As I wake up every morning feeling more and more foggy-headed and lethargic, more like I barely managed to survive the night, I am aware I walk through the valley of the shadow of death. I even passed out for a few minutes as I wrote this intro. I don’t know how long I actually have left. I no longer have the funds to get tested by the cardiologist, the urologist, or the endocrinologist every time a pain or a lightheadedness concerns me. I may not still be here when morning comes around again. But I fear no evil. When I finish reading the last page of a good book and close the book, I don’t mourn that the reading experience has ended. I exult in the wonderful story I have read or marvel at the lessons and learning the book has taught me. The end of my life will be like that. My life is not one that must be regretted.
The thing about having a shadow hanging over you is that it can be totally defeated by adding a little sunshine. I have never been a better writer than I am now. I am nearing the end of what seems to me to be the best novel I have ever written. I felt that same way as Catch a Falling Star was being written, and it proved to be true. I won the Rising Star Award and the Editor’s Choice Award from I-Universe publishing which has them on the phone with me again trying to find ways to fund the marketing they think it deserves in spite of my total lack of money. I also thought Snow Babies was the best thing I had ever written, even better than Catch a Falling Star. And the publisher I found for that one thought so too, right up to the moment when my curse as an unknown writer killed their little publishing company. I feel really good about Sing Sad Songs as it continues to basically write itself. So what if I never live to see any of my books yield success? The fact that I have caused them to exist is enough to fulfill me. It is enough to satisfy me. Of course, I do have more stories in me that need to be told. That is motivation enough to stay alive and keep writing.
Francois singing a sad song.
It is the valley of the shadow of death, however. A novel character I love is about to die. It seems there are a lot of my novels that end with a death even though they are all basically comic novels, full of things that at least make me laugh. But I fear no evil. Thy rod and thy staff, the stick that whacks me when I misstep and the shepherd’s crook that rescues me from dark crevices, they comfort me. I will continue to pass through.
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.
1 Comment
Filed under commentary, goofiness, humor, novel plans, NOVEL WRITING, Paffooney, strange and wonderful ideas about life
Tagged as Sing Sad Songs