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.
Her name is Mandy. She is the twin of Tandy. She is not actually a demon. She just plays one in this novel.
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.”
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.
Canto 79 – Riding theMagic 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.
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
Here I hold in my hands the first printed copies of my two newest novels in print.
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.
I figured today was going to be a bad-luck-sort-of day because the signs and omens were all against me. I forgot to buy dog food yesterday. And I also forgot yogurt for the Princess’s breakfast in the morning. Not only that, the Simon’s Cat game on my phone made me lose the daily challenge three times and the phone ran out of charge before I beat the stupid thing.
George Appleby and his wife (Red Skelton’s Hen-pecked Husband sketch)
Time out for a word from our sponsor;
The promotion ends at midnight tonight.
What’s worse, the first and only thing my wife said to me this morning was, “Michael, stop looking at me with such an angry face!”
I admit I wasn’t smiling. But I was not mad about anything. Should I have been?
“I’m not angry. Are you just saying you think my face is ugly?”
“You said it. I didn’t.”
Yes, the signs and omens were not in my favor today.
What is destined to go wrong?
Car accident on the way to Walmart?
Didn’t happen.
The price of yogurt went up to the point that I could no longer afford it?
Nope, again. But the bill at Walmart had 13 dollars on the front of the price. !!! 13!!! The unluckiest number? I added a candy bar to get the price up to 14 dollars. The candy bar was 88 cents. The total= $13.95. “Oh, no!!! An impending stroke when I carry the dog food into the house!”
Nope. Didn’t happen there either. Is bad karma building up on me for my next teaching job?
Maybe. We find out with 6th graders on Tuesday.
Or maybe I am just fixated on the bad signs and omens too much. If I worry too much about it, I might become George Appleby.
But then again, my wife probably deserves to be covered in toothpaste.
On Wednesday I subbed again for a science teacher at Long Middle School. They were eighth graders, the chest-thumping apes at the top of the monkey-house food chain. There was an AVID class with too many at-risk and under-disciplined kids in it. And the Long ESL classes contain too many rabid monkeys who don’t understand monkey-English well and are liberally dispersed through-out the harried eighth-grade teachers’ day. In other words, the Wednesday job caused me brain damage from which I haven’t recovered from fully at this writing.
So, today I am obsessed with finding the magic necessary to avoid having any more teacher-meltdowns and brain injuries like that 6th period debacle. (“Debakkil” is a magic word, but it is an evil magic word),
In the Disney animated classic Cinderella, the Fairy Godmother uses a magic spell called (in a song) “Bibbety Bobbity Boo”. In the course of singing the song, the old F-G turns a pumpkin into a carriage and mice into horses, the swayback horse into a driver, and the dog into a groom. I need a spell like that to remedy the monkey-house meltdown syndrome that I was victimized by.
So, here is how “Dibbletey Dobbletey Doo” will work.
The spell is cast initially on a male student, a monkey-like being swinging from the light fixtures, but obviously smarter than the other male monkey-students. You could magically turn his raggy clothing into a ball gown and embarrass him completely (which would be true to the metaphor, but would turn him into your worst nightmare)… but don’t. Instead, tell him that he is smart enough to be a leader. Put him in a position of power, making him in charge of a group, and telling him his consequences will be either a reward for good leadership, or the blame for the bad behavior of the group. Remind him that he has natural leadership skills. If he speaks to others respectfully, they will be respectful to everybody. If he shows them how to behave properly, they will use him as a positive example. He will get the credit for the good things they will do.
“Dibbletey Dobbletey Doo!”
It works. We had a poster project to do in groups of four. They were supposed to create a diagram of the mechanics of the four seasons of the year, with a sun and four representations of the earth with its axis and equator tilted properly in relation to the sun. That’s the kind of assignment that can result in the explosion of the science lab or the total cannibalization of the substitute. But I made it successfully work in four out of five classes.
Why did it go wrong in that last period? 1. Classes that are out of control for the regular teacher are impossible for even the best sub to control. 2. Too many students in one classroom are impossible to control when you have more groups than work tables. 3. Supplies run out at the end of the day, and empty pens and markers become projectiles. 4. Eighth graders all need to take mandatory naps in the afternoon (using sedative darts and a dart gun when necessary) but no school or principal is aware of that fact. 5. Cranky afternoon baboons grow longer fangs than they had in the morning.
So, Mickey must revise and rework this particular spell for the afternoons. And he must refuse the next job coming from this particular teacher.
My most-recently-published book is now available for free from Amazon. I have tried this free-book promotion idea with other books, but this is the newest book I have available. I need to give away a bunch of books, so help yourself to one with the above link.
Nocturne 6 – Highly Heated Moments (The White Thread)
Rocket Rogers and Phoenix walked together towards the community baths in the Palace of 1,000 Years. Not far behind them walked Friashqazatla, better known to all as Freddy due to pronunciations and the intricacies of the Zaranian language.
“You do know that he’s following you and not me,” said Phoenix. “It’s you he seems to be queer for.”
Rocket looked at his literally hot-headed friend with a sense of embarrassment. He didn’t know what to do about Freddy’s apparent hero-worship.
“Hey, Dog-Boy. If you’re going to follow us around like a puppy, you might as well be one. Didn’t Ged-sensei teach you how to transform?” Phoenix could be needlessly cruel it seemed.
Freddy looked at them with sapphire eyes. Then he stripped off his blue jumper and his blue turban, transforming into the black wolf as he did so.
“Good boy!” said Phoenix. He signaled to the black wolf to come to their side, possibly to pet him. But when Freddy padded up within reach, he used his pointer finger to set the wolf’s tail on fire.
Freddy immediately changed back to his dark-skinned humanoid form, putting the fire out before being burned by making all the flammable fur go away.
