Category Archives: NOVEL WRITING

February 21, 2023 · 3:54 am

Silly Sunday Stuff

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I made a choice, long about 1980 or so.  And I have not regretted that choice.  I became a teacher instead of the writer/artist I thought I wanted to be.  And the more I look back on it now, if I had gone the writer route back then, I could’ve eventually become an author like Terry Brooks who wrote the Shannara books.  I might’ve even been as good as R.A. Salvatore whose fantasy adventure stories have reached the best seller list.  Back then, in the 1980’s I could’ve eventually broke into the business and been successful.  Even as late as when Frank McCourt broke onto the literary scene with his memoir, Angela’s Ashes in 1996, I might’ve been able to transition from teacher to writer the way he did.  But I chose to keep going with a teaching career that enthralled me.

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Publishing and the literary scene is changing now.  And it is no longer possible for someone like me to break into the big time.  I am an author who has come aboard a sinking ship.

But I have stories to tell.  They have lived inside me for more than thirty years.  And I am scrambling now to get them told before my crappy old body completely betrays me and makes the chance go away.  I will get them told… even if no one ever listens.

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And there are some advantages to doing it the way I have done it.  It is, and always has been, about the people in my life.  My wife, my children, my students, my co-workers, my cousins by the dozens, my little town in Iowa…  they are the people in my stories.  My stories are true to life, even if they have werewolves and fairies and living gingerbread men and nudists in them.  I live in a cartoon world of metaphor and surrealism, after all.  I would not have had the depth of character-understanding in my stories without my experiences as a teacher.  And I really don’t have to worry about the whole marketing thing any more.  I am not on that treadmill.  I do not have to be aware of what the market is looking for.  If my writing ever turns a profit, I won’t live long enough to see it anyway.  And that has never been what it is all about.

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I can do anything I please with my stories.  They belong to me.  I do not owe the world anything.  What I give you now in this blog and in my books, is given for love, not profit.  I can even write a pointless blog post about Sunday blather and illustrate it with Tintin drawings by Herge. And you can’t stop me.  And, hopefully… you don’t even want to.

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February 21, 2023 · 3:40 am

The Haunted Toy Store… Canto 10

Canto 10 – Rogelio and Steven

Rogelio found himself standing naked in a dark, night-time alley.  A horse was tied up to a hitching post nearby and eating oats out of a wooden bucket.  But the horse, though moving and apparently alive, was nothing but the skeleton of a horse with a ghostly outline of mane, flesh, and saddle overlaid upon it.

“What have I gotten into?”

“I paid the toy man the usual fee, and he gave me you to play with as the toy I need for this,” said Steven, apparently from inside his own head.

“What are you?  Are you a ghost possessing me, or something?”

“We don’t use the word ghost, actually.”

“Spook, then?”

“If you must know, we call ourselves the Lonelies.  Or, as you will soon see, the Bones of the Lonelies.”

“What are you if you are not ghosts?”

“We are the ones left alone when we died.  Those who died a terrible, lonely death.  Or were cursed.  Or simply did not have the love during life that life owed us.”

“How sad for you.  But what do you need me for?  And why am I standing here naked in an alley with a horse made of bones?”

“I need your body to do what I must do.  Just as Imelda needs the body she is playing with.  But we don’t need your clothes.  In 1875 nobody wears impractical crap like that.  And everybody is dead in my time compared to your time, so all you can see of them is their bones and the memory of their flesh.”

“Like the horse over there?”

“That’s Blue, my horse.  We’re gonna ride him to the quinceañera.”

“What quinceañera?”

“The birthday celebration of the girl I have to kill.”

“Kill?  What do you mean kill?”

“Don’t worry.  I will explain it before we go. That’s just a simple time-ride on old Blue.    I will show you everything that happened.”

“That’s why Yesenia and I are both here in the flesh?  You’re going to kill her?”

“I must kill Imelda.  But Imelda is using the living girl to relive the quinceañera celebration.”

“You have to let me go.  I won’t help you do that!”

“You can’t go anywhere until I am done with you.  And I will not be done with you until I stab Imelda to death once again.”

“You’ve done this before?”

“Hundreds of times.” Rogelio was suddenly sick to his stomach. But he couldn’t throw up.  Steven was in complete control of his body.  He was, apparently, merely along for the ride.

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February 16, 2023 · 4:26 am

Talking to Nobody

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.“

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February 14, 2023 · 3:53 am

The Haunted Toy Store… Canto 9

Canto 9 – Mr. Mephisto

Mark and Shandra were both hanging up against the theater wall by their strings.  Both were naked.  But they were no longer real children.  They were now both jointed wooden marionettes.

