These are the pieces of art and illustrations that are going into the re-writing project of my novel Aeroquest.
I decided to totally rework the novel and illustrate it more fully because it was always supposed to be a science-fiction satire and parody that was more cartoonish than literary.
It is a story about a teacher conquering a space empire. It arose from a science-fiction role-playing game that filled my days in the 1980’s and early 90’s.
It parodies Star Wars, Star Trek, Flash Gordon, Buck Rodgers, Dune, and much more besides. And it includes many of my own wacky inventions about what the future might hold in store.
Here is the original teacher in space and some of his first class of students.
Many of the main characters are based on the actual role-playing characters made up by the boys and young men who played the game with me. Many had to be re-named, however, because, like Tron Blastarr above, they often had movie-character names.
This important character was a parody of Professor X of the X-men, from the comic books and well before the movies.
It was a simple matter to give him psionic powers and transfer him into outer space. Oh, and get him out of the wheel chair too.
The character’s creator was the son of the local high school science teacher.
Ninja powers were a thing with teenage boys in the 80’s.
Combat is an important part of the role-playing game.
We became well-versed on weapons and tactics… and how to manipulate the rolls of the dice… by cheating if necessary.
How else do heroes overcome impossible odds?
Two more player characters that play a critical role in the novels.
Again with the parody characters that came from player-character ideas stolen from TV and the movies.
Aliens are necessary to this kind of story.
I am near to completing this third novel in the series.
The Nebulon aliens, though very human-like, are blue of skin. That is not easy to depict in a black-and-white drawing.
Canto 89 – Back to Darker Skies (the Blood Red Thread)
Ham finally had the Leaping Shadowcat reloaded and ready to return to space. It was a pleasant thing to take part in celebrations for a new government, but the reality was that soon the rot warriors and death commandos of the Galtorr Imperium would be descending. Admiral Tang would hear about Ferrari’s victory and wish to turn it into an ultimate defeat.
The Imperium could bring far more warships and troops to bear than a single planet like Farwind could possibly hope to possess. The only real hope was to activate alliances with other planets.
There was always Coventry. The high-population world was Ferrari’s home planet, and likely to be even more easily swayed to Ferrari’s cause than Farwind had been.
Ham’s crew was reassembled. Duke Ferrari would return as astrogator and navigator because he knew the routes to Coventry better than the rest.
The two Lupins, Sinbadh and Sahleck Kim, would continue to serve as stewards. Sinbadh would be the cook and sometimes the copilot. Sahleck was the cabin boy and did the cleaning.
I was back aboard as the ship’s engineer and chief mechanic. I could also lay claim to the job of Science Officer, though nobody really took a Star-Trekky job like that seriously in the modern universe. Space travel had never truly been imagined right by the movies and TV.
Besides, I was one of the few that really took Astrophysics and Xenobiology seriously. Most spacers would much rather kill it than study it, regardless of what it was. The Kritiian Bugbright was left in charge of the revolutionary government, and we took off on a new mission.
The Leaping Shadowcat rose smoothly through the bright blue skies of Farwind. It was basically a water world, only a few small islands showing on the surface of the ocean-covered blue planet. I watched the planet become smaller below us as I looked out through the viewport on the bridge.
I knew that Coventry would be far different. It was a planet with practically no oceans. Ninety per cent of the water there was underground, or contained in sealed water systems. When you looked at a smoggy brown high-population world like that, all you really could see was a vast, seamless cityscape. I didn’t relish the idea of going there.
“Are we gonna have to make another commando raid against impossible odds when we get to your homeworld Duke?” Ham asked pleasantly.
“I hope not,” Ferrari answered. “You probably noticed that I am no good at such things at all.”
“How do you plan to reconquer it?”
“I don’t really know. Maybe we can luck into something as we get there. Like we did on Farwind.”
“I think…” I said, offering vast wisdom on the matter, “I think we should seriously list those who are on our side in the area.”
“Well,” said Ferrari, “I know we can’t count on Galtorrian or Fusion troopers to aid us this time. Coventry has three different Imperial Training Academies on the planet, all of them fiercely loyal to Slythinus. The local pirate or corsair forces are the Monopoly Brigade, and we’ve learned from Tron Blastarr that their leader is dead set against us.”
“Well, that’s two definite no’s,” I commented wryly.
“How about the White Duke?” offered Ham.
“He’s powerful throughout the sector with gamblers, smugglers, and thieves, but do we really want them on our side?”
“Are there many Unhumans in the system?” asked Sinbadh innocently.
