Category Archives: humor

February 11, 2022 · 2:49 pm

Banned Breakfast-Table Talking

Prinz Flute22

At Mother’s breakfast table we were always encouraged to talk about stuff.  That was a given.  It was how families operated in the 60’s and 70’s.  Mom and Dad not only listened to the mindless drivel coming out of the childish mouths of me, my two sisters, and my stinky little brother, but they also tended to hold forth about things they wished to teach us. We learned Methodist-Church-flavored Christianity and Eisenhower-Republican values.  Ike had been president when I was born and got most of the credit for the post-war boom in the economy.  We were middle-class people with solid middle-class values.

And then I had the bad sense to grow up and start thinking for myself.  Nixon had let me down big-time when I was in high school.  I had defended him against my McGovern-leaning loony liberal friends.  My best friend was a preacher’s kid, a Methodist preacher’s kid.  His father actually believed in progressive nonsense about sex-education for children and helping to feed the poor.  And then Nixon turned out to be a liar, a coverer-upper, a cheat, and a bad-word-user.  I suspect, though my Dad never admitted it, that he may have voted for Carter over Ford.  It was my first time voting, and it actually felt good to use my vote to strike back at the party that betrayed my trust.

Religion, too.  In the late seventies a man named Carl Sagan put on a TV show called Cosmos.  The man bedazzled my father and I with Science.  He taught us that every molecule of us was composed of atoms that could only have been forged in the cosmic furnaces in the centers of stars.  He showed us how spectroscopy of the stars could show us what they were made of.  He showed us the meaning of Einstein’s special Theory of Relativity.  He pulled the universe together for us in a way that could not be undone.  And he did it without calling upon the name and blessings of God.  But he pointed out that we are connected to everything in the universe and everything is connected to us.  To me, that seemed to define God.  My religion was changing from Christianity to Saganism.  Of course, Mom heard that as “paganism”.  Breakfast table talking changed into early morning arguments.  We didn’t exactly throw chairs at each other, but some pretty heated and pretty large ideas went flying through the air.   Religion and politics became the banned topics at the breakfast table.

tedcruz  So that brings me to the Paffooney points for today.  This blog has turned into a place where a disobedient son, a horrible sort of “free-thinker” type of radical hippie pinko goofball, can talk about the loony-liberal progressive ideas that have taken over his good-little Eisenhower-Republican little-boy mind.    I spent the last post talking existentially about my religious beliefs.  My conservative, old-fashioned friends and family call me an atheist now, but I truly believe in God.  It’s just, I recognize the factors behind Christian myths.  I bow to the wisdom of Scientists like Sagan, Neil DeGrasse Tyson, and Stephen Hawking… as well as hippie psychologists like Alan Watts… and literary heroes like J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S, Lewis.

Will_Rogers_1922I am proud to be an Iowegian (a Mickian word for being from Iowa), yet my birth-State produces gawd-awful Tea Party politicians like Steve King and Joni Ernst.  The stuff that comes out of their mouths doesn’t even make good fertilizer.  But they are comedy gold.  Will Rogers would have pointed out that the jokes will write themselves.  All the humorist would have to do is consult the front page of the newspaper.  I also live in Texas where the debate over secession from the United States still goes on with new Governor Greg Abbott, a man who is a Rick Perry clone, except that he hasn’t bothered to put on glasses as much to make him smarter.  And Texans are looking forward to the next Republican president in 2016.  Both Rick Perry and Ted Cruz are running.  That doubles Texas’ chances, right?  With Global Warming not being accepted as a real thing, the need for giving all our money to the Koch brothers and the Walton family being recognized by both parties in Congress, and looming war with foreign nations that have the bad sense to be “Muslim in nature”, the future looks kinda bleak.   But it is a great time to be a humorist, and I am guessing I won’t be doing very much talking at the breakfast table for a while.

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February 9, 2022 · 9:51 pm

The Storyteller

The doctor looked at me with a pained and worried look on his pasty white face.

