Lords and Zombies

Of all my six incurable diseases, psoriasis is the one least likely to kill me, and also the one I hate the most. It tortures me daily and makes me wish I could take off all of my skin and switch it out for an entirely new set, like a suit of clothes. Seriously, does it come in Brad Pitt? How about blue? That would be special.

Psoriasis, for those of you lucky enough not to know this, is a skin disease where the skin develops little volcanoes of dead skin cells. They become white or silvery or red flaky patches that continually erupt, crack, and embarrass me to no end. People like me who suffer from the disease become rather paranoid about letting our spots show. I look like a pink and white Dalmatian at times, and I end up wearing long sleeved shirts in summertime Texas where it gets to be 104 degrees in the shade on a regular basis. No more swimsuits for me. No more shaving or haircuts either. I accept being called a hippie or a dirty bum now because it is easier than making people understand about my disease and its consequences. I itch constantly. Whole areas of my body burn with skin irritation and make people draw back in horror if they see it, mostly because of the erroneous perception that I might infect them too.

It is a disease of the body’s immune system, and it can’t be transmitted by contact in any way. It is more of an inherited thing passed on from my parents or grandparents… though it probably was greatly aided in plaguing me because I am also diabetic. I cannot infect anyone with the disease… though I don’t enjoy the reaction I get when someone sees the large patch of psoriasis I have on my lower back. It is a horrible, decayed-looking open sore that takes practically forever to go away. I also enjoy a healthy crop of psoriasis patches on my private parts… the reason I often spend alone time sitting naked at the computer, writing and complaining about stuff, and trying to be funny about stuff like death and psoriasis, while all the time trying to avoid the urge to scratch and make it worse. There is probably a snowbank of dead skin flakes under my bed by now… I’m afraid to look and see what might be growing under there. If I decided to be a Sith Lord like Darth Vader, I don’t have to burn off all of my skin before I put on the suit. The crusty patches and scarring are already in place for the big take-off-the-helmet scene. I could also probably win a part on the Walking Dead TV show because I wouldn’t need as much skin make-up. But I would certainly be willing to forgo these wonderful opportunities if there were a way to suddenly get rid of this disease. Unfortunately, I think that is not exactly what the word “incurable” has in mind.

So what’s the point of sharing this beyond the gratuitous gross-out value of the humor? Well, that’s probably exactly what I had in mind, but I hope you will also realize that I am not the only person in the world who has this disease. Many people have it worse than I do. Children have it far more often that seems fair by the standards of karma. Maybe, when you meet someone who has the problem, you could be a little nicer to them. They are not lepers or plague-carriers. They are not infectious. And they could use a little more understanding…a little more love.

15 Comments

Filed under humor, Paffooney, psoriasis

Tagged as 6 incurable diseases, colored pencil, disease, explaining psoriasis, humor, itching, Paffoonies, psoriasis

August 3, 2015 · 2:03 pm

Working on Snow Babies

I really don’t have to put very much into this blog since most of my 500 words are already taken up with novel editing. So I will just put in a few comments on this novel that has consumed me since 2012. It is called Snow Babies

because it is basically about lost children and a blizzard that threatens to take them away completely. Now, there are fantasy creatures in the story, child-like ghost-things that come in the teeth of the blizzard to take away the souls of those who die in the cold. But the title actually refers more to the child characters in the story, Valerie Clarke (as seen above) and the four runaways from the Trailways bus. It is a story of survival during a blizzard, and survival when you have lost the ones you love. It is also a story of quilts… patchwork quilts… of many colors and varieties all stitched together seemingly at random. Because that is what life is like. Random stuff. Stitched together…to make something beautiful that can save your life in the cold.

This novel was submitted in manuscript form to the Chanticleer Book Reviews novel writing contest for Young Adult fiction. The contest is called the Dante Rosetti Awards as seen in this logo. The book didn’t win, but of the many manuscripts submitted it made it all the way through to the final cut and was a finalist in the contest.