“Mark?  Can you still talk?”

“How did you say that without moving your mouth?”

“You must have some idea, dummy.  Your mouth didn’t move either.”

“Yeezus, Shandra, what happened to us?”

“That damned toy man changed us into Pinocchios.”

“Oh, no!  Does that mean we have to get swallowed by a whale in order to turn back into human beings?”

“Gawd dang, Mark.  You are such a child.  We have been cursed by some kinda monster devil-man.  We are screwed.”

The curtain opposite the two puppets parted and a man came through.  It was the man who had pulled them out of the toy man’s magic box.

“Well, well… awake again, are we?”

“What are you doing to us, devil-man?” shouted Shandra.

“You are a feisty one, I’ll give you that.  It’s no wonder the archangel asked me to hide you two.”

“That’s what you be doing to us?” asked Shandra.

“You need to not have Poppa Dark find you for a while, am I right?”

“Well… yeah.  But you changed us without our permission.”

“And you made us naked too,” whined Mark.

“Oh, shut up, Mark.  You ain’t suffering by being naked.  You don’t even got no little wooden dick on you as a puppet.”

“She has a point.  While in this guise, you can more-or-less be anything or anyone by simply dressing you up in new puppet costumes.  Want to be a girl for a while Mark?  New wig and a gingham dress, and voila!  Mark becomes Mary.”

“Do I gotta be a girl?  Or can I be like a pirate?”

“Or maybe a soldier?” said the man.

“Oh, yeah.  That would be neat!”

“Now, wait just a minute, devil-man.  Who the hell are you?  You gonna help us?  Or cook us and eat us?”

“Now, Shandra, my dear, if I were going to eat the two of you, would I have turned you into wooden puppets?  Kind of harder to chew that way, don’t you think?”

“Well, how do we know you don’t like to eat wood like a dang beaver?”

“I have no plans on changing myself into a beaver.”

“Who and what are you?” Shandra sharply demanded.

“My name is Nicholas L. Mephisto.  I am the owner of Aunt Phillia’s Toy Emporium.  And you two have been changed into marionettes to put on a few shows before we try to solve your collective problems.”

“Well, whatever you gonna do to us… you better at least put some clothes on us.  And don’t you dare touch my private parts while you are doing it!”

“Shandra, you don’t any longer have any private parts,” reminded Mark.

“Oh, yeah.”

Mr. Mephisto smiled at the girl marionette as he picked out for her a nice red dress with white polka dots and a frizzy blond wig to complement her ebony black-painted skin and super-sassy attitude.

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February 7, 2023 · 2:28 am

The Haunted Toy Store… Canto 8

Canto 8 – The Slink

On the car ride home, Maria worked up the nerve to ask her stepfather a few things.

“Why did you lie to those people, Stan?”

“I didn’t lie.”

“You were pretending to be that woman’s friend.  You never met her before.  How is that not a lie?”

“I only said I knew Brittany from her charity work.  When I researched her, I found that information about the charities.  So, that was exactly how I knew about her.  I can’t help it if he interpreted my words differently than that.”

“So, you really want the man and his little girl to think of us as friends and call us?”

“We need to listen to anything they have to say.  If we are going to learn anything about why this woman was struck down in this way, it will come from what they want to talk about when they want to talk about the incident.”

“But why bother at all?  It doesn’t really have anything to do with the case we really want to solve.  We need to find out about Rogelio and Yesenia.”

“Strange things have been happening in and around that toy store for a long, long time.  I have a suspicion we will need to find out how more than one of those things happened in order to figure out what your boyfriend is caught up in.”

“So, what do you really think happened to Mrs. Nguyen?”

“I don’t know anything for sure yet.  You have to be open to anything as a possible clue.  Once you find some things out, you follow those leads and try to eliminate them as paths to the answer.  You eliminate all the false paths, and the one you are left with is the one that will lead you to the answer.”

“It makes you sound like Sherlock Holmes.”

“It should sound like logic.  In fact, it is the methodical application of logic that Sherlock might’ve called “ratiocination.”

“What ratio-whatsit do you already have about Rogelio?”

“Well, you said he seemed to be hearing voices in his head before he disappeared.”

“Yeah.  He seemed to be talking to a papier-mâché skull.  You know.  One of those Day-of-the-Dead Mexican holiday things.”

“Did you hear it say anything?”

“No.  It was just a toy on a shelf.”

“But was it really?  Do you know for sure he wasn’t talking to someone, somehow?”

“Like how?”

