Category Archives: NOVEL WRITING

May 16, 2017 · 11:11 am

Stardusters… Canto 47

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Canto Forty-Seven – In the Flower Garden

“Don’t get too near that old plant again, Brekka,” warned George Jetson.  He shuddered with the memory of it scooping her up in the mouth-like blossom and nearly munching her to pieces as it had done to the scabby.

“Silly boy, the man-eating plant is now my friend.  He… or she… or it… is calling to me, telling me it will never harm me again.  In fact, it wants to help me and protect me.”

As the emerald-green girl tadpole walked closer to the huge blossom, the plant seemed to be smiling with flower-petal lips.  George looked at Menolly.  Menolly looked back and shrugged her bare shoulders.  She appeared to be creeped out by the carnivorous flower as much as George was.

Brekka stopped, naked and defenseless, directly under the giant blossom that was grinning at her.  She reached up with her left hand.

The blossom lowered to her.

“Oh, no!” gasped George and Menolly together.

But the blossom stopped an inch above her hand and let her stroke it… her… or him… under what could’ve been a chin, but definitely had the look of sepals.

“That’s a good boy, Lester… er, good girl… er, well… that’s good anyway.  You aren’t going to hurt anyone ever again, are you?”

The plant pursed its “lips”.

“Well, yes, I suppose you can eat all of those scabby thingies that you want.  That wouldn’t bother me a bit.”

The plant rubbed leaves together to get an actual chirping sort of sound.

“Oh, really?”

“What did he say?” Menolly asked Brekka.

“He says he… or… she can provide cuttings and runners to make baby plants that we can eat.  She says she… or… it can process carbon out of the air with photosynthesis and make plenty of food for us…  It says it… or he… um, can feed the whole Bio-dome if we want it to.”

“That’s good…” said George, “but if the plant is our friend now, wouldn’t that be eating our friend?”

“Lester says the plants on his… er… her world do it all the time… eat each other, I mean.”

“That will help with some of the food shortage problem, won’t it?” asked Menolly.

“Sure,” said Brekka.

“Maybe we should go talk it over with Sizzahl?” suggested George.  He really wanted to get himself and the girls away from the creepy plant-monster.

“You and Menolly go,” Brekka said.  “I want to stay here and play with Lester.”

“Are you sure that’s safe?”

“Lester can’t eat Tellerons without getting really, really sick.  So he will never again try to eat one of us… er, she won’t.  As long as we keep Sizzahl and the Morrells away from it… er, him.  Geez, the boy-girl thing is really confusing.”

So, George seized the opportunity to get away.  He dragged Menolly with him.  Brekka seemed happier with Lester anyway, and George was thinking… well, maybe he and Menolly could try some more… kissing.

*****

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May 9, 2017 · 10:51 am

Stardusters… Canto 46

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Canto Forty-Six – Outside the Bio-Dome

Harmony led her troops up to the front door of the Bio-Dome.  They waited quietly for her to signal the next step.

“Shalar?  This is the only mostly-intact building in the entire area.  Do you think this could be where they went?”

“If they are still alive, this looks like the kind of shelter they might be drawn to.”

Harmony went forward to the entryway and peered in.

“Oh, my goodness!  All their clothing and equipment is piled in there.  Their weapons too.  If they are still in there, they are naked and unarmed!”

Shalar adjusted her own breath-mask to reassure herself.  “If they are not still in there… or if the air in there is the same as it is out here… then they are already dead.”

“No!  Not my children!  We will enter here and go find them!”

Suddenly the metal man with a handful of spinning blades appeared on the ledge above the door.  His hand-blades whirred menacingly.

“Men!  Catch it in a crossfire like I taught you and take it out.”

The Telleron soldiers knew better than to disobey Harmony.  Four took the left flank and two went right.  The crossing skortch beams fried the machine man, and quickly reduced it to dust and vapor.  Shalar shuddered at the realization of how ruthless and efficient Earther humans truly were.  Her semi-incompetent Telleron soldiers were displaying an unusually high amount of self-discipline and military know-how which they had learned entirely on this mission by following the old Sunday-school teacher’s battle commands.