“Um, okay, I don’t know how to tell you this, but…”

“Well, if you don’t know how to tell it, then maybe you should look at the notes you made one more time.”
“Yes, okay, tell about your major symptoms one more time.”

“Well, Doc, I don’t seem to be able to explain anything to anybody without using complicated metaphors, similes, or timely literary allusions.”

“That’s why you began, “It was the best of times and the worst of times?” When you visited the first time, I mean.”

“Yes, with somber Dickensian overtures to the grim details of the London streets in summer. I didn’t feel like myself, since I live in Texas.”

I grinned at him and continued in a sad voice.

“And what’s worse, when I go to sleep, I dream dreams where there is a horrifying beginning, a mysterious ramble in the middle, and I can’t wake up until I have achieved a satisfactory conclusion.”

“I see.” the doctor said.

“Yes, first I see, then I take what I saw, and use the saw with hammer and nails to build a setting. And then I stir up some doughy memories and add highly conflicted seasoning, stir vigorously, and then bake it all into a plot.” I grinned as I said that sadly.

“Did you try the medicine I gave you last time?”

“Yes, I did. I read what I already red while I was writing, and the red pills helped me spot where the plot’s crankshaft was wobbling. A minor revision with the blue pills of clarity, and then a huge dose of the green pills of proofreading. After a while the engine of theme and meaning was purring.”

“Do I detect a bit of pun infecting your system?”

“No, I took the read pill while reeding.”

“Okay, I get it. A bit of dyslexia perhaps?”

“Possibly. Or perhaps pernicious practical punnery.”

“Ooh! Let’s hope it’s not that bad. Please continue.”

“It seems I have a lot of voices in my head. They are constantly telling me things about their lives. Sometimes deeply personal things. This one voice is a young girl who reminds me distinctly of a student I had back in 1994 and 1995. She was a very strong-minded young woman who definitely got her head together around the time she was thirteen and fourteen. She may have had a slight crush on me. But she had a hard time with a number of tough hands that life had dealt her in the poker game for all the marbles. It was a sort of extended poker game with the old Devil himself. And she was losing. But with a little bit of advice from me, and a whole lot of life lessons from her to me, she learned how to beat the old Devil himself. And this time the Devil was not just in the details, but also at the poker table of Life. And he cheats. But she beat him anyway. And I found I had so many things and notes and story-parts from that, that I needed to write a book about it. And when I did, it was never enough. I had to write another and another.”

“Yes, I believe I am getting the whole picture now. By the way, that’s Valerie in the picture, isn’t it?”

“It’s supposed to be, yes.”

“I see. …But leave the saw on the table, Mickey.”

“So… so, what is the matter with me, Doc?”

“Well, I hate to break it to you like this, but you want me to be completely honest with you, don’t you?”

“Yes, just give it to me straight, Doc.”

“The bad news is, Mickey, that you are an incurable novelist. You can’t help yourself at this point. You are seriously infected with storytelling.”

“Is it fatal, Doc?”

“Probably. You will definitely have this disorder until the day you die. There is no cure. There is only editing, editors, and the joy of publishing that can help you now. You just have to take it one day at a time, one story after another, from now until the final chapter ends.”

After that, I felt better. There was no cure, but at least I knew the prognosis.

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Filed under humor, irony, metaphor, novel plans, novel writing, Paffooney, self pity, self portrait

February 9, 2022 · 4:55 pm

Architecture for Clowns

Try not to be upset with me for drawing a naked lady. You see, she is not really a lady, she is a caryatid, a stone pillar for holding up a building.  Besides, I have been recently very ill, and drawing naked ladies makes me happy, even though it is a sin and means I will probably burn in hell.  I am a hopeless sinner in this regard.  I got kicked off Pinterest for liking an oil painting of a naked lady.  I think it was a painting by William Adolphe Bouguereau.  How could I be so terrible?  You should check out my post about his sinful, horrible paintings so you can see how terrible I am for yourself. (Bouguereau)  carytidOf course, This post is not about naked ladies at all, so why am I fuming and ranting and telling all my darkest secrets about that?

