Things go awry,
Like dropping apple pie,
Cause you’re really not too spry,
And don’t know the reason why…
And the pipes have sprung some leaks,
And our house now really reeks,
And fixing it takes weeks,
And even hero Aquaman freaks,
At the water in the hall,
And the dampness over all,
That the fish began to call,
A real big water wall…
But we have done this all before,
And the rain begins to pour,
As our luck flows out the door…
THERE IS WATER ON THE FLOOR!
Filed under angry rant, feeling sorry for myself, humor, poetry
Because I have characters in a few of my books who are nudists, based on people I have met in real life, my books have caught on with naturists, particularly naturists who write novels about naturism. Ted Bun, a naturist writer and operator of a nudist resort in France, has read and reviewed several of my books so far. You can find his reviews using the link below.
http://tvhost.co.uk/reading-writing-and-posting
It is a good thing to have your novels read by others. And I am sorta on the edge of being a member of the nudist community on Twitter myself. Of course, my days of comfortably going nude anymore is limited by psoriasis sores, ill health, and disapproval by family members. So, I guess I can only say I am a fictional nudist myself.
I have also been successfully spending time in schools (with all my clothes on) being a successful substitute teacher. I benefited yesterday from the efforts of an excellent teacher as I successfully conducted a U.S. History class with eighth graders all day long. It is rare to have a day when you don’t actively have to stop and redirect bad behavior at least once or twice during the day. But her well-taught series of classroom procedures made my day easy. I only had to tell them I was instituting her every-day discipline plan, and the classes seemed to almost run themselves. Especially in the two LEAP classes (Advanced Placement) . Those classes were heavily populated by students who are first or second generation Indian-Americans. Perry Middle School obviously has a nearby immigrant community of people who are originally from India. And probably smart, professional people too.
I am also still working on my next novel, A Field Guide to Fauns. I am currently at 8,672 words with 32 pages and three illustrations completed. I have been working on it for almost two weeks. It is the story of a boy trying to recover from psychological abuse while trying to fit in with his father’s new family, a stepmother and two twin stepsisters who are nudists, living as full-time residents of a nudist park. I hope the Twitter nudists will love it, but I am not writing it for them. As always, it is a book I am compelled to write.
I am also losing my eyesight. I have glaucoma. Bright lights now fill my field of vision with haze and blurry spots while floaters swimming in my eyes have me repeatedly swatting at bugs that aren’t there. I continue to have symptoms of Parkinson’s Disease, including minor hallucinations. If school children I am trying to be a substitute teacher for ever find out, they will be repeatedly telling me that the misbehavior I am seeing is all a hallucination. So, finishing visual projects has a new urgency now.
My eldest son talked to friends in Oklahoma this weekend about acquiring cheap medical marijuana for my glaucoma. We shall see if I am to become a pot-head or not.
Anyway… this little essay is rather a mixed bag of ingredients, poured into a stew and loosely cooked together with poorly-written transitions. So, I now have done a pinch of this, a pound of that, and the stew must now marinate its very meat in weird broth. How do you like them apples?
Filed under autobiography, feeling sorry for myself, goofiness, humor, novel plans, Paffooney, teaching
Canto 81 – Mong the Miser-like (The Midnight Blue Thread)
Tara Salongi stood next to the conference table in the reception room of the main hall. She wore a diaphanous blue gown that, with its see-through fabric, was quite revealing of her newly-healed feminine form. In fact, it was the kind of dress that, if this story were a Japanese anime, it would be called fan service. But, of course, it was no more so than the fur bikini she had worn for most of her old life back on Don’t Go Here.
At that moment, Emperor Mong, who had summoned Tara, entered through the double-door entrance.
“Ah, the beautiful sorceress Tara Salongi, I believe,” said the sinister looking bald man with the goatee that came to a sharp point under his chin.
“Yes, I am here. What do you want of me?”
“I am told that Wormheart Toadsucker, Admiral Tang’s left-hand sycophant, delivered you here by giving you over to Lord Dark Doo.”
“That is correct, if I know who you are talking about.”
“But the question is, my Lady, why weren’t the admiral’s specific orders carried out?”
“What do you mean?”
“Yes… whatever do you mean, Mong?” said Raylond, appearing from behind a curtain on Tara’s right.
“Excuse me, Lord King. I do not believe it is business you were supposed to know anything about.”
“Am I not one of the ruling triumvirate of this star system with it’s multiple inhabited worlds?”