“That was impressive,” Shalar remarked.

“Of course it was,” said Harmony.  “Now let’s get inside.”

The Telleron soldiers filed in using the precise order and the sweeping-for-enemies maneuver that Harmony had taught them on the way to the Bio-Dome.  The soldiers secured the entryway and the hall beyond while Harmony and Shalar went through the pile of belongings that had belonged to the tadpoles and the Morrells.  Shalar noted all the items on her computerized notepad.   The inventory suggested that everything the tadpoles had taken with them from the crash scene was present.

“They were all here, Harmony,” Shalar said.  “And they don’t have anything with them wherever they’ve gone.”

“We will take all this gear with us so that the young scamps won’t be gadding about naked.   Why they took everything off here is a mystery.  But in my experience with human kids, it usually involves hormones and misbehavior.  We not only have to save their little lives, but save them from sin as well.”

“Sin, Harmony?”

“Well, it’s complicated.  But running around a dying planet stark naked can’t be pleasing behavior to a loving but righteous God.”

“Oh, of course… that.”

Shalar looked down the dark hallway.  She was worried about the children.  The mystery only seemed to deepen and the peril looked increasingly worse.

*****

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May 2, 2017 · 10:48 am

Stardusters… Canto Forty-Five

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Canto Forty-Five – Aboard the Galtorrian Space Cruiser Bone Head

The lizard soldiers roughly tossed Farbick into the holding pit on top of Starbright who had been tossed down roughly before him.  The Grandpa Munster face of Senator Tedhkruhz grinned down at him from above.

“I will allow you all to see the sights of beautiful Last-Star Fortress on the southern coast of the Bone Continent before we cut you all up for meat.”  Tedhkruhz cackled with porcine, gloating laughter.  Porcine was a good Earther word for pig-like, Farbick knew, and nothing reminded him so much of a gluttonous pig as the plans he had heard from the mouth of the Lizard Lord, Senator Tedhkruhz.

Bahbahr lay up against the wall of the prison pit, sobbing quietly to himself in inconsolable misery.  Stabharh stared at Farbick with cold, lizard eyes.

“Are you planning to return to the moon when you’ve eaten us?”  Farbick asked, trying to make it seem an innocent question.

“What?  Fat Bahbahr’s stupid Gundahl Base?  Of course not.  I have already blown the poop out of it with the biggest boom-bombs my people could manufacture.  There is nothing left of it to take possession of.”

“You are going to leave it for any other warlord to take?”

“What?  You mean Emperor Rekhpahree?  That unctuous toad has no space-worthy ships left to get up here.  Once we leave it, there will be no one coming here for a very long time, probably centuries.”

Farbick looked at Starbright’s frightened eyes and winked.  She had to know that the Galtorrian War Lord was playing right into Farbick’s selfless plan.

“You all get some sleep now, you hear?” gushed Grandpa Munster, “you have a big final day ahead of you tomorrow… all four of you.”

The lid was pulled over the top of the pit with a metallic clang.  Everything went to black at the same instant that Starbright caught hold of Farbick’s arms and pulled herself into his comforting embrace.

“So,” said Stabharh’s cold voice in the pitch darkness, “you hid the lizard children so Tedhkruhz wouldn’t find them and eat them.”

“We did,” admitted Starbright.  “At least they will live.”

“Why did you do that?” asked the soldier in a grim accusatory voice.

“We thought that those children deserved a chance to survive.  They have a future.”  Farbick knew the Galtorrians didn’t understand self-sacrificing love… not the way that Harmony Castille had taught the Tellerons from her little black book of Hebrew fairy stories…  But he figured there must be a heart in that lizard-man’s body somewhere.

“You would do that for creatures of another planet who would’ve eaten you if you had not fed them with your machine?  Why wouldn’t you want to see them die along with you?”

Starbright sounded deeply hurt by that.  “If I am doomed, why would it help me in any way to see them doomed too?  Your planet is deeply troubled.  You need those children alive.  They are your future.”