This post is about architecture, about giving structure to things, about holding things together and holding things up.  Is it clever that I drew this picture of an ornate pillar and placed it in this post so it looks like it is standing on later paragraphs and holding up the introduction?  I find weird surrealist things like that help me write stuff that makes a few people laugh.  It helps me because I can focus on nonsensical side-stuff like that (mixed up with obscure puns and alliterations like “pillar” and “placed” that, when cooked together with goofy rhythms in over-long sentences end up sounding funnier than they really are), and then I can say stuff that is actually funny because I don’t realize how wrong, or weird, or silly some of these words I am futzing it all up with truly are.  (And I am amazed that the Pinterest police haven’t come and kicked me off WordPress for using a word like “futzing”, even though they don’t know what it means.  Heck, even the spell-checker didn’t object to the word!)

But someone like me who is trying to be funny needs structure more than anyone else you can think of.  Why?  Because the sad-clown-crying-on-the-inside is so very true.  The dark dips of depression… pain, illness, and more pain… family stress from others in my family who also suffer…  That’s what makes the laughing so very necessary.  You need the lighter stuff to fill up the room (somewhat like a really big fart) because you depend on the sheer buoyancy of it to lift the entire house up and keep it from sinking to the very center of the earth.  (And the stink of it can also help keep you awake when otherwise you might never get out of bed again)… (But please don’t light any matches around my house.)

So, in conclusion, this stuff I write does have basic structures, basic rules.  It has a beginning, a middle, and an end.  It has a theme, a point that needs to be made,  And then it needs to end with some kind of a kicker line or punch line… because when that finally hits me square in the face (like a pie thrown by a pie-whacker clown), it helps me remember… I am still alive, and I can still laugh about it.

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February 8, 2022 · 2:24 pm

On a Frosty Morning

Frosty Morn

Yes, there was frost on the ground in the Dallas suburbs today.  A bit of fog too.  And I mean that both literally and figuratively, in a very Robert Frost-ian sort of way.  The air was clean and cold and crisp for a change.  I could see, hear, breathe, and think well for a change in this gawd-awful city of death and decay.  It was poetically, virtually, and monumentally a moment of clarity… such clarity that only three adjectives could possibly be enough to provide the complex understanding of my Robert Frost moment.

My typical apology for living, and for writing this, and for making you read it comes in the second paragraph today.  You have to forgive me for being so much of an English teacher.  Do you know who Robert Frost is?  Frost is a great american poet who won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry four times in the 20th Century.  Does that really tell you who Frost is?  Of course not.  Only this does;

The Road Not Taken

a poem by Robert Frost

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim
Because it was grassy and wanted wear,
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,,
And that has made all the difference.

Yes, like Robert Frost, I took the road less traveled by in life.  Having a gift for creative writing, drawing cartoons, and generally being seriously silly and obtuse (and claiming that meant I was funny), I chose to not  be a novelist and cartoonist when I was young.  I chose to be a school teacher.  Of course, if you pin me down and ask me, requiring me to answer before you let me up, and threatening to spit on my nose if I don’t answer, I will tell you that God really decided I needed to be a teacher.  After all, I developed arthritis that effected how often and how long I could spend drawing.  I had the usual novelist’s problem of a keen awareness of how to write, and no real life experiences to write about.  But even though it was a holy mission from God, it was my own decision to become a teacher.

And look what I got from it.20150216_152544  This is a picture of Freddy.  I started this picture in 1986, drawing the portrait from a photo and from real life.  Freddy was a vato loco from Cotulla.  He is the sort of kid that teachers dread.  He is the kind that if you let him sit in the back of the room, he will shoot spit-wads into the girls’ hair… but if you put him up front, he is constantly putting on a show, a stand-up-sit-down-again comedy routine for the entire classroom.  And I had the honor of being his favorite teacher both in his seventh and eighth grade years.  He made me laugh almost as much as he was laughing at me.  He claimed he was a Mexican even though he was born in the U.S. and has always lived in the U.S. and if he goes to Mexico, they won’t understand his Texican version of Spanish without an interpreter.  (Now, you probably already know that I never use real names of people I write about in order to protect the innocent… or in Freddy’s case the only-mildly-guilty.  But I haven’t actually revealed his name in this post.  Alfredo Giovanni is such a common name in Texas that you will never be able to find him through research.  And Alfredo Giovanni is a name I made up anyway.)  By the time I actually put the color on this picture, Freddy will no longer look even remotely like this.  He’s in his late forties and Hispanic.  He probably weighs at least ten times what his tiny self did back in 1986.  But I was honored to know him and teach him, even though I have more than a few gray hairs on my head that he specifically caused.