“Mostly as part of the downtrodden under classes. The Imperium treats sentient aliens almost as badly as the Classical Worlds do.”
I had to shake my head on that one too. Genetic freaks were also abused in the area as far as I knew.
“Are there any allies for us there?” asked Ham, concerned.
“Not really,” said Duke Ferrari. “The people loved me when I ruled there, but I championed them and alienated all those who had power. It was the beginning of my downfall.”
“I thought the Imperium was not a republic or a democracy,” offered Sahleck. He was a bright-faced boy for a Lupin. I had always thought Lupins were thoughtless brutes before.
“That’s true,” said Duke Ferrari, “but even a cruel tyranny like the Galtorr Imperium has to have the consent of the governed to rule.”
“Maybe,” said Ham, “that is precisely what we need. The people are behind you, Han, not the current rulers. We just have to let them know what the Imperials tried to do with you.”
“Well, I be hornswoggled!” said Sinbadh. “Ye have found a solution Ham-boy!”
The simpering Lupin lackwit had suddenly reversed my opinion of Lupins once again. The Shadowcat, now fully prepared, but not fully confident, embarked through jump space for the next fateful destination, the planet Coventry. If only we had failed to tell Captain Dalgoda and the First Half Century where we were going!
I finished another re-read of my most recent book, A Field Guide to Fauns. In spite of this being an experiment expected to fail, I read into it a growing sense of my ability to write well. The issues it deals with, mental health, body shame, self-image, and dysfunctional families, are all things critical to my own understanding of myself. All of these things have deeply affected my life and my family’s life. And, being set in a nudist park, it has a certain aura of comedy about it that you can really only achieve with characters who are naked (figurative or literal are both funny).
Ironically, two of my five best books have nudists in them. Six of my fifteen books over all have nudist adventures in them at one point or another. That’s four more more than have Nazis in them. Four more than have werewolves in them. Four more than have zebra puppets in them, as well as four more than have literal clowns in them. And two more than feature aliens from outer space. Five more than have rabbits who are changed into people by science.
If nudity is not funny, then I have seriously miscalculated the appeal and gone entirely down the wrong garden path of humorous story-telling. So, since I now believe The Field Guide to Fauns is one of the best novels I have done, I may have actually laid an egg. (Who knew that farm boys could one day grow up to lay an egg themselves?) For balance I need to plant a few more carrots of irony in that garden that the garden path of humorous writing leads to.
Mandy Clarke, Pinky Pithers, and Tandy Clarke
I am planning to make my newest novel this month’s free-book giveaway sometime next week. I have a few more corrections to make on it before I do, so stay tuned. I don’t like it when I find bugs in the writing on the fourth re-read. But I think I may have sprayed them all with anti-bug proofing spray (figuratively speaking again, because with Mickey, you never know.)
I have not yet finished AeroQuest 3 : Juggling Planets, but the groundwork is being laid already for part 4 in the AeroQuest Saga. The series is, after all, the rewrite of my out-of-print, 2007 novel, AeroQuest. So, the overall structure of the story already exists. I am merely expanding and revising that 350-page book into a better series of four or five books. In fact, there might have to be even more than that. I basically am too inventive for my own good, and there are just too many characters and plot threads for one book. And it may take six books to work it all out correctly.
This, then, is not so much a novel project as a hobby. Or maybe an artifact of an old hobby.
You see, AeroQuest was a story made from the notes I kept of my ongoing Traveller Role-playing game of the 80’s and early 90’s. Hamfast Aero, a main character, was a player character created by one of the first gang of players I had in the 80’s. In fact Ged Aero, Trav Dalgoda, Tron Blastarr, Xavier Tkriashav, Vince Neill (the player’s misspelling, not mine), Cold Death, King Killer, and Duke Han Ferrari were all player characters and strongly reflect the personalities and style of their original players. The plot is bizarre because of some of the creative problem-solving decisions made by the group of nerds who played the game. It had to be a comedy because we always had that over-the-top jokeability as a guiding principal of game play.
I am past page 100 in Book 3, and I have passed 27,000 words. It will end up being at least 135 pages and at least 35,000 words when it is finished. Book 4, if it ends the series, will have to be more than twice that. That’s why I am thinking five books instead of four.
The inspiration for the book was the foolish idea of combining Douglas Adams’ Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy wackiness with Frank Herbert’s Dune huge-book-with-many-short-chapters style. I guess the rewrite has given up on the Herbert format, if not the multitude of characters and subplots that went with it.