“Yes,” said Stabharh bitterly, “Galtorrians’ future, not yours!”

“I think the future is not yours or mine.”  Farbick weighed his words carefully in the darkness.  “I think the future belongs to all of us.  We don’t wish your people to die any more than we would wish for our own people to die.  It is the nature of those who are alive to want to keep living.”

“Not all people, frog or lizard, can possibly survive.  Survival of the fittest is the way of the Universe.”

“Perhaps,” said Starbright softly, “but the fittest doesn’t necessarily mean only the individual when the whole race is at stake.”

The darkness grew very quiet.  Was Stabharh thinking of a reply?  Or did he lose interest and fall asleep?  Perhaps Farbick and Starbright needed rest too.

“You frog people are just like the other alien races we met…” the small warrior lizard said after a long silence.  “You always talk about peace and helping others along the pathways to the stars… but this is actually the first time I have seen an alien practice what he preaches.”

*****

senator-tedhkruzh

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April 25, 2017 · 10:53 am

Stardusters… Canto 44

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Canto Forty-Four – In the Bio-Dome

Alden and Gracie stood before the row of cloning jars, staring at the gently floating and twitching forms.  Sizzahl gently adjusted the nutrient feeds to the artificial placentas.

“They look so… so human,” said Gracie.  “Their little bodies are so perfect, and so big!”

“We will have them developed to birth size by morning,” said Sizzahl.  “The cloning jars use electro-magnetic chronol-enhancement to make the gestation occur in a fraction of the time.”

“Really?” Alden was aghast, “We will have ten babies to take care of by morning?”

“Oh, yes.  They will grow fast for a while.  They will be toddlers in less than a week.  And about your other comment, Gracie… they are precisely fifty per cent human.  Half me, half Alden… half Galtorrian…”

“…Half human,” said Alden.  It was stunning.  He and Gracie had talked about having kids, in fact, tried hard to have kids for years… and now, suddenly, they would have a family of ten children and three parents who, no matter how mentally old and wise they might be, were physically only between ten and twelve.

“I want to be a mother so badly it hurts,” said Gracie.  “But why so many?  How will we manage ten babies all at once?”

Sizzahl put a hand on Gracie’s bare shoulder.  “There is very little romance in what we have to do.  We have to raise up a workforce of these new fusion-race babies, possibly even an army.  We really don’t have a choice if we are not going to simply let this entire planet die.”

Suddenly a black-clad figure appeared above the tanks.  It was humanoid in form, but had a tail like a Galtorrian.  It wore a black mask like a ninja.

“Ah!  Scabby!” cried Alden, pointing.

“He moves too much like a lizard with no diseases,” said Sizzahl, a firm hand on the shoulder of each of the Morrells.  “In fact… he seems awfully familiar.”

“Sizzahl!  I thought Gohmurt had killed the whole family!”

“Senator Makkhain?” asked Sizzahl.

The lizard-man pulled off the mask.  “Yes, little one, I have survived.  The Cooperative managed to kill Emperor Rekhpahree in the last battle over Spidercrawl Fortress.  I came to tell your father and recruit him to our cause… um, forgetting that Gohmurt killed him, I guess… but it seems the Bio-Dome is wrecked and everyone else is dead.”

“I am not dead,” said Sizzahl, mistress of the obvious.  “And the Bio-Dome is not wrecked.   I have the atmosphere scrubbers working at full capacity, and I am trying to solve the blighted food supply problem.”

“Clever girl.  How did you survive the scabbies with nothing more than your little naked self?”  Makkhain pulled off his mask.  For a lizard-man, he had a very gentle face with wise bluish snake eyes.

“I’m not alone here.  Father’s robots are set to kill anything wearing clothes or carrying equipment.  How is it that you survived them?”

“I’m sorry.  Three of your father’s toys attacked me, and I had to break them quietly with this…”  He brandished a silver blade weapon with a hook on the end that was smeared with oil.

“Erm… I guess I will have to fix them, then.  They have been protecting us very effectively.”