And that brings me to my final movement in this classical opus.  Here is the difference I have made by choosing the path I chose.  Now that poor health has forced me to retire from teaching, and I have a limited time left to me to pick up the novelist/cartoonist thing again, I have done so with passion and insight that I would not otherwise have had.  I have crafted a novel in The Magical Miss Morgan based entirely on my experiences as a classroom teacher.  It is the best thing I have ever written in my life.  And one of the main characters, the rapscallion leader of the Pirates’ Club, Timothy Kellogg… is Freddy in fictional form.556836_458567807502181_392894593_n  Oh, it is true that the character is the son of a high school English teacher in my story, and he does have a lot in common with my own oldest son… but he is actually Freddy.  The things he does and says (translated from Texican into Iowegian) and thinks and feels, are all Freddy.  And how do I know what Freddy thinks and feels?  Come on!  I was Freddy’s favorite teacher.  There is no way I would still be alive and sane unless I could read minds.

Two roads diverge on a frosty morning pathway in the park… One over the bridge into an entirely different life that I didn’t choose… and one that leads straight on into the new dawn… whatever the consequences of following it.

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February 7, 2022 · 2:30 pm

People All Have Worth

2nd Doctor  I know that you are probably immediately listing all the reasons that my title is totally wacky monkey-thinking in your head.  And if you want to lay into me in the comments, you are more than welcome.  But the reality is that teachers have to develop the mindset that all kids can learn and all people have value… no matter what.  That can be hard to accept when you factor in how corrupted, warped, and badly-taught so many people have turned out to be.  It honestly seems, sometimes, that when faced with the facts of how people act… being violent, or greedy, self-centered, thoughtless, un-caring, and willfully stupid… that they really don’t even have value to others if you kill them, let them rot, and try to use them as fertilizer.  The plants you fertilize with that stuff will come up deformed.

But the Doctor I have pictured here, the Second Doctor played by Patrick Troughton always seemed to find Earth people delightful.  Alien people too, for that matter, unless they were soulless mobile hate receptacles in robotic trash cans like the Daleks, or mindless machines powered by stolen human brains like the Cybermen.  There is, indeed, music in every soul, even if some of it is a little bit discordant and awkward.  And people are not born evil.  The classic study done on Brazilian street kids showed that even with no resources to share and living empty, hopeless lives, the children helped one another, comforted one another, and refused to exploit one another.  As a teacher you get to know every type that there is.  And there are stupid kids (deprived of essential resources necessary to learning), and evil kids (lashing out at others for the pain inflicted upon them), and needy kids (who can never get enough of anything you might offer and always demand more, MORE, MORE!)  Sometimes they drive you insane and make you want to resign and leave the country to go count penguins in Antarctica.  But the Doctor is right.  No matter what has been done to them, if you get to know them, and treat them as individual people rather than as problems… they are delightful!  Andrew

So let me show you a few old drawings of people.

Cute people like Andrew here.

Or possibly stupid and goofy people who never get things right.

Harker

Or long-dead people who made their contributions long ago, and sacrificed everything to make our lives different… if not better.DSCN4448

Supe n Sherry_nOr young people who live and learn and hopefully love…

And try really hard at whatever they do… whether they have talent or not.

Player3

And hope and dream and play and laugh…

And sometimes hate… (but hopefully not too much)…

And can probably tell that I really like to draw people…

Because God made them all for a reason…

even if we will never find out what that reason is.