Anyway, I will have Book 3 published before I move on to the next writing project. The goal has never been to make money and be famous as a writer. But telling stories and writing them as novels has never been a choice. And, as painful as some of it is to give birth to, there is fulfillment to be had just from the simple act of writing.
Lemurians were shaped like human children except for the thumbs on each foot and the long prehensile tail. Most sentient aliens and Unhumans treated them like mere animals mostly because they wore no clothing and spoke no discernable language. Of course, nakedness made them much more like the Classical Worlders rather than apes. They were covered in soft tan and chocolate fur, but it covered up no more of their bodies than the oil that a naked athlete from the planet Mantua might wear.
And lack of language didn’t necessarily make them any less of a person than the vast numbers of humans that fell under the general heading of “stupid people”. Emperor Slythinus, though, the deposed Emperor of the Galtorr Imperium, had discovered a telepathic ability that he shared with the monkey people. He called it the “shining” because it was more a matter of reading colored auras and electrical impulses around the monkey people than reading actual words from their minds. It was a primitive brain-to-brain language that served as a sort of pre-telepathy. It allowed him to translate for the Lemurian people.
Ookah, the Lemurian leader, now stood in front of King Killer, Dr. Hooey, and Slythinus naked as the day he was born and radiating green-colored lies.
“How could you not tell me about this?” raged Slythinus. “You have been my most trusted friend. Better than my top advisors on Galtorr.”
The monkey man shined an answer that was intended to be soothing and conciliatory, but ended up being a transparent form of lie.
The blind Emperor turned to King Killer and Dr. Hooey. “They found the device when they first came through,” he said, interpreting. “They found it from the other side because they did not originate here. Ookah and his friends sought to keep the knowledge of it from me because they feared I would be hurt by the place’s guardian, some villain they “shine” at me as being a “white man”.”
“Interesting!” cooed Hooey. “These little monkey people have developed a real fondness for you, a man mostly snake by nature. Tell me, did you have your eyes when you first met them?”
“No, of course not! Prince Ali blinded me before he marooned me here.”
“I wonder if they would’ve had an atavistic fear of those eyes if they had seen them.”
“What I want to know,” said King Killer, “…is where is the dang thing, and how do we use it?”
Slythinus took a moment to “shine” back at Ookah. The little simian looked quite agitated as the answer came back.
“He says he will take us to the place. He has no other way to tell us.”
Ookah turned and gestured to the monkey people who surrounded the tree house sitting in each and every one of the trees around it. They began jumping up and down on branches and shouting raucously, sounding more like upset children than alien primates. Eerily, it almost sounded like a series of swear words.
“They don’t like it,” interpreted Slythinus, “but they promise to take us there and help us defeat the white man.”
“Natives defeating the white man?” said King dubiously. “That doesn’t sound like something that happens too often in History.”
Hooey laughed aloud. “Now the skeptic thinks he knows History better than a Time Knight! Wait and see. And remember the Little Bighorn.”
Canto 87 – The New Star League (the Multi-colored Thread)
Ged was still a bit stunned when he made his way the next morning to the meeting in Shen Ming’s Hall. But he knew it was going to be important as Shen Ming claimed to know nothing at all about it, which always turned out not to be true, and Tkriashav said it was about the direction the Prophecy would take next.
He entered the Masters’ Study to find Shen Ming sitting behind the desk, contemplating the desktop with his off-kilter stare. Tkriashav stood behind him with his arms crossed, looking disgustedly at the two guests standing before them. One was a clownish-looking fool in a scout uniform. The other was a young boy wearing tights that bore the insignia of Tron Blastarr’s Outpost.
“So, Liz was right. A scout ship has come to Gaijin.”
“You knew about the prophecy?” Tkriashav asked him.
“Not until she told me about it last night.”
“Did she tell you this little incident will require the founding of the New Star League?”
“No, she must’ve forgotten about that part.”
“We should kill her, Ged. She’s a spy for the Imperium. We don’t know who she’s meant to help in the working out of the prophecy.”
“But she’s the mother of my son.”
“Ah, gave you the egg, did she?” said Shen Ming with a grin that could kill a bear.
“Oh, for heaven’s sakes, Shen-sensei!” swore Tkriashav with a very mild swear. “Why do you insist on never telling me about the things you read in the prophecy?”
“For one who can read minds, you really don’t understand much about thoughts and feelings, I fear.”
Tkriashav’s glare had shifted fully to the back of Shen Ming’s spotty old head.