“Who is this man, Makkhain?” asked Gracie.  “Should we be trusting him?”

“Oh,” said Makkhain, “your naked Skoog Monkeys talk?”

“We are not Skoog Monkeys,” said Alden.  “We are humans from Earth.”

“Of course you are,” said Makkhain.  “But apparently really scrawny ones.”

Alden was boiling at the insult.  Still, the lizard-man had a sword and Alden was naked and trapped in a mere boy’s body.

“Makkhain is my uncle,” said Sizzahl at last, “my mother’s brother.  He is one of the good guys.”

“That is good,” said Gracie.  “We need more good guys.”

“What are you doing cooking tailless Skoog Monkeys in the cloning pots?”

“These are fusions,” said Sizzahl proudly.  “They are half Earther and half Galtorrian.  They will be our new work force, hopefully with the best qualities of each race combined into one being.”

“Ah, girl, you always were the smart one in the family… a real dreamer.  But do you really need these things now that I am here?”

“Yes, uncle.  They are superior to the lizard-people who have destroyed this planet.  They will be a more worthy successor race than we were as an original race.”

Makkhain dropped down onto the floor of the cloning chamber and lowered the sword.  He quietly put an arm around his naked niece.  She hugged him fiercely and began to cry.

Alden felt awkward.  He was glad that Sizzahl had a family again.  He was also glad for an adult-sized ally.  But something about Makkhain rubbed him the wrong way.  Things just didn’t feel right in Alden’s farmer weather-bones.

*****

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April 18, 2017 · 11:09 am

Stardusters… Canto 43

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Canto Forty-Three – On the Moon Gundahl

The massive space cruiser set itself down on the ruined tarmac of the moon base.  Only Farbick and Starbright were there to meet it.  After all, the two Galtorrian overlords were still penned inside a force-field and all the young lizard-children were still soundly sleeping off a full meal.

The cruiser was heavily armed and had cannons sticking out in all directions like spines on a sea urchin.  It had some battle damage on it, but obviously gave far worse than it had received.  In fact, Stabharh had said that this was probably the same warship that had damaged the moon base to such a degree that chunks were missing from the moon.

“Can they really be as terrible as Stabharh says?” asked Starbright.

“I suppose he would know better than I,” said Farbick.  “He says this Senator Tedhkruhz led an army across all the continents of Galtorr Prime and murdered two thirds of the population of the entire planet.”

Starbright shivered.  Farbick put a comforting arm around her shoulders.  There was definitely something to be said in favor of the Earther way of showing love through physical contact.  Tellerons had been too cold and distant from each other for too long.  Starbright leaned into the hug in response.

The entry ramp of the cruiser came down, and some of the crew appeared at the top of the ramp.  There were Galtorrian soldiers armed with slug-throwers akin to what Earthers called assault rifles.  There were also clunky metal robots that looked a lot like trash cans with a pair of legs.  Two lines of soldiers and robots formed on each side of the ramp.  Then, decked out in a purple velvet suit, the Senator himself appeared.  Farbick couldn’t help but notice that the Galtorrian Senator had a smiling face that resembled Grandpa Munster from the television show   The Munsters of the 1960’s on Earther TV.  Grandpa Munster with no hair and a smiling face covered in green scales, but definitely Grandpa Munster.

“Where is Bahbahr?” asked the Senator in a loudly-projected voice.  Farbick couldn’t tell if he was using some kind of unseen microphone device, or his voice was actually that capable of booming.  “I know that the Galtorrian criminal I seek is here somewhere!”

“What will you do with him if you have him?” asked Farbick.

“He will get what he deserves… his just deserts are to be dessert.  We will cook him and eat him.  My soldiers are hungry.”

“If we give him to you, will you give us this base and leave?”  It was worth trying.

“Of course not.  We will take and eat all of you.  You can’t really believe you can prevent that from happening, can you?”

“There are four of us.  My companion and I have captured the scoundrel and his warrior.”