“That was mean,” said Freddy, sitting on the wet floor of the bath house naked.
“Why do you have to follow us?” asked Phoenix hotly.
“Well, um… I like Rocket and want to be his friend.”
“He’s already got me for a friend.”
Then both of them looked directly at Rocket. He blushed a bit. “Yeah, um… I think I may have room for more than one friend.”
“Suit yourself.” Phoenix dropped his black kimono and proceeded nude to the bathing pool currently occupied by Taffy King and little Mai Ling.
“If you’re willing to risk it, you can bathe with us,” offered Rocket. “But I’m not gay, if you were wondering.”
“That’s good. Me neither. I just want to be your friend.”
Rocket dropped everything but his cowboy hat, helped Freddy up, and together they went over to the same pool and slipped into the water. Phoenix had already used his Psionic powers to heat the water to a level barely able to be tolerated by humanoids.
“Do you always have to make it so hot?” complained Taffy. Rocket liked being around her when she was nude. She was not human in the way he was, but only her saurian eyes made her noticeably different than him.
“If you don’t like it, you can always get out,” said Phoenix with an evil grin.
Rocket quietly lowered the water temperature a little, not quite enough for Phoenix to notice, but enough to protect Freddy and the girls from being broiled like cooked lobsters in a pot.
The warm water was actually soothing on sore muscles after the rigorous workout they had been doing under Ged-sensei’s direction.
“So, Taffy, what are you gonna do for a boyfriend now that Alec has found a new squeeze?” asked Phoenix with a suggestive leer.
“Alec was never my boyfriend. Just like you will never be. But I am still open to other options. Boys who aren’t so mean and evil, I mean.” Taffy smiled at Rocket.
“Well, I like that,” muttered Phoenix as he apparently made the water even hotter.
“How do you do that?” Mai Ling asked Phoenix. “I really like hot water for baths.”
“Really? How hot?”
“Phoenix! Don’t you dare!” Taffy glared at him with green lizard eyes.
“Would you like to see how hot you can stand it?” Phoenix offered, sounding a bit more sincere than usual.
“I really would,” said the little girl. “But maybe in another pool? And don’t cook me, please.”
Phoenix shrugged. He and Mai Ling got out and walked to another pool.
“Remember, Phoenix. She’s a very good shot and is useful in combat!” Rocket shouted.
“Don’t worry, Rocket. I might be in the market for more than one friend too.”
As soon as Rocket turned back around in the pool, Taffy planted a kiss right on his lips.
“Mmmph! Ah… what exactly was that for?”
“How would you like to be my boyfriend?” Taffy asked point blank. Then she kissed him again. Longer. And he didn’t mind at all. But when they finally came up for air, Freddy was looking at them both with an embarrassed grin on his face.
I entered the classroom silently. Death doesn’t have to make any sound when it enters a room, but I remember many times when I entered a classroom in a fully enraged-lion roar. Probably too many times.
This time it was a small lesson to a small class. Little Mickey, ten years old, was sitting there in a front-row desk. He was wearing that stupid purple derby hat that he always wore in his imagination. And he was wearing nothing else besides.
I gave him that old death-eye stare of disapproval. He grinned and shrugged. “Hey, I like to write about nudists, okay? They tell the truth more than most people.”
I simply nodded.
Sitting the next row over, in the front seat also, middle-aged Mickey was slumped in his seat like the cynical, world-weary teacher-thing he actually was. I nodded disapprovingly at him too. “I know, I know,” he said. “My time is running out. I have to get started on my writing plan for real this time. My stories will never get written if I don’t.”
The third seat in the third row contained Old Coot Mickey with his wrinkled clothes, his long Gandalf-hair, and his frizzy author’s beard. He grinned his goofy grin at me and nodded at me cheekily. “I’ve got fourteen novels written and published now. Taint my fault that nobody ever reads ’em. They are mostly good stories, too.”
I rolled my eyes at the dark ceiling.
On the chalkboard I wrote out. Today’s Lesson Is…
“I know! I know!” shouted little Mickey, naked except for his purple hat. “The next novel is A Field Guide to Fauns. It is all about nudists in a nudist camp. I am definitely down with that!”
“Is that really a good idea, though?” asked middle-aged Mickey. “I think I was meant to be a writer of Young Adult novels, like the ones I taught so often in class. I know how those books are structured. I know their themes and development inside and out. I know how to write that stuff.”
“But the little naked guy has it right. You have ta be truthful in novels, even as you tell your danged lies.” Old Coot Mickey made his point by punctuating it with a wrinkled hand thumping on the top of his desk. “You have written novels with characters forcing other characters to make porn films in The Baby Werewolf, and sexual assault of a child in Fools and Their Toys, and lots of naked folks, and betrayal and death… All of that is the kinda stuff kids really want ta read. And them stories don’t glorify that stuff neither. Stories can help fight agin that stuff.”
“Remember, that stuff is hard to write about because I actually went through some of that stuff in my own life. It’s possible for even a fiction book to be just too real for a YA novel.” Middle-aged Mickey had entered fighting mode with his fists on his hips.
“But the underlying truth is why you had to write those stories to begin with. You have truth to tell… But in fiction form,” argued little Mickey.
“And horrible experiences turn into beautiful survival stories and heroes’ journeys with time and thoughtfulness and art,” said Old Coot Mickey.
I agreed with all three of me. I nodded and smiled.
“But you are Death, aren’t you?” asked middle-aged Mickey.
“And you’ve come to take away at least Old Coot Mickey!” declared little Mickey.
“You’ve got me all wrong,” I answered all three of me. “I am not Death. I am Nobody.“
Catch a Falling Star 