“Yes, that is so. But the Admiral…”
“Wait a moment… do you mean Admiral Tang started a business in secret that he didn’t want me or Lord Hardretter to learn anything about?”
“That is correct… er, I mean… It was a local matter from another star system that the Admiral wishes to control… for Imperial security reasons.”
“So, tell me, what is the Admiral’s specific plan involving Tara, whom I consider to be under my protection for now?”
“Um, well… Lord King, the fact is… this woman is a dangerous Psion. The Admiral captured her at great personal risk to himself.”
“I am aware that she is a Psion. But we have the proper shielding capability available to us, do we not?”
“Um, yes… but the Admiral wanted to ship her to the planet Djinnistan where Dr. Havir Bloodlust could possibly use his genetics skill to transfer her unique abilities into a suitable Mechanoid or even a controlled genetic Freak.”
“No sir. I will not have it, sir. She is under my protection. Lord Hardretter and I have discussed ways to use her here on our worlds to better life for all of us.”
“Ah, but since Lord Hardretter isn’t here now, and I have the Admiral’s proxy vote in the matter…”
“Ah, but I am here, Mong.” Smoky Hardretter, the teenage ruler of the system’s manufacturing worlds, stepped out from behind the curtain on Tara’s left.
“Lord Hardretter? Uh, are you suggesting you are siding against me and Admiral Tang with Lord King?”
“That is exactly what I am suggesting. We have use for the cooperative and lovely Psion, and two thirds of the ruling triumvirate can overrule even the Imperial Grand Admiral.”
“So, maybe you should go back to playing with your rot warriors and tin men, Emperor Mong, and leave us to the business most beneficial to the Imperium,” said Raylond King.
Mong, white in the face and obviously frustrated, stormed out of the room.
“Thank you, Lord King. And thank you too, Lord Hardretter,” said Tara.
“Think nothing of it,” they both said simultaneaously.
Filed under aliens, humor, novel, NOVEL WRITING, Paffooney, science fiction
Canto 80 – Jungle Darkness and Damnthings (The Green Thread)
Running and sweating in the jungle darkness had begun to get very old.
“Climb a tree!” ordered King, pounding down the jungle path behind Hooey and Culver. The damnthing, a huge, smelly pig-dog sort of predator, was close on their heels and all three men were beginning to tire.
A large, gnarled tree loomed straight ahead. King leaped and caught its lower branches, swinging himself up into the lower branches like Johnny Weissmuller playing Tarzan on steroids. Dr. Hooey imitated him to the very best of his ability, meaning he was as graceful as a hundred pounds of chopped liver being flung through the air by a baboon that had drunk three too many cups of coffee. The good doctor managed to lodge himself on a branch just above the apex of the damnthing’s leap, though he was hanging upside down by one knee hooked over the branch.
“Help me! I’m the expendable one!” cried Willie Culver as he missed the branches and tumbled butt first into the undergrowth.
“Dang it!” swore King Killer, “I told you that we were ALL going to make it!” He leaped down from the branch that held him directly in front of Willie Culver. “You do not have permission to die right now!” he swore.
Unfortunately, directly behind King, the snorting damnthing lumbered up and came to a gum-gnashing, teeth-grinding halt so close that its spittle ran down into the back of King’s collar.
“Oh, Gawd…” prayed Willie. The pale expendable sidekick scrambled out from under King and used his fingernails to claw his way up the side of a foul-smelling babuti tree. Babutis were an exotic form of alien tree that existed on several jungle planets which sprouted gorgeous orange and yellow flowers, but smelled so bad they made your eyes water like raging rivers. The damnthing moved first to grab Willie, but the smell wrinkled its big pignose and resulted in the damnthing turning its attention to the Corsair King of Killing.
King, partly frozen in place by the vague hope that the thing’s vision was based on movement like he’d seen in an ancient Earther video about a dinosaur park, and partly winding up his interior springs for the leap of his life, slowly turned his head to stare right down the slavering gullet of the huge, nasty pig-dog thingy.
“King, old buddy, you can’t die here either, you know,” admonished Hooey from his upside-down perch.
“I’m working on it,” said King. His legs were taut with stored energy, ready to leap. He vaulted forward at the same instant that the damnthing struck with its big-piggy chompers. The beast growled. King screamed. Big pig teeth pierced the flesh of his shoulder.
“Aaargh!”
“Oh, no!”
“King! My gawd!”