“Ha!  That is rich.  Tellerons who happened to catch the big and mighty lord of merchants!  And is his warrior toothless little Stabharh?”

“He is.”  Farbick hoped the children were well enough hidden that this cruel cannibal would never find them.  He had disabled all the Telleron tech except the force field that held the two lizard-men, so there was no chance that Grandpa Munster would be able to use the devices against anyone.

“You are going to have to accept the inevitable, Mr. Telleron,” said Tedhkruhz.  “Surrender now and you won’t be subjected to pain and torture.  We will make it easier on you.”

“Will you take us away from this place?  Or will you stay here?”

“Why-ever would anyone want to stay in a place like this?  I blew chunks out of this moon before.  It’s in pieces now.  Not a very nice place to be.”

“You have a better place?”

“Well, no… but I own several other installations that are at least partially whole.  We will be able to make something work.  Some of us are destined to rule and be the lords of this planet.  I have the power to be the last one standing, and I think that is pretty great.”

Starbright and Farbick just held up their hands and surrendered.  What else could Farbick do?  At least, Biznap and the other Tellerons would find this place where they could take up residence and possibly survive as a people.

*****

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April 11, 2017 · 10:20 am

Stardusters… Canto 42

Canto Forty-Two – On the Surface of Galtorr Prime Near the Crash Site

The landed Golden Wing Thirteen was completely surrounded by crazed scabbies with diseased mouths dripping saliva and venom, and wild eyes filmed over in a most unpleasant manner.  They gibbered at the crew of the wing without advancing further.  Several of the Telleron soldiers were good shots, but it was Harmony Castille’s weapon skills that had skortched half a hundred slavering lizard-scabbies.  That kind of brutal accuracy gave even the mindless scabbies pause when it was time to charge again.

“We need to fly out of here, Harmony!” said Shalar.  “With this many creatures here, the tadpoles could not have survived.”

“Nonsense!  We did not find their bodies in the wreckage.  My kids are alive.  Davalon and Tanith are too good and too smart to fall to these mindless lizard-things.  We just have to find them.”

“But we are outnumbered!” wailed Studpopper.

“They are using their claws and teeth to fight us.  We can vaporize them with these skortch rays.  There are only half as many now as there were when they first attacked.”

“But we’ve lost half our men already,” argued Studpopper.  “They have guns, some of them, and we don’t know how many more of them are out there.”

“Look at those idiots over there with guns in their holsters,” said Harmony.  “They are not even using them!  I don’t think they are smart enough to even realize that they have guns.”  To emphasize her point, Harmony blazed away with her skortch pistol at three of the lizard-men with guns and disintegrated them totally.

“You are right,” agreed Shalar, “about all of it, but we don’t know why these creatures are so stupid.   There may be smarter ones out there somewhere.  In fact, there have to be.”  Shalar skortched two more scabbies who were equally as stupid as the ones they skortched before.  “Why do you suppose they are so mindless?”  Shalar asked.

“Look at them,” said Harmony.  “They are covered in sores and wounds.  Their eyes are filmy.  I think they are sick.  Probably from this foul air that we have to wear the breath-masks for.”

Shalar nodded.  It was obvious that Harmony was right.  These walking horrors were out of their blogwopping minds.  But they were too stupid to be afraid and run away also.  That complicated things.

“Let’s charge the mass of them over there,” said Harmony, pointing with her weapon at a group of about thirty of the creatures.  “We take out all of them, and then we’ll have them outnumbered.

“Lead the way,” said Shalar.  Harmony was their best hope.  She was easily the best war-leader Shalar had ever met.  Sunday school on Earth was certainly a very effective place to learn small group combat tactics and strategy.  How lucky the Tellerons had been to escape from Earth without every engaging Sunday-school-trained military units!

With a great roar, Harmony lead the twelve remaining Tellerons to the group of shuffling scabbies she had targeted for the assault.  The confused lizard-men disintegrated into the surrounding air so quickly and so efficiently that it was obvious the Tellerons would not only win this battle, but they would clear the entire area of scabbies in minutes.  The rescue mission was looking more and more like a possible success.