I am currently working with editor Jessie Cornwell of PDMI Publishing to get the book ready for print. I hope to have it published soon. Clay Gilbert, Managing Editor of PDMI LLC recently did a profile on me because of my upcoming book. Here is the link for that;

Portals and Pathways by Clay Gilbert

Let me leave you with a look at the frost spirits from my novel.

I hope you don’t feel hopelessly mooned by that, because there are worse things that Snow Babies can do than that.

1 Comment

Filed under humor, NOVEL WRITING, Paffooney, Snow Babies

Tagged as humor, novel characters, novel writing, Paffoonies, publishing, revision, Snow Babies

August 2, 2015 · 2:28 pm

Being Old Enough to Know Better…

I am the man from the Setting Sun,

Come to the future to deliver the past.

What does that even mean, that silly little two-line poem I wrote twenty years ago? Am I not old enough to know better than to create a snippet loaded with goofy contradictions? Apparently not. But I am old enough to deliver the past. I have been around long enough that I remember when President Kennedy was assassinated. I saw Neil Armstrong take that “small step for man” on the surface of the moon. I have learned a number of lessons from the past. And as a writer, I can deliver those lessons in the form of stories. I was born in a different century. I have been around for more than half of one… approaching two thirds. I have collected all kinds of wonderful things in my goofy old brain. And make no doubt about it, with six incurable diseases and being a cancer survivor since 1983, my Sun is about the set. So, I have a mission, to open the eyes of people who are too foolish to avoid listening to what I have to say, or to read what I have written.

I saw The Sound of Music starring Julie Andrews in the Cecil Theater in Mason City, Iowa in 1965 when I was not yet ten years old. I heard the song My Favorite Things for the very first time on the old black and white Motorola TV set in the clip I posted at the start of this post. Kukla, Fran, and Ollie was a puppet show I never missed on Saturdays if I could help it. In a world before video games and computers and even color TV, kids still had priorities. And my world was definitely a world of imagination.

Captain Kangaroo and Mr. Moose

Fess Parker as Davy Crockett, and then as Daniel Boone

Paul Winchell with Jerry Mahoney and Knucklehead Smiff

So, what kind of knucklehead must I be to think younger folks would want to know about any of this stuff from the time of dinosaurs and black-and-white TV? I write books that are basically genre-breakers and about way too many different things to make sense to adults. As a result, I classify myself as a Young Adult novelist, a writer for children… but not the beginning reader kind, or the early chapter-book kind… the kind like Huckleberry Finn, To Kill a Mockingbird, Light in the Forest, or Dicey’s Song. I write books about what it was like to be a kid in the past… the 1960’s, 70’s, 80’s, and 90’s… last century. And I have some knowledge and expertise in this area because I was one of those teachers during that time period that got to know the kids in my classes. I made the horrifying mistake of actually talking to kids, asking them about their lives, and listening to their answers. I talked about all manner of things with all manner of kids… brilliant things and stupid things… with dumb kids, smart kids, smelly kids, charming kids, and the kids everybody else hated. You know… I did all the stupid mistakes that teachers who have no earthly idea how to do discipline would do, and got those kids to learn to behave at least halfway like human beings by being somebody they trusted and respected and… on rare occasions… believed. Right now I am working on Snow Babies. It is set in 1984. And I hope to be good enough of a Sunset Man to be able to deliver it to the future.

2 Comments

Filed under humor, NOVEL WRITING, oldies

Tagged as 60's, 70's, 80's, 90's, good old days, goofiness, humor, imagination, life as a kid, novel writing, oldies

Monthly Archives: August 2015

R.D.G.

Timeline – Finale

Timeline – Part 2

Timeline

Humor Without Insults

Making Mickey Happy

Mickey’s Blue Summer

Psoriasis, the Disease of Choice for Sith Lords and Zombies

Working on Snow Babies

Being Old Enough to Know Better…

Catch a Falling Star FB Page

Recent Posts

Stars We’ve Caught

Catch a Falling Star

Follow Blog via Email

Categories

Meta