“A miniature radio?”

“ESP?”

“Ghosts?”

“Be serious!”

“I am.  At the start, you don’t throw out any possibility.  It is the weirdest ones that make it hardest to find the real answer.  You can’t discount anything without evidence.”

“Okay.  I see your point.  I hope it’s ghosts, actually.  That would be more fun than a miniature radio to contact Yesenia in the alley.”

“Yes.  We might want to see if we can eliminate the radio thing first.”

“You going to that toy store to check on it?”

“We are going.  I need your eyes and ears and brain there too.”

So, it was settled.  The investigation had a new lead to track down.

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February 4, 2023 · 10:43 pm

Faun Art

I have completed work on a novel called A Field Guide to Fauns. In it, I will make use of one of the most central metaphors in all of my art and writing. The mythological figure of the faun is usually portrayed as a young boy or youth, nude, and potentially having goat horns, goat legs, a deer’s tail, and/or pointed ears. It represents sensuality, connections to nature, and a willingness to partake in enjoyments without hiding anything.

Fauns were defined in art long before I came along. The Marble Faun was a book by Nathaniel Hawthorne that I read in college. I looked endlessly in libraries after that for pictures of Praxiteles’s masterpiece from all angles. I would eventually be inspired to make the picture above by a picture made in print by Maxfield Parrish printed in Collier’s Magazine. I have been fascinated for years by fauns. And I began drawing them repeatedly.

As a teenager, I had a faun as an imaginary friend. His name was Radasha. He made it his business to lecture me about sex and nudity, morals, religion, and what was wrong with me. At the time I was repressing the memory of being the victim of a sexual assault, a very painful and traumatic experience that I did not allow myself to remember and admit was real until I was twenty-two. Radasha turned out to be a coping method who helped me heal, and helped me realize that just because it was a homosexual assault, that did not make me a homosexual.

Fauns would come to dominate my artwork through the eighties. I drew Radasha multiple times. I would use the image to express things I feared and fought with and won victories over .

I would come to learn that there were fauns in real life to be found. The portrait above is of Fernando, a favorite student from my first two years as a teacher. He is portrayed as a faun. The cardinal on his shoulder is a symbol of courage and endurance, a bright red bird that never flies away when the winter comes.

Devon Martinez is the main character of my novel in progress. He is an artist like I am. He is fifteen at the time of the novel, and faced with living the rest of his childhood in a nudist community. He doesn’t consider himself a faun to begin with. But that changes during the course of the novel.

Here is the first illustration done for the novel. It is supposed to be a picture drawn by Devon himself.

So, as always with Saturday artwork, there is more to come.

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January 31, 2023 · 2:32 am

The Haunted Toy Store… Canto 7

Canto 7 – Room 1313, Parkland

Stan brought the flowers he bought in the gift shop with him as he entered the room.  The husband, David Nguyen, sat in the cushioned chair by the bed with his head in his hands.  He was obviously distraught in spite of the time that passed since the mystery illness struck down his wife.  The daughter, Hannah according to the notes, sat in a folding chair watching cartoons on the hospital-room TV. 

Stan turned to Maria and whispered, “You make friends with the little girl.  Give her your cellphone number and tell her she can call you if she wants to talk about anything.”

Maria nodded silently and walked over to the little girl.

“Um, Mr. Nguyen?  I know now is not a good time, but I brought Brittany some flowers.  I wanted to know if there was anything I could do to help your family out in this time of trouble?”

The man looked up.  He was obviously an Asian-American, probably Vietnamese.  He had been crying.  His eyes were red.

“Who?  Who are you?  Brittany knows you?”

“I know her through her work at the charity, the one helping troubled teens.  She’s a very determined activist trying to make kids’ lives better.”  It wasn’t totally a lie.  The information he dug up about her charitable activities was indeed impressive.

“Yeah, well, I wish she had spent more time with her own daughter and less time fundraising for future criminals and terrorists.  Now poor Hannah will never know her mother as well as she deserves.”

“Oh?  Did the doctor give you bad news?”

“He can’t tell me anything at all.  He has no idea what caused this coma.  She’s not brain-dead, but nobody can say when or even if she will ever wake up.  For all they know, she will be like this until she dies.”  The man was obviously filled with bitterness and anger.

“She got this way at that old antique toy store on Mockingbird Lane, didn’t she?”

“Yeah…”

“Do you know anything about what happened while she was in there?”

“Not really.  She took Hannah in there just to look at the toys.  Why?”

“There’s a lot of very old things in there.  Some of those really old toys come from a time before anybody knew that mercury or asbestos was bad for you… even deadly.”