Just as it seemed that the damnthing would devour the King, a sudden flesh-colored flash came blazing out of the canopy on a sort of bungee vine. It was a relatively small boy wearing nothing but some furry animal skins tied around his delicate parts. He grabbed on to King with a grip of steel, and then the bungee pulled them both back up into the canopy, ripping King’s flesh out of the very mouth of death and dismemberment.
The damnthing, stunned in its piggy surprise, blinked twice, and abruptly walked away into the jungle.
“What was that?” asked Willie, clinging to the bark of his smelly tree.
“That would have to be Randy the Jungle Boy,” said Hooey, without missing a beat. “He’s not the only weird character we are about to meet in this jungle.”
“You knew what was going to happen?”
“Well, some of it. I read about it in Googol Marou’s book, which I read in the future. Of course, the timeline has been altered again, so I can’t predict anything with certainty.”
“Why? What’s changed?”
“You were supposed to be the pig-dog’s lunch. So, I guess you have to write your own destiny from here on, Willie Culver.”
Willie’s eyes grew round with sudden fearful gratitude to King Killer. And it would only take another chapter or two for his heart to actually start beating again.
Filed under aliens, humor, novel, NOVEL WRITING, Paffooney, science fiction
Sometimes the fact that you are writing up a storm on your current work in progress works against you in that you have no writing electricity left to spark an idea for the daily blog . So, what do I write about on day like today?
I can’t talk about the previous novel anymore. It is out there now. It is complete, and a part of my over-all body of work.
It is a good one, though. It is funny, full of magic, and action, and characters that I love.
I can’t really talk about A Field Guide to Fauns. It is too new, and I haven’t had time to fully digest what I’ve done in the last four days.
That sort of work in progress is too fresh to have the analysis boiled out of it.
I can show you an illustration from the novel that is new and hasn’t been seen before.
I can illustrate this post with recent pictures used in recent posts, but that doesn’t get me a topic to write about either.
This picture of Randy is an illustration from AeroQuest 3 : Juggling Planets. That’s my novel rewrite which I am working on at the same time as I am doing the current work in progress.
So, I guess there is really nothing to write about today. And I must now end this post by saying, “I guess I am just not going to write a post today.”
Filed under artwork, humor, illustrations, new projects, novel writing, Paffooney
As a retired school teacher who retired for health reasons, I have a limit to how much I can teach. As I substitute, mostly for teachers who planned on being out for in-service training or special educational meetings, I can usually only do two jobs a week. That limits the number of kids you have contact with, especially the more gifted and talented sorts of kids. But that doesn’t really matter much. As a regular classroom teacher I always focused more on making connections with kids, especially the challenging ones. My two jobs this week consisted of sixth grade Science all day on Tuesday, and seventh grade AVID classes on Thursday.
Sixth graders are the rabid squirrel monkeys of the middle-school monkey-house. They are the ones who jump around the most, scream at each other the most, and swing from the light fixtures the most. And if you think of it as being only metaphorically true, you don’t really know much about sixth graders and modern education.
But the coach I was subbing for is very good at discipline. He gave them an article on the organ systems of the human body and told them to to use the annotation marks on his close-reading poster. Now, you and I both know that coaches don’t really walk sixth graders through note-taking and reading-comprehension drills regularly. There’s a reason coaches are more likely to teach Science, History, or even Math before taking on English or Language Arts teaching assignments.
So, I did a quick-teach using the two-page article on how to circle key words, underline main idea sentences, and how to do a SWBS (Somebody-Wanted-But-So Charts) analysis to summarize the article. They, of course, did not do that before in science class, or even in English that they could remember. I basically simplified his fifty-minute busy-work assignment into a simple twenty-minute reading assignment that would take the slow readers longer. So, I had to occupy the smart, quick, and evil kids with something else while I helped the stragglers finish. I drew a cartoon rabbit, a cartoon duck, and a Disney-esque Goofy on the white board, challenging them to copy it.
I got to work one-on-one with several slow readers. Xavier, a hyper, mouthy kid who had dyslexia was tickled pink to learn he could pick out and put together key words and main ideas. He was unable to write the summary, but he annotated correctly, possibly for the first time ever. And that was a break-through for him. I subbed with him in other classes where he was one of the awfullest chandelier swingers, so that connection made a huge difference for him for at least fifty minutes of his school life. Malik the Mouth who never does anything but insult the others, and gives somebody else’s name to the sub when he gets in trouble, actually kept his bargain with me from the last time he was baby-sat by me. He stayed in his seat and kept working all period. The only time I had to make him give me his name was at the end of class so I could leave a good-job note for the coach after class ended. I actually like those sorts of kids who other subs routinely blow up at and send out of class. Xavier and Malik (possibly not their actual names) are both a hoot to teach. And they help add to my list of funny classroom anecdotes when they lose control and get in trouble with me. I always try to turn those into teachable moments.