*****

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April 4, 2017 · 10:57 am

Stardusters… Canto 41

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Canto Forty-One – Back Aboard the Mother Ship

Biznap hurried up the ramp and through the mist-filled corridors of the Command Center.  Xiar was going to do something about this.  He had to!  Biznap had always thought of Farbick as just another underling before, just another yellow-skinned Fmoogish boob…  But the truth he had come to embrace was that Farbick was the only other Telleron besides himself on this whole mission that could possibly make things work out in the Tellerons’ favor.  He felt slightly guilty about the fact that he was alive now only because of the sacrifice Farbick and Starbright had made.

“Commander Biznap!”  Docking bay officer Oogsblotter was surprised to see the second-ranking Telleron of the entire mission hustling up from the bay all by himself.  At least, he was definitely submissively bowing out of the way like a yellow-skinned Fmoogish boob.

“I need to see Xiar and Shalar, now!”

“The Captain is busy in the control center, and Science Officer Shalar is away on a recovery mission.”

“A recovery mission?  Looking for who?”

“Well, you sir… and apparently some of Xiar’s tadpoles stole a ship and went down to the planet too.”

“Merciful Crocodile Gawd!  Where’s Harmony then?  …My wife, I mean?”

“She is the leader of the recovery mission.”

Biznap was stunned at the news.  Nobody to rely on for help other than wishy-washy old Xiar and… himself.  Well, it had to be done.

“I need to see Xiar, and I need it to happen now!”  His voice was powerful enough to shake Oogsblotter down to his socks, as if Tellerons wore socks, and the docking bay officer fell all over himself scrambling to comply.

“I will get him immediately, sir!”  The officer crawled off on all fours to get to the Command Center and alert Xiar.  It felt kinda good to have that kind of power and respect.  Before the invasion of Earth no one had looked up to Biznap.  They secretly laughed at him for always striving to do his best and go by the regulations.  But then he survived the invasion, came back with the beautiful Harmony Castille as his prize, survived Commander Sleez’s insurrection, and ended up with Sleez’s job as First Officer.  They weren’t laughing any more.  Biznap was a rare thing… a Telleron who could accomplish things.

“Biznap?” said the hustling Xiar while making his way into the docking bay, “what has happened?  Where is Farbick and your crew?”

“Two are dead and two captured, but we located a key moon base from which Tellerons could operate as the dominant space force in this system.”

Xiar looked shocked.  “B-but you know we are not a large force.  We can’t stand up to overwhelming numbers of vicious, Telleron-eating lizard-guys.”

“We actually don’t have to.  This planet has decimated itself through greed and lust for war.  There are only two lizard-guys on the moon base, and only one of those is a soldier.  We could take them easily, and maybe rescue Farbick and Starbright at the same time.”

“You mean actually fight?  Not a secret invasion like on Earth?”

“We can do it, Captain.  I have learned a secret from Farbick and our experiences with the Earther primates.  If you care about one another and fight for your friends and family instead of yourself, you can actually win.  The fight means more, and you can do a better job!”

“Ooh, I don’t know if I could do that…”

“Your new wife, Shalar, and some of your children are already caught up in this.  Their lives are at stake.  You need to do this for them.  Just like I intend to do it for Harmony.”

Xiar bit his lower lip and seemed befuddled.

“You love them don’t you?  You have learned about love from everything Harmony and the Morrells have taught us… haven’t you?”

“Well,” said Xiar, apparently drawing the conclusion that Biznap intended, “maybe I do.”

