I have now re-written about sixty percent of the old novel AeroQuest. I published AeroQuest 1 : Stars and Stones in September. AeroQuest 2 : Planet of the White Spider was published yesterday in October. AeroQuest 3 : Juggling Planets will probably take longer than either of the other two. The story has to be elongated. The growing rebellion of the pirates and smugglers trying to establish the New Star League need time to grow their rebellion. In the previous edition of this book the flower blossoms almost before the shoots are out of the ground. I need to develop the rebellion with more planets and systems with reasons why they want to leave the icky old emperor and establish a space-born democracy. And this novel series isn’t merely a parody of Star Wars or an imitation of Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. It is also its own version of a space opera with unique characters and plot-lines that are entirely Mickian in their non-sensibility.
Ged Aero, the main character and most important protagonist, is revealed in AeroQuest 2 to be the new White Spider, a prophet-like teacher fulfilling a century-old prophecy by leading twelve young disciples into the state of near-perfection of their psionic mind powers. Adventures where these twelve student-disciples learn stuff they need to know need to be added to the original story.
Each of the first two re-written books is about 35,000 words. The original novel is about 120,000 words. I will need to add a lot more than just the re-write of 50,000 more words. And I want to keep the books approximately equal, so I will be aiming to increase the total to at least 140,000 words by writing two more 35,000-word stories. And it may be enough more than that to fill five total books.
If my run-away cancerous imagination is not reigned in, I have at least three more book-length story-tumors to add in beyond that.
So, I have enough to do. My Tuesday blog plan will still be going for a while.
I am nearing the completion of the rewrite of part two of AeroQuest. Part of that is getting all the illustrations I want to include done. So, here are a few more that I have been working on.
For those who might be wondering, AeroQuest 1 and AeroQuest 2 are comic science fiction, and I have chosen to rewrite them with lots of illustrations since it is a work of fiction that I might’ve done as a graphic novel if only I didn’t have arthritis in my hands.
I do draw some pictures from models, photos, or other illustrations… but fantastical things that you can’t find a model for are what occur most often in my stupid head.
I was back in a classroom yesterday as a sub. 6th graders. It did look an awful lot like this, but I was holding another teacher’s giant pencil. This is the ski-jump on Valwood Parkway in Farmer’s Branch. I merely changed the railroad tracks into a stream.I taught all three of these kids when they were thirteen, but one in ’81, one in ’92, and one in ’94. Oh, and not on Mars.No models were used in this picture, though I did know several blue children.Done without a model, unless you believe 3″ tall fairies are a real thing.No werewolf girls posed topless for this picture.This classroom photo was entirely in my stupid old head, not in a school gymnasium full of snow.Even the mountains in the background were drawn directly from my mind’s eye.A lot of what I draw is merely emotional flim-floogery and provides a look inside of me that makes a portrait of me drawn even more naked and vulnerable than if I drew myself nude.
As I continue working on my work-in-progress, I get ideas for how I am going to make a cover for it. I have kicked around ideas and even tried executing a few of them. And when I say that, it doesn’t mean I literally kicked anything or shot anything in the head. I did drawings and thought seriously about how to put them together.
Remember this one? I drew this because my current novel has two people in it that claim they are actually dragons in human disguises.
One of those people is the girl Fiona Long, who goes by Fi most of the time. She is an aggressive red-headed girl who makes the boys cringe on occasion. She tells them her real name is Firefang, and she’s a red dragon wearing a human meat-disguise. Of course, the boys in Norwall, Iowa immediately believe her, because dragons are so common in Iowa.
So, I took these two image-ideas and slapped them together.
Oh, I forgot to mention, the story happens in 1976, the Bi-Centennial year, and the story climax happens during the 4th of July celebration.
I wasn’t really happy with how this first one looked, so I tried a second shot at putting them together in a slightly different manner.
Of course, the novel is not yet done. It is maybe only half done. So, for that reason, the cover does not have to be done also. And it does bother me a little that the title is The Boy… Forever, and yet, I have a picture of a girl and a dragon on the cover. Maybe Icarus needs to be in the picture too. Icarus Jones is the boy from the title. So, I need to work on that, and maybe redo the whole cover. We shall see. And that will make a possible future blog post too.
The Chinese Dragon that I have drawn for today is a part of the planned cover illustration for my work in progress, The Boy… Forever.
But it is also more than that. The villain of the story claims to be a dragon in human form. And even though this may be a metaphor-like lie, it is an apropos symbol of the underlying conflict that informs almost all of my work. There is always, it seems, a hidden evil that is far more dangerous and life-consuming than it portrays itself as. The blizzard in Snow Babies, the real werewolf, the murderer, in The Baby Werewolf, suicidal depression in When the Captain Came Calling and Sing Sad Songs, and the serial killer in both Sing Sad Songs and Fools and Their Toys all kill other characters in my stories. They all bear the stamp of the evil dragon, magically powerful and dangerous in ways that guns alone cannot protect you from. They are evils embedded in human nature. They are the dragon that the White Knight of the story must defeat.