But when the coach came in at the end of his smartest class, saw everybody was done, and saw cartoons on his board, he got mad at them. I had to take the blame for them and explain why they were not simply blowing the assignment off and playing around. Coaches don’t usually understand that classroom learning can be fun.
Thursday I was subbing for AVID classes again. These are special classes where at-risk kids are put in college-prep courses and treated like gifted kids. The program is misused as a warehouse for failing discipline-problem kids by this school district. But the Field Middle School has their act together for this program. The kids were working with college-level education students as tutors, and had to fill out self-examination forms that evaluated how they were doing in working with their tutors.
These are well-trained, smart, and seriously funny kids. Xochitl (an Aztec name pronounced ZOACHIE for a Hispanic girl that I have suprisingly encountered more than once in Texas) was a giftred complainer and procrastinator who was too lazy to lift a pencil, yet did the actual work in a few short minutes when she finally got around to it. She had time to tell the kids at her table, one of the tutors, and me about a time when she knocked the head off of a cucaracha (a cockroach who speaks Spanish) and tried to wait for an entire day for it to finally die so she could pick it up and flush it. The thing is, a cockroach only needs its head to eat with and see with. It is perfectly fine otherwise until it starves to death or gets eaten by a rat. So, when she went to pick it up with salad tongs, it was still alive and wiggly. She pantomimed how she threw the thing across the kitchen in surprise, and when it landed in the sink, she nailed it with the garbage disposal. This girl is a gifted story-teller. She had us all laughing. And her school grades were all A’s and B’s.
I admit it. I love kids like that. They are the best things about teaching. And whether they are Aaargh! Sixth Graders! or Uggh! Seventh graders! (the chimpanzees of the middle-school monkey-house) I actually love them. (But PLEASE don’t tell them that!)
As my resolution to illustrate my novels grows further and further into solid, irresistible form and driving obsessional shape, I have been working on new pen and ink projects. Some are for AeroQuest. Some were for The Boy… Forever. And I will soon need to create new ones for A Field Guide to Fauns. Today’s post is just a glimpse of what I have been doing.
Filed under artwork, humor, illustrations, Paffooney, pen and ink
Canto 79 – Riding the Magic Carpet (The Blue Thread)
Arkin Cloudstalker and his six Lazerstone companions returned to their little scout ship at the downport. One of the Lazerstones carried the angry head and torso of the bounty hunter, Ace Campfield.
“I don’t know how we are going to fit seven of us in this little two-man scout ship,” complained Arkin. “It’s barely supplied well enough for two.”
“You forget that the Lazerstone collective are not humanoids. We don’t eat food. We don’t breathe atmosphere. We don’t even sleep. Besides, I can’t leave any of my kind on a non-resonant rock like this one. We must all go with you to a better source of crystal.”
“You aren’t going to leave me here with no arms or legs, either, are you?” complained Campfield. “And I make eight if you are counting me.”
“Seven and a half,” corrected Arkin.
“We could completely destroy him,” recommended the Lazerstone carrying the mechanoid
“He could prove useful yet, especially if we re-program him,” said Arkin.
“Well, the machine-man is right, then. If he counts, he makes too many.”
As they reached the berth of their star ship, Cloudstalker was surprised to see the woman he knew as the Black Fly standing there in her full black body suit with one of the Snarcs Brothers, the one called Cinco Snarcs.
“What? What are you doing here? And didn’t the Snarcs idiots strand us when they disappeared from Hyde Park without warning?”
“We is not abandoning you, boss,” said big-nosed Cinco Snarcs. “Sir Emerald Man with his greeny wishes came and snorkeled us all away to sell fish-skin socks in anudder time and place.”
“He means the Snarcs brothers had to be in another time and place for the White Duke’s purposes, so a Time Knight whisked them away.” The black fly pulled off her black mask as she spoke, a beautiful fall of auburn hair revealing a beauty that Arkin had not thought possible. She was a lovely lady of about his own age.
“So, you two are here to help cram us all into a little scout ship we were left with by fleeing Snarcses?” Arkin’s voice sounded far more cross than he had intended.
“We don’t do the sardini thingy with space men, no,” assured Cinco Snarcs.