“Ah, so you must be Ged Aero, the famous White Spider of Prophecy.” The clown in the scout uniform wiggled his thick, black eyebrows weirdly.
“Who’s asking?” Ged asked.
“I am Captain Spaulding, the African Explorer.”
“No, you’re not,” said the boy. “You are going by the name of Bill the Postman.”
“Oh, right, right. It’s hard to forget sometimes. And easy to disremember.”
“Since when does the Imperium send messages and videos to Gaijin?” asked Tkriashav. “Gaijin is an unknown planet to the Imperial Scout Service.”
“The ISS don’t pay me enough to come here. Fortunately, the Star Nomads do.”
“Star Nomads?” Tkriashav asked.
“The Star Nomads? What are they?” Ged echoed the Psion.
“I thought you knew everything, old Zaranian spooky-dude. The boy can explain later. He’s a gift to Ged Aero from Tron Blastarr and the Magnificent Wanderer.”
“A boy is a gift to me?” Ged didn’t like the idea of people as property, let alone as gifts.
“Oh, not quite a boy. Take your head off and show them, Tiki.”
To Ged’s horror, the child peeled all the flesh and hair off his head, revealing a silver face that looked like Artran if it weren’t bald and made of metal.
“You are a Metaloid?”
“Yes,” said Tiki. “Your Metaloid from now on, Ged-sensei.”
“Even programmed with Gaijinese honorifics, he is.” Shen Ming smiled at the child as he put his head back on. “You will accept this boy, Ged, as a gift to the White Spider and an honor to own.”
Ged nodded consent, since he really had no other choice.
“Now we need to settle some details about the New Star League,” insisted Tkriashav.
“Like what, for instance?”
“Well, we have worlds to sign an alliance with to finally form the League.”
“What worlds?”
“Well, I was thinking of proposing Gaijin itself as the capitol world. Then there is the world you still own at Don’t Go Here.”
“I don’t really own that world. It’s a democracy now.”
“Yes, as is the world of Zarane which I have already secured in an alliance.”
“Three worlds against a thousand?”
“We also have treaties in our possession with the former Psion world of Phoebus IV. Tron Blastarr has pledged the forces and star system of Outpost, as Razor Conn has the system of Dancer. We may still take back the world of White Palm. And we have word that Duke Ferrari now reigns over Farwind.”
“So, seven worlds… maybe eight.”
“Yes.”
“Against a thousand.”
“Well, minus Dancer, Farwind, and White Palm, so more like 997.”
“Ah, comforting that sounds,” remarked Shen Ming.
“You will go with this Bill the Postman today as he leaves here?” Ged asked.
“Yes, as I seem to have no choice by the Prophecy,” answered Tkriashav. “Although it makes me worry to leave with this scout whose strange mind I cannot read.”
“Are you suggesting, sir, that I have no mind to read?” asked Bill who was really Scarpigo Snarcs but had first claimed to be Captain Spaulding.
“Certainly not. But you are not human. You are some sort of time-traveling being.”
“Ah, my mind is an open book, then,” said Bill Spaulding-Snarcs. “You just have to live with the fact that all the pages in it are blank.”
“You see what I mean about him not being human?”
“Yes. Where will you go?”
“What other choice is there? I must go back to Don’t Go Here. And when I go there, I must work out plans for the New Star League with Frieda. Ancient Technology has a large part to play in the Prophecy going forward.”
“At least you don’t have to go to Don’t Go Here alone,” offered Shen Ming with an inscrutable grin.
“Who is going with me?” Tkriashav seemed startled, an unusual state for one who reads minds so easily.
“Lizard Lady,” said Ged. “The Prophecy told her to leave too, just as it told you.”
“That’s a good sign,” said Shen Ming. “You are going to a planet called Don’t Go Here with a woman you would rather not go with in a space ship piloted by a man with a mind like a book with blank pages in it. Poetic to say the least.”
“And the least said, the better,” said Scarpigo-Bill Spaulding. “If you ask me, that is.”
I did it again. I now hold in my hands the first printed copy of A Field Guide to Fauns. It is my first pro-naturism novel, even though it is really more about healing from a traumatic divorce, abuse, and severe depression. It is set in a nudist park. Devon, the main character, is a fifteen-year-old boy struggling to adjust to a change in his parents’ custody arrangements after abuse and depression force him to live with a father who has remarried into a family of nudists. Devon is also an artist who deals with the world through drawing. And more than ever, Devon has begun to suspect that he is actually a mythological forest creature… a faun.