*****

farbick

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April 2, 2017 · 1:34 pm

Downloading Darkness

I just finished a novel project last Thursday, completing the manuscript of Recipes for Gingerbread Children.  But being the excessively creative goofball that I am, this was not a stand-alone project.  The companion book, The Baby Werewolf,  is an incomplete manuscript of a comedy horror story about a boy with hypertrichosis, sometimes known as werewolf-hair disease.  Both books happen in the same period of time in 1974 and share both characters and events.  The boy, Torrie Brownfield, has lost his mother.  His father has brought him back to a small Iowa town where he himself was once a boy, to live in the same house where the boy’s father and uncle grew up.  The uncle, hiding some dark secrets of his own, requires that Torrie be raised in hiding up in the attic.  But this only lasts until a local farm boy,  Todd Niland, discovers Torrie’s sad existence and becomes his friend. This is a much darker story than I have tackled before, and I am no stranger to dark humor.  It is significant, though, that both Todd and Torrie are gingerbread children from the book I just finished, and even though some sad, dark things come to light in that book, they are not nearly as sad and dark as what is present in this next project.  So I had to find some inspiration before trying to re-ignite the novel forge for The Baby Werewolf.

That led me to watch the video Donnie Darko for the very first time.

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Oofah!  What a strange, horrible, yet beautiful movie!  Richard Kelly’s first film is an incredible artwork that makes your soul sing darkly.  Talk about listening to dark rabbits from the future… really, I mean, no one told anyone they should talk about about dark rabbits from the future… but this film does with a twisted elegance and ironically terrible beauty.  It discusses the sex lives of Smurfs, raises alarms with old women wandering aimlessly to the mailbox in the path of oncoming cars, and fires teachers from their jobs for discussing the short stories of Graham Greene.  There is no way I can explain in a witless-wordless movie review.  You must simply watch the movie for yourself.

Remember this musical masterpiece?  “Hello, Darkness, my old friend… I’ve come to talk with you again…”  Yes, I am entertaining the darkness again because I will be depending on her to help me write this book whose theme is going to be, “Everyone dies in the end, but the real life depends on how we deal with that fact.”

Yes, people who know me, I mean really know me, including the facts behind what I can’t actually say in this blog because the innocent must be protected, will probably worry that I am undertaking a writing project about monsters and depression and suicidal thoughts and child abuse.  I do have scars.  But I am at peace with the hard parts of the life behind me.  And from great pain and profound suffering, beautiful things can be made.  So don’t worry.  Downloading a bunch of monster-movie darkness into my stupid old head is not going to hurt me at this point in my life.  And if I can’t write it now, it will never be written.

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April 1, 2017 · 3:45 pm

Mickey Notes

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This is the purple-furred Mickey Icon done Don Martin-style.

If you are one of those readers who has taken to regularly reading Mickey posts on Catch a Falling Star ( a habit that is probably bad for you, but certainly not fatal), there are some things and random recent developments that you should probably be made aware of.

  • Mickey recently finished a rough-draft novel.  After giving birth to a massive 12-month-long-gestating thought artifact like that, there is bound to be some necessary recovery time involved.  He may be difficult to understand for a while as he puts the pieces of his psyche back together again.  Using mental duct tape for such things takes time and patience.
  • The novel is called Recipes for Gingerbread Children.  If that arouses curiosity in you (a condition that I also hope is not fatal… You are not a cat, are you?), there are instances of rants and delusional spoutings about this story to be found in recent posts on this blog.  Unfortunately, it will not be published immediately.  You will have to wait to actually read it until I or my heirs eventually get it published… by whatever means necessary (though I have my doubts about the plan involving kidnapped alien slaves and mimeograph machines.)
  • The novel I do have nearing publication is Magical Miss Morgan.  I recently submitted approval for final edits to my project manager for Page Publishing.  Since I am investing my own money in this publication project, I am expecting that it will get published before 2017 is done.  I will continue to relentlessly plug the thing here.
  • Page Publishing is a less expensive and less professional publisher than I-Universe that did Catch a Falling Star for me.  If you are reading this for ideas about pursuing publication yourself, I would recommend the more expensive publisher first, due to the quality of their professional editors, though I intend to continue publishing my books with less expensive self-publishing options like Amazon from here on.  As I finish the publishing process I am now involved in, I promise to complain about publishers and throw Mark-Twain-like insult fits in future blog posts.  No one should have to repeat the egregious mistakes that Mickey has made.
  • Catch a Falling Star, the blog, will continue to be a blog about my artwork, my story-telling, my teacher memories, and my generally confusing and bombastic opinions about life, the universe, and everything… including pies.  Mmm!  Pies are good.  You might even want to look at my essay on Gooseberry Pie.

