Category Archives: novel plans

April 14, 2016 · 5:35 pm

Like Pulling Teeth from a Chicken

superchick2

Life is hard here in the Kingdom of Paffoon where you labor hard at a labor of love and try to give birth to something eternal that ends up going nowhere… stacks of old writing litter my closets, and the prospects of being published grow dimmer and dimmer. My book Snow Babies has a contract with a publisher, but, apparently they are not going to be able to publish it after all. I am at the very least going to have to find another publisher for the rest of my books, both finished manuscripts and works in progress.

Blue and Mike in color (435x640)

I do intend to follow through and get published, though. I can no longer teach, but I feel a powerful force pushing me towards the sheer precipice of authordom. One way or another I am going to make it over the edge and plummet to the bottom of that cliff. I am compelled by the need to tell stories, and I have a captive audience every school day no longer.

I used to tell my classes that doing impossible things was like trying to pull chicken teeth with pliers. You know, impossible things like getting a book published or teaching a mostly Spanish-speaking student how to read in English… every-day-sort-of impossible things.

“But, Mr. B, chickens don’t have teeth,” some bright-eyed student would say after realizing that “chicken” was the English word for “pollo”.

“Exactly!” I would say. “That’s what makes it so challenging!”

And now I must put on my chicken-catching socks, find my tooth-pulling pliers, and get ready to make more novels happen. After a brief bout of consternation and depression, I actually feel a bit better about the whole fiasco. There are other publishers, and publishers seem to like my writing, even if they can’t publish it. And I have waited two years to get Snow Babies published, all apparently for nothing. It is time to stop wasting time. And maybe to stop repeating repetitions too.

The Survivor

Elf on Patrol

I am trying to bounce back. Yesterday I survived the possible end of the world. No heart attack. No asteroid hitting the Earth. But also no writing contest win. A huge delay in the publication of my novel. My writing world is in danger of expiring because my life is winding down to its finale, and I’m running out of time. I can still do it, though. I have come back from down and out before.

In 1983 I had a mole removed from my face. It wasn’t a vanity-type thing. Removing it wasn’t going to cure ugliness or anything. But it had gotten larger and had a strange color change. So, my ancient and doddering Czechoslovakian doctor removed it just to be sure. As with any such removal, the excised tissue was sent to the lab for analysis. Malignant melanoma in the very first stages. At the time, the survival rate for such a cancer in Texas was less than fifty per cent. But most cases were not discovered so early in the crisis. I went back in for more surgery. They ended up cutting a hole through my right cheek and stitching it back together again. The new tissue underwent very close scrutiny and it was determined that all the dangerous cells had been removed during the very first surgery. No evidence anywhere of creeping metastasizing cancer death. It was decided that chemo-therapy would only do harm and would not help anything. So I got to keep my hair. It did eventually mean the removal of two more moles and three lumps, but they were all benign. Cancer was fought off and beaten 33 years ago this month. I am a cancer survivor.

I often marvel at the fact that I am still alive and still able to write. I have had innumerable near misses. Car accidents that didn’t happen by a matter of inches. The skidding truck on the icy street in Iowa City missed the front tire of my bicycle by about three inches. Facing down irrationally angry youths with weapons intending to strike out in anger, and somehow having the right words to calm them and prevent the tragedy. One of them told me it was because he looked me in the eye and saw no fear there that he couldn’t do it, couldn’t strike me down. By rights, I should be dead. It is a supreme irony of life that an almost-atheist like me believes in guardian angels.

I don’t know what the ultimate goal is. I don’t expect to be a wealthy published novelist like Stephen King. I don’t know if it is even important that I break through the bookstore barriers and get my work on the shelves for a few paltry dollars. It is really only important that I write. This blog has become important to me because I have developed a small readership that actually reads and provides feedback. I do occasionally reach the heart of people I don’t actually even know. And I have made friends and relatives a little bit misty. I have written 849 posts, posting every single day of 2015, and every single day of fifteen months in a row. I have written six complete novels and gotten two actually into print with an ISBN number and everything. My writing, like me myself, exists, and it will survive. I am a survivor.