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February 2, 2022 · 9:04 pm

Messing With Paper-Doll Art

I remember a time when you could get a card with a cut-out paper doll on it, and pages and pages of doll clothes with the little tabs all over them. On the internet you can find all sorts of old paper-doll doobiddies that somebody copied or scanned. There was a time when, growing up with two sisters old enough to play with and a baby brother who wasn’t good for much but crying at night and pooping on stuff, I have to make a confession, I did girly things. Back then I often resorted to playing with dolls and making dolls by cutting them out, and making them less naked by cutting out clothes with the little tabs, and often pasting them on because we forget the little white tabs were not supposed to be separated from the clothing.

This Annette Funicello paper doll, just like one my sister once had, was made from a scan of the back of a box of 1950s Cheerios. I borrowed the thing from Pinterest, printed it out in color with my printer/copier/scanner, and then pasted it to cardboard before cutting it out.

The clothing, mostly dresses, I left on mere paper and then cut them out to dress and re-dress Annette. For instance, I like this cowgirl get-up because I saw the episode where Annette and Darlene were working jobs for teens at a dude ranch. That was fascinating to me at age thirteen. Yep. And you could take the clothes off the paper doll again, though you couldn’t actually make the doll naked, since she had yellow gym bloomers under her clothes.

I decided that if I was going to make art from paper dolls, that I wasn’t limited to pre-made dolls from other artists. I took some of my own drawings, copied, cut out, and pasted them to cardboard. Here you see young Prinz Flute, Mandy Panda, and little Henry.

This little cutie is Luz from Owl House on Disney+. But don’t sue me, Disney. She is borrowed from fan art on Pinterest, so it’s fair use of copyrighted material that actually gives you free advertising.

Where this anime nudie cutie actually came from, I do not know. But she fits Annette’s striped skirt.

As much as I would like to make a paper doll of this Shirley Temple doll, I cannot in good conscience do it since I traced this image to a site where the paper dolls are advertised for sale.

Still, it might be worth the money. My sisters had one of these too.

I will just have to be satisfied with whatever I can make from this little guy/girl? public-domain character from the 30’s. You can make wonderful things out of something like that.

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February 1, 2022 · 5:19 pm

He Rose on a Golden Wing… Canto 1

This novel, my new work in progress, was not the original choice to fill this space on Tuesday’s NOVEL WRITING posts. It is not like novels I have written before. It will be longer, deeper, and probably more controversial. It will also probably not be a stand-alone story/ It will be deeply intertwined with When the Captain Came Calling, Snow Babies, and Sing Sad Songs, my previous Valerie-Clarke novels. The Cantos will not be short and will be titled with Classical music. An emphasis will be placed on thematic development and character development. And I may not do more than a few Cantos here.

Prelude and Opening Movement

Just because you cannot see someone knocking on your front door anymore, it doesn’t mean they are totally gone from your life.  In fact, sometimes the most important people in your life are the ones that you can’t touch anymore… the ones who don’t sit down at the dinner table with you anymore… the ones you can’t talk to and have them actually give you an answer anymore…  the ones who will never actually kiss you ever again.

That’s why Valerie Clarke was crying in her bedroom.  It was why she was awake with her eyes closed early into the wee hours of the morning.  It was also why she hadn’t really been aware when the racing thoughts and weepy sighs turned directly into a conversation with her angel.  It was as if Michel Volant was a part of her every-day living world.

“Why are you crying, Mon Cher?  What solace can I give to thee?”

He flapped his large white wings only once, and the swirl of cool night air helped draw away some of the heat on her face because she had been crying, and cooled her body down just enough to drain away the tightness and stress.

“Because they’re all gone, Michel.  I have nobody left.”

“Who has gone?  You mean Mary and Pidney because they have gone to College in Cedar Rapids?”

“Yes, my two best friends from high school are gone far away.  But not just them.”

“Danny Murphy because he has fallen in love with the Bates girl?”

“Yes.  He was never my boyfriend.  But he made me laugh.  And he doesn’t have time for me anymore because of Carla.  He’s deeply in love with her, and won’t risk making her jealous.  I had no closer friend when I was twelve and he was thirteen.”