Nocturne 7 – The Prophecy Fulfilled (the White Thread)
Ged returned to the Palace of 1,ooo Years with a lot on his mind. But, in truth, the last thing he was thinking of was becoming a biological father.
As he was entering the apartment that he shared with the Lizard Lady, he was surprised to see her sitting at the table with her feet folded under her and a large green egg on the tabletop in front of her.
“What is this, Liz?”
“You have been busy, my love.”
“I have, yes.”
“So have I.”
Ged suddenly had an eerie feeling about what this all meant.
“Is that…?”
“It is. You must say hello to your firstborn son.”
“But that is an egg.”
“One cannot fool the White Spider.”
“Galtorrian females lay eggs?”
“We do. Its gestation still has another six lunars to go.”
“Six Gaijinese lunars? Ten Earther months?”
“That is correct. You were in Galtorrian form when he was conceived. He will be as pure-blooded as any Galtorrian ever is.”
“How do you know it is a boy? Is he already formed in the egg that way?”
“That I do not know. But this is the child of the prophecy. This will be Lizardboy Aero, heir of the White Spider.”
“You will tend the egg like a bird? On a nest?”
“Not quite. Shen Ming has the necessary incubators to raise a Galtorrian cub. Lizardboy will not be the first eggborn delivered on this planet.”
Ged knelt on the opposite side of the table.
“May I hold it?”
“Certainly. You are his father.”
Ged carefully took the leathery but firm egg from her. He turned it over and over in his hands, examining it carefully.
“My mother on Questor would never have believed this of her son if she were still among the living.”
“May Zhan keep her soul, and may she be blessed by her grandson from another world.”
“Are all Galtorrian purebloods born by eggs?”
“Not all. There is much Earther DNA in Galtorrians. They have been intertwined for more than three thousand of your Earth years. Possibly from a time even before our two home-worlds were ever aware of each other.”
“I know fusions like Phoenix and Taffy King were born the way Earth humans are born.”
“Yes. All fusions are born the Earther way. That is why they are so much more human-looking than I am.”
“Ah, but you are beautiful too. I admit, I never felt it at the beginning, but I do love you now. And I will love this boy as well.”
“Now comes the hard part, my love.”
“What do you mean?”
“If it hadn’t been for the Prophecy of Zhan, I would never have met you. But my part in the prophecy is not yet ended. I am still a spy in the service of the Imperium, and I still have a destiny to fulfill.”
“So… what does that mean for the two of us?”
“We must part for now. I will leave in the morning, heading back into the Imperium.”
“In what ship? There is only the Dragon and the Rooster on this planet now.”
“The prophecy says a scout ship will arrive tomorrow. I must be on it when it leaves.”
“How will I raise our son without his mother?”
“You will be a wonderful father. And young Sara Smith is not the only lovely little lady that will happily play mother to our son.”
Ged’s head was swimming with emotion. This parting was completely unexpected and unwanted.
Most star systems in both the Imperium and what would become the New Star League are generally referred to by their primary world, the planet in the system with the most population, highest technology, and/or the dominant culture. Between the worlds of Djinnistan, Houris, and the three moons of the inner gas giant that had habitable atmospheres and ecosystems, namely Pan, Eblis, and Surtur, Djinnistan took first place not by population or culture, but because it was one of the three heart-worlds of Faulkner Genetics.
Now, I have never contended that I am any sort of expert on genetics and the science of DNA manipulation, but I do understand the dominant role that heart-worlds had in the creation of the kind of beings known as Freaks.
Freaks were genetically engineered slave races bred mostly from human DNA, though also including recombinant lifeforms made from other viably sentient creatures. They ranged from the Longlegs Speedsters of the planet Martin Faulkner’s Dream, to the Man-bull living bulldozers of Sword-World Prime, to the fire-belching Afrits of Djinnistan.
Djinnistan was the science playground of Faulkner Genetics’ number-two man, Dr. Havir Bludlust. He was a man capable of grafting and gene-splicing his own body to achieve a sort of immortality, and doing any necessary horrible thing to other beings to get the specific genetic effects he wanted in a special slave. It is rumored that he had genetically amplified his own brain and given himself two giant bird claws in place of feet. Many claim that his self-manipulations drove him to insanity, but the masters of gene-splicing were all a little bit insane to begin with.
On Djinnistan, Dr. Bludlust produced three different kinds of Freaks with a decidedly Arabian Knights sort of theme.