“You think she might’ve gotten some of that stuff from the toys in there?”

“It’s possible.  Did you talk to the store owner… or whoever was there running the place?  Maybe he could’ve shed some light on what she did that may have caused her condition.”

“I didn’t really talk to him.  He did talk to the ambulance guy and the police while I was there.  But I went here to Parkland in the ambulance with Brittany.”

Maria gave Hannah a hug and then came over to stand next to her stepdad.  Stan winked at her with the eye farthest from the man in the chair.

“My daughter and I are hoping for the best.  You and your family will be in our prayers.  I will leave you my phone number.  Anything you want to talk about or anything we can do to help, just give us a call.”  Stan handed the man a piece of paper with his cellphone number scrawled on it.

“Thank you.  What was your name again?”

“My name is Stanley… but you can call me Stan.  Stan Menschen.  My daughter here is Maria.  Your daughter is more than welcome to talk to her about anything.  I asked her to give Hannah her cell number.”

“Thank you.  I don’t know what else to say…” He dropped his head back into his hands.

Stan walked out with Maria feeling like they did not learn much, but the groundwork was laid.

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January 24, 2023 · 2:55 am

The Haunted Toy Store… Canto 6

Canto 6 – The Porcelain Doll

Brittany’s head was swimming as she walked into the coffee shop with the doll still cradled in her arms.

“Lady, you look a little pale and peaked.  How about you sit down at the counter, and I give you a free first cup of java?” The broad-faced man behind the counter had a huge and welcoming smile.  It made her heart stop fluttering just a bit.

“World War Two is going on?” she tried not to gasp as she asked it.  But she was sure the three other people in the place, all older than dirt, knew she was rattled to the point that she was about to shake herself to pieces.

“Husband fighting in Italy is he?  We all think it’s almost over there.  Patton is wiping out the bad guys.  But it will be a while before Germany falls too.  Or is he in the Pacific?”

“No… ah, my husband is… well, he’s not in this world anymore.”

“Oh!  We’re so sorry for your loss.”  The shop owner had tears in his eyes as he poured her coffee.

“That why you bought the doll over at Aunt Phillia’s place?” asked the old man three seats down from her at the counter.  “It’s nice… um… an antique… but it’s naked…”

“Weren’t a good idea, Miss.   The toys from that store are all cursed,” said the old woman sitting next to him.

“Hush, Mabel.  She just told us her husband died a war hero.  You gotta have more respect than that.”

“No, my husband didn’t die in the war… He just hasn’t been born yet.”

“What?”

“You can’t tell them that,” said the doll.  “They won’t believe you.  And they will never understand the truth from your point of view.”

“Did you hear the doll talk just now?” she asked the shop owner.

“He can’t hear me,” said the doll.

“Listen, Ma’am, I know the world doesn’t make any sense for a while after you lose someone.  Especially if you lose them overseas and far from home.  You need something to eat?  It’s on the house in view of your loss.”

“He’s being kind.  You need to accept and be grateful,” said the doll.

“Maybe… the sausage smells good.”  She tried to smile, but the tears were real.

“Certainly.  Not real easy to come by with the war on, but certainly what you need about now.”  The shop owner took the sausage out of the frying pan and put it on a plate for her.

“Where did he die, Sweetie,” said the old woman, trying to be more considerate.

“I can’t… I mean… I don’t…”

“You don’t have to say anything.  Just eat.  Mabel is being nosy.  You need to recover from your loss.”

“It’s me you need to talk to,” said the doll.  “But not here.  They already think you’ve gone nuts from grief.  Finish eating and then take me somewhere private.”

Brittany wolfed down the sausage, which really was savory and delicious, and then tried to get out of the shop and leave the doll behind.

“Miss, don’t forget your doll.  She’s probably valuable.  And you really shouldn’t be completely alone now.”

The old woman snatched up the porcelain doll and put it directly into her arms.  She smiled at Brittany with a toothless smile.

“Please don’t leave me, Mommy,” said the doll.  “I can’t lose you now.  You are my last hope.”

Brittany burst into tears, hugged the doll to her, and started to run.

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January 17, 2023 · 4:35 am

The Haunted Toy Store… Canto 5

Canto 5 – The Game’s Afoot

Stanley Menschen was a simple man, believing firmly in the right and wrong of many things.  He believed in police procedures.     He still believed in them now that he was no longer a member of the Dallas Police Department and was doing freelance investigative work instead.  That’s why he didn’t participate in the initial investigation of Yesenia Montemayor’s disappearance.  You needed to let the police do their jobs.