“But surely there are others…”

“No.  Really, there are not.”

“You mean?”

“You I know.  But…” Valerie’s eyes were open, but seeing only the darkness of the bedroom.  “I was in love with him too.  And he was… he never got to… Oh!  I can’t even say it.”

“But I was him and he was me… for a time.  So, I know he was deeply in love with you.  But he had no choice.  A hematoma in the brain that the doctors had missed…”

“And before him it was Tommy.   He came with the blizzard, and left with…”

“But you knew he had a mission in life.  He had to go.  And perhaps he will return one day.”

“He never asked me if I would let him go.  Or if I wanted to go with him.  Now, I don’t even know if he’s still alive.”

“He is.  That boy was made of iron.  He was stronger than any adult you ever met.  At least, stronger of heart.”

“And I have lost so many adults in my life too.”

“Your mother is still here.  And Uncle Dash.”

“But there was Catbird.”

“The old hobo from the blizzard?  The man with the crazy-quilt for a coat?”

“He was so wise and so good.  But when the blizzard was over… he was gone.”

“And who else did you lose?”

“My cousin Stacy.  I could talk to her about anything.  And Uncle Dash drove her away because…”

“Because she fell in love with the Toad, Brom Brown.”

“Yes…  And don’t forget Ray Zeffer.  He simply disappeared.  Remember how he saved me when the Voodoo Guy was tricking everybody?”

“The first boy who ever saw you naked.”

“Well, the first non-cousin boy.”

“And before that?”

Valerie’s eyes were blurry with tears.  Did that mean this wasn’t a dream?  Do you get blurry vision in a dream?

“Daddy…”

“Yes.  You found him in the barn…”

“And the gun was still there…”

“Oh, Ma Belle, I’m sorry to make you remember.”

 “Why did he do it?  Was it because of something I did wrong?  Was it my fault?”

“This I do not know.  But I think not.  And you must remember, the pain of losing someone is caused by their value to you.  If it hurts that much…”

“…Then that’s how much you loved them.  I know.  The pain will never go away.  He left me without ever even trying to tell me why he had to go.” She could say nothing more.  Her whole mind was full of tears.  She laid her head on his soft bare shoulder, and he folded his wing around her.  And then she realized that she was awake.  It was not so much a shoulder as it was a damp pillow.  And she desperately needed him to come back.  Her heart was broken.  Even her angel had left her behind.

Can I do this? This is going to be the hardest novel to write that I have ever yet written. I had to write it to answer critical questions I have about my own life. But reading this through for the fifth time, I still had to stop and cry three times. It’s worse now that both my mother and father have died. But if I can mend Valerie’s broken heart before this story is over, then it will more than be worth it.

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January 31, 2022 · 6:15 pm

Bad, Bad Mickey

My writing has generated some bad reviews of late. Things I am not sure have very much validity, but are a part of public opinion you have to learn to live with. I recognize as an experienced public school teacher, there are always going to be people who automatically hate you for no reason, and will be motivated enough to find a reason, and even get you fired if they can.

The critics are not going to get me fired in this case, since I am a retired school teacher and no longer teaching. And I live on a pension, not the money I make on my novels (currently between $2.50 and $5.00 a month) so getting them banned from Amazon has no financial consequences.

My book The Baby Werewolf got a two-star review from a lady who claimed to have worked in publishing and editing. She said she hated to give a bad review, but my book was so unprofessional and bad that she had no choice but to recommend that nobody else ever reads it. She said it had too much telling rather than showing, an unprofessional cover, and a story that doesn’t have a coherent plot.

But she also says that my book, a horror comedy, is too creepy. And she qualifies that in that she thinks it’s creepy in ways that a horror story shouldn’t be creepy. She objects to humor involving Sherry Cobble, the nudist character. She says that she has no problem with the idea of nudism, just the way I use it.

So, I think, what it boils down to is she is not so much shaming the novel for being a bad novel, but she is saying that I, as the author, am either too stupid to effectively write a novel like this, or that I am a bad person with evil motives for writing a novel like this. So, she got me! Curses! Foiled again!