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Filed under autobiography, healing, health, humor, novel plans, writing

Tagged as cancer, humor, melanoma, surviving, writing

February 16, 2016 · 4:45 pm

Mapping the Stories

Norwall map

By golly, I finished it. It may not look like it, but this map of a place that really only exists in my memory and imagination took a lot of work. I surveyed the town and made a set of rough map sketches back in 1994. Some of the places on this map don’t exist any more, while a few never existed at all in any real sense. I finished drawing it out in pen and ink yesterday, February 15th, 2016.

This map is Norwall, Iowa, population 275 (If you count the squirrels… and we had a lot of squirrels in this town… in more ways than one). The map is attributed to Bill Stuyvessant, known to the locals as “Cherries Bill” because he loved cherries more than any other fruit and it was the exact same color of red he had on both his cheeks and nose. For the last decade of his life, the 1960’s, he lived alone. His wife died in 1958. His only son, Christian, died near Bastogne in December of 1944 at the Battle of the Bulge. He lived alone with a house full of stacks of old newspapers. It is believed by many that he was a sorcerer and knew practically everything. Some even said he was God. The map probably had to originate with him because it shows the locations of key settlements in the Faery Kingdom of Tellosia, which of course is known only to practicers of magic and those with vivid imaginations.

Norwall is the setting for my hometown novels series. They are not exactly science fiction and not exactly fantasy, but have heavy doses of both. They are actually about real life as it can be warped by imagination and dreaming. You can make the argument that they are surrealism. The four pictured above are completed novels, except for When the Captain Came Calling on the right. It is undergoing a complete rewrite and is only about 50% complete. I have one published novel in this series through I-Universe, an imprint of Penguin Books.

1-14069dd51a

I also have a number of novel projects in the planning and rough-draft stages that are also set in this little imaginary Iowa town. I am continuing to write and expand it all as time continues relentlessly forward.

Francois

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Filed under humor, maps, novel plans, NOVEL WRITING, Paffooney, surrealism

Tagged as colored pencil, goofy stories, hometown novels, Iowa, map, map of Norwall, novel plans, surrealism

December 21, 2015 · 6:45 pm

Coasting on the Home Stretch

2015 is a year in which I have been furiously writing. I made a pact with myself that I would write a blog post every single day. I am now only 10 more posts from finishing that goal after today. I have pursued my vow to increase my published novel accomplishments by taking Snow Babies through the editing process with PDMI publishing. Soon it will be a real book. Then I will have three published novels, two of which are actually worth something. I have submitted another contest novel, and made the final judging round in the 2015 YA Novel contest at Chanticleer Book Reviews. Winning a prize could mean landing a literary agent and becoming somebody who actually gets help from others to tell my goofy little surrealistic stories. I really don’t have to push all that hard to complete my 2015 goals now. They are within reach. I just have to keep plugging a little and coast when I can.

I need to spruce up The Bicycle Wheel Genius and submit it to a publisher. PDMI has a back log, and as a small independent publisher, they move slowly. I don’t even have a decision about Superchicken yet. But therein begins the plans for 2016. So today’s post is a little short and somewhat content-free because I am coasting. The final kick in this race is about to start.

1994_n

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Filed under humor, novel plans, NOVEL WRITING, Uncategorized

Tagged as blogging, coasting, humor, novel writing

August 10, 2015 · 2:13 pm

Timeline – Finale

So how do I end this little trilogy of timeline terror? I have to fit in the remaining novel projects that are related or at least partially done. And the unrelated ones too. I have way more in the Mickian bag of tricks than I will ever have the magic-using years to actually use. The thing about wizards is that, by the time they have accumulated all the knowledge, wisdom, and arcana that it takes to do the wizardry, they are already old and near to death. How much time is left for the actual magic? I have been living this weekend in fear of imminent stroke. But I believe the random brain pain has actually turned out to be sinus problems. So here are the projects that finish the timeline and are the projects least likely to get written and published.