The little halfling-like creatures, called Peris by Dr. Bludlust, were bred for extreme creativity. They had basically the bodies of a human child with a slightly larger-than-normal head. Their eyes were large and very clear-sighted. And they thought in very innovative and eccentric ways.
One Peri engineer designed a ground car with chicken legs instead of wheels, capable of hopping over rough terrain and running smoothly at about the hunting speed of a velociraptor, providing the most common vehicle on Djinnistan because it was a design loved dearly by all Peris.
Another Peri engineer created a material-synthesizer cannon that could instantly create any kind of aquatic lifeform in the barrel and shoot it out to a distance of one hundred meters. This “fish-gun” was not particularly useful on a desert world like Djinnistan, but became a popular “trout gun” for the mountain streams of Houris. It was also used as a “barracuda gun” on more violent water-worlds like Design and Dancer.
Besides being wildly creative, Peris were also prolific. A Peri female was capable of having one baby a year for 280 years out of a normal 320-year lifespan. That’s how you end up with baby names like, “Another Danged Boy Number 152” whom I may talk about later in this epic tale.
A second main form of Djinnistani Freak is the Winged Djinn race of humanoids with hollow bones and avian wings. These people are capable of extra-vehicular flight within the atmosphere, creating slaves capable of reaching all sorts of difficult-to-reach places on jungle planets, mountainous regions, and extra-large air spaces aboard some of the largest cargo cruisers in space.
These winged beings were the most numerous peoples residing on Houris, Pan, and Eblis. They were second only to the Peris on Djinnistan, and even the third most common residents of the magma-filled world of Surtur.
The hulking and sulfurous Afrits were a unique race designed to have fire-breathing capabilities. They were not blessed with high intelligence, but they made excellent warriors, and even better artillery pieces. They were capable of vomiting napalm-like material from their own stomachs as far as half a mile away with deadly accuracy. They were also fire-proof enough to survive a direct hit from a plasma rifle fifty percent of the time. Of course, they were most common on Surtur, but found on all the worlds of the Djinnistan System.
So, this was the planetary system that Arkin Cloudstalker, Black Fly, and Lazerstone came to in order to invade, with just the three of them to conquer the entire star system.
Once again I am running a free book promotion. Fools and Their Toys is a comedy YA novel about an autistic man who learns to communicate only through a Zebra sock puppet that he uses in his ventriloquist’s act. But even though there are a lot of comedy moments about this fool, his favorite toy, and his child-friends, it is also a murder mystery as the Teddy Bear Killer continues to prey upon young boys. There are some extremely un-funny things in this tale, a story narrated by the zebra sock puppet through his unique point of view. There are numerous emotional responses I am trying to get beyond mere laughter. Sadness, grief, fear, horror, revulsion, doubt, and bewilderment are all supposed to be represented here. And this story does not unfold in sequential time order, Murray the ventriloquist’s mind does not work like that.
And that is what leads to today’s basic topic; What does it mean to claim you are a humor writer?
I have also just completed A Field Guide to Fauns. This is a novel about nudists, so there are a lot of naked people in it. The main character, who is the narrator, is a fifteen-year-old boy who is trying to recover from both a suicide attempt and the loss of the home he grew up in. He comes to live with his father and his stepmother, along with two twin stepsisters in their permanent home within the confines of a nudist park. It is a strange balance of humor, psychological horror, and melancholy.
So, I guess to understand the writing of humorous fiction the way I understand it, you have to accept the notion, “Humorous fiction is not always funny… at least, not on every single page.”
You can find precedent for that in the works of great humorist fiction writers. As funny, quirky, and essentially British as Charles Dickens is, you have to admit, there are pretty dark things happening in some of his greatest books. Oliver Twist has the childish adventures of the Artful Dodger side by side with the murderer Bill Sykes. David Copperfield contains the antics of Wilkins Micawber and the simple Mr. Dick contrasted to the evil of Murdstone, David’s stepfather, and the slimy machinations of Uriah Heep. Even his greatest masterpiece, A Tale of Two Cities, has its clowns like Jerry Cruncher, the grave robber, and Miss Pross. the governess/pugilist, and its villains like the Marquis de Evremondes, the heartless aristocrat, and Madame DeFarge, the even more heartless revolutionary.
The illustration above was the last bit of revision and editing added to A Field Guide to Fauns. It is now ready to be self-published. My writing time today, after posting this, will be devoted to publishing this book. So, soon you will be able to see what I mean about humor having its dark side.
Catch a Falling Star 