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In case you were not aware of it, this purple mouse-man is Mickey, and Mickey is the writer-spirit within me.  Mickey is not actually me.  You know how Mark Twain is not really a real person?  The real person was Samuel Langhorn Clemens.  Mickey is not a really real person either.  Michael Beyer, cartoonist, writer, and former middle school teacher is the real person… if any former middle school teacher can ever be considered a real person.

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Filed under feeling sorry for myself, humor, Mickey, novel, novel plans, NOVEL WRITING, Paffooney, publishing, strange and wonderful ideas about life, work in progress, writing, writing humor

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March 29, 2017 · 2:38 pm

Illustrating in Novel Ways

I have just finished a novel project that I worked on for a year, from Spring of 2016 to Spring of 2017.  And part of my personal project procedure involves using drawings to help me visualize the characters in the story and begin to view them as real people, even when they most certainly aren’t real.  I even have this derfy Mickian idea that Paffoonies (those picture ideas that are inseparably fused to words) are essential to Mickian fiction.  (Mickian fiction= another frighteningly goofy idea that needs to go unexplained.)

Gingerbread Children

The book, Recipes for Gingerbread Children is about an old woman, a German immigrant and Holocaust survivor, who comes to a small Iowa town with a gift for story-telling and a gift for baking things, especially gingerbread cookies.

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Grandma Gretel Stein, seen in the Paffooney on the left, is the main character of the story.  She tells stories, mostly fairy tales, that have lessons about being true and faithful even in the face of great evil.  The fairy in her hand is General Tuffaney Swift, an immortal Storybook fairy who leads the army of the local fairy kingdom called Tellosia.    Gretel believes he is real  Honestly, she gets so into story-telling that her fairy friends seem absolutely real to her.  And who is to say that there aren’t little magical people living in a hidden kingdom among the cornfields in Iowa?  Gretel convinced me that they were real.  She even has a hand in making new fairies by the baking of gingerbread.  She gets a magical recipe from the fairy Erlking, a wise and magical being, and uses it to create living gingerbread boys and gingerbread girls.

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The gingerbread girl on the right is Anneliese, named after Gretel’s own daughter and decorated with frosting, food coloring, and gumdrops by the favorite story listener who constantly listens to Gretel’s stories and helps bake Gretel’s gingerbread, Sherry Cobble.

Sherry is a beautiful young eighth grade girl who reminds Gretel of her long-lost daughter.  Sherry has a twin sister named Shelly and they are identical twins, but Sherry not only looks like Anneliese once did, she acts like her with the same confidence and enthusiasm for life that Anneliese once had before the war.

Sherry and Shelly are both part of the Cobble family, who have a reputation locally as wacky-pants loonies because they believe firmly in being nudists and engaging in nature completely naked while not actually wearing any wacky pants.  I haven’t done any actual pictures of Sherry  in the nude, but if you look carefully at the first picture of her above and see clothing, then you are seeing things that are not there.  Yep, the girl bakes and decorates gingerbread men in the buff, wearing her pale pink birthday suit, even when the weather outside in Iowa makes that nonsensical.

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So by now you can probably draw several conclusions about me as both a novelist and an illustrator.  #1, There is definitely something a little bit off about me.  #2, I haven’t said anything yet about this book having dead Nazis and a werewolf in it, even though I rarely talk about this book without throwing those things in somewhere.  #3, Number 2 is actually taken care of in a backhanded way if you are reading this whole list carefully.  #4,  This story is probably about things that really aren’t just gingerbread recipes.  #5, You should congratulate yourself if you read this far in this post.  You have unusual amounts of patience and curiosity, and an extremely high tolerance for levels of goofy that put actual Goofy to shame.

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Filed under goofy thoughts, humor, novel, NOVEL WRITING, nudes, Paffooney, strange and wonderful ideas about life, writing, writing humor