Connected to Catch a Falling Star is its sequel, Stardusters and Space Lizards. This is a novel I have most recently been trying to finish. I am in the home stretch at 40,000 words. It is the story of the failed Earth invaders continuing their journey to another planet, an even worse place than Earth. Galtorr Prime is the planet of the humanoid lizard people. Their world is on the very brink of extinction by global warming, toxic politics, and war. The remnants of the Telleron aliens who tried to invade Earth and their Earther-human friends not only have to make a colony for themselves here, but have to save the planet itself as well. It is a cautionary-type science fiction tale in the same comedy-young-adult-novel genre as Catch a Falling Star. It also happens in the early 1990’s (intended to mean the time on Earth which is not relevant in any case).

The next novel is Monstro, a ghost story in which the Norwall Pirates have to take on the Lonely Ones, the spirit-echoes of the crazy people of the past in a haunted farm house that awakens to feed on the living. The story is more than half written, but is looking at a near total rewrite to make it conform better with comedy young adult fiction. It is set in the mid 1990’s, around 1995.

None of my Hometown Novels will go beyond the 20th Century. Monstro is ostensibly the last of the novels.

I am a science fiction writer as well, though. The first book I ever published, Aeroquest, is set more than three thousand years in the future, at a time when the Orion Spur of the Sagittarius Spiral Arm of the Milky Way Galaxy (where Earth has its street address) is largely colonized and thoroughly inhabited. As the novel now stands (a sorry mishmash that no decent publisher would’ve ever printed) it is in need of a total re-write and make-over. It is a novel that I humorously say is about teachers in space… though I do realize that “humorously” has to be qualified as a big bald-faced lie.

So this is run-down in time order of all the stuff I want to do as an author. How much gets done in reality is anyone’s best guess. Who knows? I may live another twenty years and finish at least one novel every year.

Timeline – Part 2

You may remember that yesterday I was giving a run-down of my various Home Town Novel projects according to the order they supposedly happen in real time (measured in years). Here is what I went over yesterday;

Superchicken, set in 1974, the first Home Town Novel that I completed.

The Baby Werewolf (also possibly titled The Wolf in the Attic), set in the Fall of 1974, not yet completed.

The Forever Boy, set in Spring 1975, not yet written in manuscript form.

Sweet Pickles, set in the Fall of 1974 and Spring of 1975, half written, but possibly too graphic to publish.

Under Blue Glass, set in 1977 and not yet written in manuscript form.

When the Captain Came Calling, is set in 1983-84, the manuscript is currently at 25,000 words and being worked on.

And the novel I am editing for publication this week, Snow Babies, set in the Winter of 1984. Snow Babies is the story of how the small town survives the raging blizzard and faces the prospect of freezing to death. Valerie Clarke, in the picture above, is the central character in a large cast trying to avoid being the one the snow spirits have come to claim.

The second generation of Norwall Pirates, the boys’ club of dreamers, goofballs, and liars, have come to be led by a girl, Mary Philips and Valerie is the second girl ever to join the club.

The next novel has undergone two transformations. It started as a book called Little Boy Crooner. It is about an orphan from France who comes to live with ne’er-do-well Iowegian relatives. Homesick and deeply troubled, the boy has discovered a natural talent for karaoke, and has a voice that people come from miles away to hear. Then, the clowns of the Dreamlands began invading this story and had to be renamed. It is now called Sing Sad Songs… with Clowns. I may, however change the name to just Sing Sad Songs.

Sing Sad Songs and the next novel in the series, Fools and Their Toys, happen at the same time in 1985-86. They not only share a setting and many of the same characters, but they share a villain and many of the same plot-shaping events. They are, however, very different stories.