“We have a patrol corvette called the Magic Carpet,” said Black Fly.
“So, we will all fit on your Magic Carpet?”
“It can handle up to sixty troops and a crew of four.”
“Good. We need to return to Tron’s base at Outpost as quickly as we can.”
“Ah, yes. But only after one further stop. We must also visit a planet called Djinnistan.”
“What will we find there, genies?”
“Djinn, Peris, and Afrits, yes.” Something about the Black Fly’s charming smile bothered Arkin just a bit.
Filed under aliens, humor, novel, novel writing, Paffooney, science fiction
I was able to run my most successful book promotion so far by giving away free e-book copies of my newest novel, The Boy… Forever.
So, unlike in the past, I now have copies of my book in the hands of possible readers.
Some will actually read it.
And I also re-published Magical Miss Morgan as an Amazon Kindle and paperback, now out from under the onus of Page Publishing’s money-grubbing publishing con.
They actually expected me to pay more money than I was getting in royalties every two years to keep my book in print.
I now have more complete control over pricing, royalties, and promotions than I ever have with this, my second contest novel, also a finalist for the Rosetti Award for YA fiction.
I will try running a free promotion with it next month… in March.
I currently have fourteen books in print. In time order by setting they are;
Superchicken
Recipes for Gingerbread Children
The Baby Werewolf
The Boy… Forever
When the Captain Came Calling
Snow Babies
Sing Sad Songs
Fools and Their Toys
Magical Miss Morgan
Catch a Falling Star
The Bicycle-Wheel Genius
Stardusters and Space Lizards
AeroQuest 1 : Stars and Stones
AeroQuest 2 : Planet of the White Spider
And coming soon ; AeroQuest 3 : Juggling Planets
Slowly but surely I am building my legacy in fiction. And I am increasingly proud of the quality of work I have achieved. I may, in fact, live long enough to see some popularity for my works. It seems, so far, that everyone who reads one of my books, really likes it a lot.
Filed under humor, novel, novel plans, NOVEL WRITING, publishing
Catch a Falling Star 
A Fatal Case of Hope
I have been avoiding talking about politics for more than a year even though it is a rich source of potential comedy material. The idiot-criminal President continues to bumble and blather and make money and do crimes he automatically gets away with in spite of the law. It’s easy to jape him and make jokes, but he black-heartedly continues to do things that benefit him and devastate me and the issues I care about.
After the South Carolina primary, Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden are now clearly the two leading candidates and most likely to become the Democratic Nominee. I will vote for either one. In fact, if Bloomberg steals it by out-spending everybody else, I’ll even vote for him. Donald Trump is the death of everything I care about in life. His position on health care, the environment, education, the arts, and on and on… is poisonous to my way of life. I may not live to see him defeated in the election. But I hope to last just long enough to be able to vote against the !#$%#%%,
In the meantime, I have forced myself to go back to work in the classroom, the thing that was killing me in 2014. And I have so far avoided the flu and death while making enough money to solve my immediate financial woes. I put in an extra day this last month beyond what I reasonably thought I could survive. And I am feeling good about that, even though I am still unable to afford the health care I need, and still feel awful on a daily basis.
So, do the good things in my near future still outweigh the bad on the scales of my continued existence? I think they do.
My work in progress, for which I am marshaling my ability to draw fauns, and I am using this blog post to show you illustrations for it, is about life at a nudist park where the family in the story is dealing with the after-effects of child abuse, divorce, and alienation of family members. It is about issues boiling in the stew-pot of my own personal experience. And about how love can ultimately overcome those issues.
I sincerely hope that Trump gets dumped in November. If he wins, and if I am still alive, that misfortune will seal my fate. I will not survive beyond it.
But if you can’t control your fate, and if the airplane is crashing, you might as well enjoy the ride down to the ground. I am doing a novel now that imagines life as a full-time nudist. My family will never accept it in real life, and my skin flakes off with psoriasis almost as badly as a leper, so I will never live that life. But you can do things in fiction that fly far above the limits of your real-life wings.
If I can keep up the work pace as a substitute teacher, I will actually have enough money to get by. That will be a welcome relief. And I might reach a level of life that approximates what I had before 2012… With a bunch of novels in print that didn’t exist before that year. No future fatality will overcome me. I exist here in my words. And words and pictures are my hope and dreams.
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Filed under artwork, autobiography, commentary, humor, illustrations, NOVEL WRITING, Paffooney, strange and wonderful ideas about life
Tagged as A Field Guide to Fauns