Notice the white beard? No, it is not really made of yarn and paste. It means Mickey is old.
I was born in November of 1456. That year Vlad the Impaler (yes, the guy who inspired Dracula) killed the Prince of Wallachia and took over his throne, ruling the part of Eastern Europe that includes Transylvania.
Halley’s Comet made an appearance that year, just as it did the year Mark Twain was born, and well before Donald Trump became President of the United States. Before even the comet itself was named by the Astronomer Halley. So if it was truly an omen of the end of the world, it came more than 500 years too early. Maybe that’s why it has to keep coming back around
The Ottoman Empire tried to march into Albania and take it over, but the outnumbered forces of Skanderbeg defeated them at the Battle of Oronichea, proving that bullies don’t always win.
And codpieces were in fashion, proving that men lack any sort of fashion-sense whether it was back then or even now, more than 500 years later.
But, of course, you knew all of that without me telling you. It was an eventful year.
So Mickey is now 561 and 1/2 years old. You’d think by that age he’d have learned not to tell lies or exaggerate things by 500. No such luck. But perhaps I can explain how this particular purple hoo-haw came to be.
You see it began in a classroom back when I was about 40 years of age. That’s right, in 1496. I was lecturing young Will Shakespeare about not putting his name on other people’s writing (which was doubly ironic, because the plagiaristic lad would not be born himself until 1564).
Young Will responded, “You are old, Schoolmaster Mickey. Shouldn’t you have retired already?”
“Just how old do you think I am?” I responded.
“I dunno, seventy or eighty maybe.”
I practically wet myself from shock. I have long looked older than my actual years. But I never let a chance for a good comeback with a slow burning sizzle added to it.
“Well, actually, I am 540 years old. I have been considering retirement for quite some time.”
“Really?” He looked shocked. So, either he really believed me, as thirteen-year-old English students readily will, or he was a much better actor than he was an original author of school essays.
And ever since that fateful day, I have always exaggerated my age to sound truly impressive. I even went back in time and did the math, figuring out what my birthday had to have been to make what I said to the class sound true.
Now, be warned, this is a story full of lies. But as with any work of fiction, it does bear significant relationships to the truth. I will leave it to you to try to discern what those relationships are.
Pay tentershawn to Dingle when he schtumms, koz when he schtumms he schtumms from eggzspearie antz.
Catch a Falling Star 
The Way Mickey’s Mind Works
If you’ve read any of the crap that Mickey wrote about before in this goofy blog, you probably already suspect that Mickey’s mind does not work like a normal mind. The road map above is just one indicator of the weirdness of the wiring that propels Mickey on the yellow brick road to Oz and back. He just isn’t a normal thinker.
But having a few bats in the old belfry doesn’t prevent the man from having a plan. If you read all of Mickey’s hometown novels, you will discover he hasn’t written them in time order. Main characters in my 2016 novel weren’t even born yet in my 2017 books. If you look at them in chronological order rather than the order written, you will see characters growing and changing over time. A shy kid in one novel grows into a werewolf hunter in the next. A girl who loses her father to suicide in a novel not yet completed, learns how to love again in another novel.
Multiple Mickian stories are totally infected with fairies. The magic little buggers are harder to get rid of than mosquitoes and are far and away more dangerous. And there are disturbing levels of science-fiction-ness radiating through all of the stories. How dare he think like that? In undulating spirals instead of straight lines! He doesn’t even use complete sentences all the time. And they used to let that odd bird teach English to middle school kids.
But there is a method to his utter madness. He started with the simpler stories of growing up and learning about the terrors of kissing girls when you are only twelve. And then he moved on into the darker realms of dealing with death and loss of love, the tragedy of finding true love and losing it again almost as soon as you recognize its reality. Simple moves on to complex. Order is restored with imagination, only to be broken down again and then restored yet again,.
And, of course, we always listen to Mr. Gaiman. He is a powerful wizard after all. The Sandman and creator of good dreams. So Mickey will completely ignore the fact that nobody reads his books no matter what he does or says. And he will write another story.
It is called Sing Sad Songs, and it is the most complex and difficult story that Mickey has ever written. And it will be glorious. It also rips Mickey’s heart out. And I will put that ripped-out heart back in place and make Mickey keep writing it, no matter how many times I have to wash, rinse, and repeat. The continued work is called Fools and Their Toys. It solves the murder mystery begun in Sing Sad Songs. This re-post of an updated statement of goals is the very spell that will made that magic happen. So, weird little head-map in hand, here we go on the writer’s journey once again and further along the trail.
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