Fools and Their Toys is the story of autistic Murray Dawes. Because he has never really been able to communicate before, his turning point comes when a new member of the family, an adopted little brother, makes for him a ventriloquist’s dummy in the form of a zebra. He calls it Zearlop and uses it to unleash the hidden intelligence that was there through all those years when other people thought he was retarded. Unfortunately, just as Murray is blossoming, a serial killer comes along, targeting young boys. More unfortunately still, some from the area believe Murray may be the killer.

Leadership of the Pirates is passed from Mary to Valerie. And in 1988 I have set my current contest novel The Magical Miss Morgan. Valerie passes the leadership of the Pirates to her highly imaginative and extremely annoying cousin Timothy Kellogg. Tim is a the second most important character in the story of the teacher, Miss Morgan, who loves to teach. Miss Morgan is the sister of original Pirate wizard, Milt Morgan. Because of her brother, she inherits responsibility for a local war between good and evil fairies, while at the same time trying to save her job from evil principals, parents, and school board members and teach a lesson or two worth remembering forever. This full manuscript novel is currently being judged for the contest, and will be submitted for publication after.

Tim Kellogg is one of two main characters in the next novel, The Bicycle-Wheel Genius. Orben Wallace, the inventor, is the title character who may have accidentally created a time machine. The novel is set in the years from 1988 to 1990, and it is about how the genius’ old inventions come back to haunt him as he tries to solve the problem of having invented a time machine, having worked on mysterious government projects, and having helped to fight off an alien invasion. This novel is also complete and merely awaiting the proper time to get published.

Catch a Falling Star is the published novel that started this blog and my dream of making it as a novelist. It is set in 1990 and tells the story of when the Telleron alien empire of frog-like fin-headed aliens fail to invade Norwall, Iowa because they hadn’t reckoned on meeting the Pirates.See Catch a Falling Star on Amazon here.

I guess I leave it here for today. It seems there is enough more to fill another blog… Part 3.

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Filed under aliens, characters, clowns, humor, Iowa, novel plans, NOVEL WRITING, Paffooney, publishing, Snow Babies, writing humor

Tagged as bad novel writing, humor, Paffoonies

May 24, 2015 · 4:06 pm

Notes from the 70’s; the Master Plan

I have wanted to be a writer and cartoonist from childhood onward. I didn’t really begin in earnest until the last few years of my teaching career with retirement looming directly ahead. Now I have made the leap off the cliff. I retired a year ago. I did everything short of bankruptcy to put my accounts in order, and transformed myself into a starving artist. I have a full retirement from Texas, subject to a grandfather clause (no relation to the Santa Clause) that allows me to receive enough money to live on for the rest of my life (thanks to the trick of being a teacher back before George W. Bush and Rick Perry came along to pillage Texas education and reduce what they pay those lazy, lousy teachers for their lifetimes of service). Of course, I must try to limit my expenditures as much as possible, because… well, it is a teacher’s pension.

But my plan from the 70’s, begun in high school and carried out through college and my teaching career has allowed me to stay on track to create something massive and complex. My story ideas have been collected over time and are all based on a very simple rule… “Everything is connected.” Every story I now labor to put into prose mentions other stories and has story fishhooks in it to catch readers and pull them into something else. Most of my work is set in farm-town Iowa in the 1970’s, 1980’s, and 1990’s. I made them all a part of the 20th Century on purpose because the personalities the characters are all based on were a part of my life then. Certain elements run through all the stories. Let me explain a few.

1. Some characters appear in many stories (sometimes as a main character, and more often as a supporting character. The French boy who sings karaoke beautifully and makes his cousin’s bar business a success by entertaining people there appears in two stories that happen at about the same time. Both of those stories are still waiting to be written. Tim Kellogg appears in my stories from the time he is but a twinkle in his parents’ eyes until he becomes the leader of the infamous boys’ gang of liars called the Norwall Pirates.