I do take note of the fact that this novel has also gotten glowing reviews from some other readers. So, I guess my evil plan worked on them. Whatever that evil plan was supposed to gain me, it must be working more often than it is foiled.

That happened again this week with my novel The Wizard in His Keep. It is due to get a two-star review via Pubby review exchange. I don’t know what the reviewer has found so offensive and wrong about my book, but it must be pretty serious in that Amazon has not yet approved that review after almost a week.

I have a fair amount of confidence as a writer. I have written things that won awards from editors. I have made the final round of judging in a novel-writing contest twice in the last decade. Whatever bad thing they are going to throw at me next, I can take it. There are no writers, even the great ones, that don’t get at least some unfair criticism. It can really hurt when the bad review is one of only eight total reviews. And bad reviews can make me depressed. But, I promise it won’t kill me.

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January 29, 2022 · 5:56 pm

Why This Picture?

This is a character from the novel The Boy… Forever. Icarus Jones is based on a kid I mentored back in the 1980’s. His real name was Jose. He was incredibly curious and good at skateboarding. He went to college at Notre Dame.

This picture was inspired by a piece of pottery I saw in 1994 in New Mexico on my way back to Texas after visiting my sister in California. The background is an imitation of the glaze on the pot. The Native American Boy is drawn from a model in a Sears catalog, one that was wearing a polyester t-shirt and narrow jeans.

These are all students I taught my very first year as a teacher. Teresa would even get a teaching degree and come back to teach in the same school district as me, though in the elementary school, not the middle school where I taught.

This is a picture inspired by a dream of being alone on a tropical island with a native island girl. Fifteen years after drawing this picture, I married a girl from the Philippines.

This began as a doodle while watching Max Fleischer’s animated movie Hoppity Goes to Town. I turned it from a pencil doodle into a pen-and-ink illustration that morphed into a comic fairytale.
This was a classroom rules poster illustrated with a portrait of Hilda, a very quiet and intelligent student who was the first of a family of eight kids of which I taught the youngest seven. The only one I didn’t teach joined us as an English teacher a decade later. Hilda never told me if she recognized herself in the picture even though she sat in my class for a second year while it hung on my wall. (I taught both seventh and eighth graders for a number of years.)

Dilsey Murphy is a character based about 85% on the older of my two sisters. The 81 is the number of Minnesota Vikings defensive end Carl Eller. My sister and my father were rooting for the Vikings as I rooted for the Kansas City Chiefs in Superbowl IV after the 1969 NFL season. I am still not allowed to gloat over who won.

This is a portrait of the main villain in the Disney version of Treasure Island. That book is the one that really hooked me on reading novels in the winter of 1966. I read Grandma Aldrich’s copy of the book illustrated by N.C. Wyeth that February while I was sick with the flu.

The background of this picture is my last actual classroom at Naaman Forest High School in Garland, Texas. I used it for this illustration of Mike Murphy and Blueberry Bates in my novel Magical Miss Morgan.

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January 25, 2022 · 4:59 pm

Novel Writing Going Forward

The Necromancer’s Apprentice is now finished and being edited for publication. So, the chapter by chapter serialization is now ended. The previous work AeroQuest 4 : The Amazing Aero Brothers is also finished and awaiting final edits for publication.

So, I need a new book to put on this Tuesday blog-spot.

Most of the novels I have put through this Tuesday process have been like AeroQuest 4, novel projects with big problems that require a lot of rewriting and editorial work.

Since I finished AeroQuest 4, I have been using Tuesdays for my main writing project, the first two being relatively short novellas. The most recent one was intended to be a novella, but turned into a short novel. If I follow the original plan, the next book I will use here is AeroQuest 5 : It Ain’t Over Yet.

The second choice would be to use my next main work in progress. That would be some version of this book;

But this novel is going to be a lot longer than any of the things I have been using for this purpose. Cantos or Chapters are a lot longer than is wise to use as a daily post. Do I use smaller chunks of chapters?

I have doubts about this method, but the post for next week would already be written if I do that.

So, by next Tuesday… I will have an answer.

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