So, I show you this dragon today as a way of acknowledging my own dragons that must be fought.
Let me begin by reminding you that the only head I have to explore as an example of what I am talking about in this essay is my own stupid head.
So, this is not an insult post. This is self-deprecating humor. And therefore, the contents of your own stupid head are completely safe.
Now, there is considerable evidence in the books already that Mickey is not, and has not been, particularly stupid for a large portion of his time on earth. He got college scholarships based on his ACT and SAT scores to get his undergraduate degree for free (in the 1970’s when it was significantly cheaper than now). And he has been both a teacher in a gifted program and the middle-school coordinator of that same gifted program. So, Mickey has effectively fooled everybody into thinking he is not stupid. But consider for a moment where the laughs come from when watching Stephen Urkel on TV, or the four nerds from Big Bang Theory. Smart people do stupid things and are very awkward at times, proving that, no matter how smart they are, smart people are capable of being quite stupid.
What, then, is the stupid thinking in Mickey’s stupid head?
Well, there are a number of things. Mickey is, as you may know if you read any of his nudity blogs, obsessed with nakedness. He was assaulted as a child in a way that caused him to be afraid of nudity and slow-developing in sexuality. As he grew older, he had to compensate for this lack of natural development. So, he has reached an age where his brain stupidly rejects guard-rails when talking about nudity and sex. He has convinced himself that he wants to be a nudist, and writes about nudity constantly, as evidenced by this very paragraph. When Mark Twain was in his seventies, he did leave the house without remembering to wear clothes more than once. The neighbors did not compliment him for doing that. That and worse is probably in Mickey’s near future.
And sex, as a subject sloshing around in a brain awash with hormones and other nightmare chemical imbalances, leads to a rash of stupid decisions. Of course, Mickey is old and has had chronic prostatitis long enough to eliminate the possibility of making a stupid decision about infidelity since those body parts don’t actually work anymore, but it leads to buying numerous things sold by marketers using sex as a way to sell things. Cabinets full of hair gel and cologne and Herbalife products that can never be used up is the result. And the wife is frustrated with the foods Mickey is constantly addicted to. “Why so much chips and salsa, Mickey?” Chips and salsa? Hubba hubba!
And Mickey’s old brain, full of a vast quantity of useless trivia-type knowledge, random wisdom floating around in a disconnected fashion, and prejudices formed by a bizarre obsession with things like nudism, Disney movies, comic books, model trains, and doll-collecting, becomes strangely creative. He begins to believe weird things.
For example, he thinks rabbits, if they were suddenly transformed into people, would make better people than people ever do. They are mostly quiet most of the time. They eat an all-vegetable, healthy diet. And they don’t vote Republican.
He obsessively also thinks about how his mind is working and how thinking about thinking is likely to improve thinking. He even realizes that the map of his head, provided above, doesn’t accurately reflect the many branching corridors and dead-end hallways of his actually-complicated-yet-stupid mind. He thinks that thinking too much about thinking makes you stupid.
I have illustrated this entire piece without uploading any new art… What a stupid thing is that?
And finally, Mickey is left with a sense of wonder about how it is entirely possible that everybody is stupid at least part of the time. And he wonders what possible things that you, dear reader, are thinking about that you consider at least somewhat stupid? You are welcome to tell him in the comments. But remember, this post is about stupid thoughts in Mickey’s head. You are perfectly free not to worry about your own stupidity.
Don’t make the mistake of thinking I have any advice to offer about how to do what I am doing. First of all, I can’t claim to be successful at it. Also, I am doing it all by instinct, not by study and planning. All I am really doing this for is to show you my favorite pictures.
for The Boy… Forever
I basically draw the pictures before I write the story down in paragraphs. The story exists already in my head, and the pictures help it gel in my mind before it comes out in fiction form.
An illustration for AeroQuest 2; Planet of the White Spider
The Baby Werewolf
I particularly enjoy drawing the characters, giving them actual, physical substance so that they exist not only in my stupid old head, but also on the page or on the screen to allow them to be in front of my eyes.
Snow Babiesfrom Superchicken From Sing Sad Songs
The Book Cover itself
Being able to illustrate can be a way into producing covers for myself that have as much chance at catching the reader’s eye as anything else that I do.
People tell me that my artwork is enchanting and that they like it.
They are, hopefully, not all lying when they say that.
Magical Miss MorganRecipes for Gingerbread ChildrenThe Bicycle-Wheel Genius
Rowan, Iowa is a place full of memories. I was a boy there, from the time I was four and began remembering life until I was 24 and life in the real world moved to distant parts the focus of what I called “Home”.