“Stan, you know she most likely ran away and threw down the underwear with the blood on it to get talked about as she hid out with friends somewhere.”

  Stan leaned over the desk and looked Officer Jason Penny in the eyes.  “J.C, tell me you don’t think the boy isn’t worth investigating because he’s doing the same thing?”

“He was her boyfriend.  The connection is obvious.”

“So, the bloody underwear thing was a pre-planned throw-down?  They plotted it out together?”

“What else?”

“That’s what I want to know.  Any other clues that don’t indicate a simple runaway?”

“The detectives didn’t turn anything up.”

“Did you seriously investigate the store owner?”

“You mean the creepy guy?  Old Eule Geist?  You know he’s your stepdaughter’s alibi, don’t you?”

“Yes, but that shop has been investigated for years.  What other current investigations involve that damned toy store?”

“Just a couple.  The mysterious case of a woman dropping into a coma inside the store.  Name of Brittany Nguyen. Currently in Parkland Hospital’s Long-Term Care Unit.”

“A prior medical condition?”

“Not that we can prove.  But how would Geist have…”

“You know the toy store is owned by some guy named Mephisto?  Has been for over a hundred years.”

“Same guy?”

“Same name on all the paperwork.  Probably a Junior and a Third, though the documents don’t say that.”

“No way any of them poisoned the lady.  Especially not the dead ones.”

Stan scribbled the name of the coma lady down in his notebook.  “And the other cases?”

“Couple of runaway grade school kids.  Eight years old.  Shandra Johnson, age eight, and Mark Merriweather, also age eight.  The boy’s bicycle was found near the toy store.  But the girl’s old man is a prime suspect.  He’s been on our radar for wife beating and child abuse for quite some time.”

Stan noted that down too.

“Anything else?”

“Your girl’s case.”

“Yeah.  At least it is something to start with.”

“There’s nothing there, Stan.  Really.  It’s all coincidence and rumors about a place we all said was haunted when we were kids.  Nothing there, I tell you.”

Stan nodded.  Nothing on the surface.  But a lot of dark and deep water to dive into.  You never prejudge anything… at least, not if you’re wise.

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January 16, 2023 · 3:13 am

Reading Bag of Bones

This is not a book review. I did finish reading this book in a 3-hour-end-of-the-book reading orgy, spending an hour last night, and two more early in the morning before the rest of my family was awake.

This is certainly not a book review. But I did read a Stephen King book, 1998’s Bag of Bones, which I picked up from the dollar sale shelves at Half Price Books. And I did love the story.

………………………………………………………………………This is not a book review. Instead, I want to talk about what a novelist can learn and reflect on by meta-cogitating over what this book reveals about King’s work habits and style and author’s voice.

Mike Noonan, the protagonist, is a novelist who writes books that routinely land in the numbers 10 through 15 slots in the New York Times Bestseller List. Obviously, this first-person narrative is coming directly out of King’s own writing experience. But, remember, this is not a book review. I am discussing what I have learned about how King puts a story together.

King sets a back-story for this novel that digs deep into the geographica and historica of the city in Maine where the story is set. The literal bag of bones revealed in the book’s climax is almost a hundred years old. And he takes a compellingly realistic tour back in time to the turn of the Twentieth Century more than once to reveal who the undead characters are and why they do what they do. One thing that makes a writer, a novelist, truly solid is his ability to set the scene, to grow the story out of the background in the most organic and realistic way possible. But this is not a book review. I am saying that King always does this with his books. And if you wish to write at that level, you must do that too. I know I am sincerely trying.

At the end of the story, he clearly tells the reader that he learned from Thomas Hardy that “the most brilliantly drawn character in a novel is but a bag of bones”. So, he is definitely aware that a character is a construct that has to be crafted from raw materials. It takes a master craftsman to build one with the right words to make it live and breathe on the page. He does it masterfully in this book with several characters. The protagonist, the beautiful young love interest, the love interest’s charming three-year-old daughter who is nearly slain in a horrific manner at the end of the book… The living villain is a well-crafted bag of bones, as is the ghost, the actual bag of bones in the story. But this is not a book review. Most of his books, at least the ones I have read, have the same sort of masterful characters.

There is so much more to be learned about novel writing from this book. He literally shows you how ideas are captured, how they are developed into stories, how you overcome “writer’s block”, and Noonan’s book he is writing within this book is even used as an example of how to poetically advance the plot. But this is not a book review. You should read this book. It is a very good and scary piece of work. But you should read it because it shows us how to write and do it like a master.

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