2. Most of the stories are centered around members of the Norwall Pirates. They are a group of small town boys dedicated to adventure, telling lies, and seeing girls naked. Much of the magic, science fiction, fantasy elements, and just plain hallucinations in my stories are the fault of boys who tell stories and lies so well that sometimes they believe them themselves.

3. Character arcs that begin in one book will often continue in another. Sometimes I go back in time and explain something that happened much earlier. The Pirate’s club first appears in my novel Catch a Falling Star set in 1990. The origin of the club is told about in Superchicken, a novel I have blogged about, but not yet published. That story happens in 1974. Valerie Clarke is introduced in the novel PDMI Publishing LLC is currently working on, Snow Babies, which takes place in Winter of 1984. She is the leader of the Pirates in the finished, but not yet submitted novel The Bicycle-Wheel Genius. That story spans 1988 to 1991.

4. Much of my nuttiness was originally created in the 1970’s. Even though the stories were given a setting much later, all the illustrated Paffoonies I have dropped into this post were drawn in 1977 and 1978. I keep these cartoon character model sheets in one of my magical tomes, the Norwall Book, a loose-leaf binder full of drawings and junk carefully preserved in plastic page-protector sheets.

So, this is all the proof that my leap off that cliff into retirement will either make a very big splash or hit the rocks very hard. It will be very something. And I hope to live to see it… especially to get all of the stories I can possibly finish written and published… with a ghost of a hope that my own drawings, cartoons, and illustrations will count for something. So, now my plan is revealed. Let the enemies plan their counter-moves, and may the devil not move the water at the bottom of the cliff.

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Filed under humor, novel plans, NOVEL WRITING, Paffooney

Tagged as big plans, cartoons, colored pencil, humor, novel characters, novel writing, old art, Paffoonies, pen and ink

December 28, 2014 · 5:56 pm

The Next Little Project

All right, the time has come to figure out what to write next. I have another thirty-plus-year-old writing project that would make an absolutely, terrifically horrible novel that I want to try to tame. I have a cartoonized version created back when I was young and stupid… in about 1981, before the invention of the graphic novel. It is in full color. It was done before I learned how to draw. It is a book that will now go under the ridiculously alliterated title The Captain Came Calling.

The novel is set, like all of my hometown stories, in Norwall, Iowa… The fictionalized version of Rowan, the town I actually grew up in. It isn’t quite as dorky in real life as it appears in my cutsified illustration, but it is approaching it at glacial speeds.

The town’s portrayal will have to change as I attempt to update and clarify characters.

The people have to be switched about. Phyllis Murphy has to become Mary Murphy. The Pirates will have to switch from the 90’s Pirates to the 80’s Pirates, as the main character, Mary Phillips has to create a new Pirates’ Club that didn’t exist when I first wrote this bilge. I have to update and increase the plot, adding the back-story through the inclusion of the Captain’s Logbook… How else can I get mermaids and the voodoo priest into the story otherwise?

I also have to be a little bit more politically correct about the portrayal of the tiki-idol-men. South Seas’ Magic can’t be racist or misogynist. And then there’s the whole thing about Captain Dettbarn’s less-than-Iowegian morals that has to be dealt with. He’s basically a clown character, not a villain.

And the Captain is cursed with invisibility. That is no small thing to pull off in work of fantasy fiction in a Young Adult style. It has to be believable enough to make the audience accept it, even if it is a comedy caper of the lowest sort.

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Filed under cartoons, novel plans, NOVEL WRITING, Paffooney

Tagged as artwork, cartoons, colored pencil, drawing, new novel project, novel writing, Paffoonies, pen and ink, re-writing old garbage

Category Archives: novel plans

Like Pulling Teeth from a Chicken

The Survivor

Mapping the Stories

Coasting on the Home Stretch

Timeline – Finale

Timeline – Part 2

Notes from the 70’s; the Master Plan

The Next Little Project

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