As my life continues, long past the time I figured I would be allowed to live by my six incurable diseases, I find myself living more and more inside my own head. Truly, my failing physical health has isolated me more and more from the people I know and have relationships with. Instead of spending hours upon hours at work every week, I find myself confined to my bedroom where I maintain breathable air, doing little beyond reading and writing, watching movies and shows on Netflix, dreaming, remembering, and imagining. My “real-world” life has been ever the less active and ever more confined to a small space. But in my head, the opposite is true. I have lived in memory; revisiting places that have been changed or torn down since, and spending time with people whom I still see as children even though they are now grown in real life with children of their own, and spending time talking to people who live no more, anywhere but in my memory.
Some of those to whom I am talking are actually me, fictionalized versions of me, imagined as if something different had happened to me, or I had chosen different roads less traveled than the ones I actually walked upon.
Some are, naturally, people whom I have loved, seen through different colored lenses than I saw them when I saw them with my physical eyes.
And it is most definitely possible to see and re-interpret the things that happened to us in a very different light than the ones I saw it all in during the 1960’s and 1970’s. It helps to be able to put on the old time-traveler’s glasses to look again, not at how it really was, but how it really ought to be.
Everything I have just rambled on about in run-on sentences of purple paisley prose, is writer-thinking. It is the very thing that most probably goes on in your head too, since you are likely only reading this blog post because you are a writer too, and you find value in the ramblings of an old man who used to be a writing teacher and is now, very definitely, one of the goofier varieties of writer whom you can learn significant lessons from (even if only what not to do, because you are not as stupid as I am when it comes to writing).
Many of the things that happen now in my silly, stupid old head happen in places like the planet Mars or on board a star-ship headed to other parts of the Orion Spur of the Sagittarius Spiral Arm of the Milky Way Galaxy.
I often live, as well, in the part of my head that is entirely made-up from galvanized, sauteed, or even moldy pieces of imagination. I live in places like the Mothership of the Telleron Explorers now in orbit around the planet Galtorr Prime. Or Animal Town in the middle of the country of Fantastica where I met my wife, seen here as Mandy Panda from the Pandalore Islands.
Or even in the Willow-Tree Fortress known as Cair Tellos, the Capital of the Fairy Kingdom of Tellosia in Wright County, Iowa.
Living in the world when your body betrays you constantly can be horrible and hard. But living inside your head is easy. And I actually plan to do more of it before the final page is turned in the Book of my Life.
All art on this planet (with the possible exceptions of paintings by monkeys and elephants, and the songs of whales and dolphins) is about people. What is art, after all, if it is not a reflection of who and what we are?
“Tell me a story with our people in it.”
I am the man from the setting sun who comes from the past to deliver the future.
Every bit of art I do now is done as my own mortality, the end of my own story, is soon to reach the final page. I have lived six decades complete and have begun to live the seventh. I am close to the sunset. But I have wisdom to share from a lifetime of struggle, and reversals, and successes, and joy. And in a dark time when it appears the world could actually be ending, I wish to do the only thing I can to help, provide pictures and stories that might prove useful to you.
“We are beautiful as the day is ending, because the day was worth living in.” “Magic, like lightning, infuses the sky with that which makes us wonder. What is it? How do I use it?”What we are is based on what we were. Our hopes for the future have their foundation in our past. We only have to see it and identify it. Then we can build on it.Why am I obsessed with naked people? Because naked people are exactly what you see. Naked hides nothing, and honesty is like sunshine, the more we walk in it, the healthier we become.
Laughter is an essential part of who we need to be and how we deal with where we need to go. Laugh at mistakes, and chuckle with satisfaction as you correct them.Life is like Moose Bowling because… in order to knock down all the pins, you have to learn how to throw a moose!Art exists because it simply has to exist. My art exists because I exist. So, my art exists because you all made the mistake of allowing me to exist.
So, all art is about people. Even the art with no people in it. That art, at least, has a creator who was most probably a people… or a monkey… or an elephant.. or a… well, you get the idea, don’t you?
Catch a Falling Star 
The Dragon Within My Writing
The Chinese Dragon that I have drawn for today is a part of the planned cover illustration for my work in progress, The Boy… Forever.
But it is also more than that. The villain of the story claims to be a dragon in human form. And even though this may be a metaphor-like lie, it is an apropos symbol of the underlying conflict that informs almost all of my work. There is always, it seems, a hidden evil that is far more dangerous and life-consuming than it portrays itself as. The blizzard in Snow Babies, the real werewolf, the murderer, in The Baby Werewolf, suicidal depression in When the Captain Came Calling and Sing Sad Songs, and the serial killer in both Sing Sad Songs and Fools and Their Toys all kill other characters in my stories. They all bear the stamp of the evil dragon, magically powerful and dangerous in ways that guns alone cannot protect you from. They are evils embedded in human nature. They are the dragon that the White Knight of the story must defeat.
So, I show you this dragon today as a way of acknowledging my own dragons that must be fought.
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Filed under artwork, commentary, humor, metaphor, monsters, novel plans, Paffooney