Category Archives: novel

September 7, 2016 · 3:02 pm

“Unfortunately, you are a Writer,” He Said.

I have made up my mind to risk investing more money in getting another book published.  Being an author, especially an unknown Indie author, is really just an expensive hobby.  Even investing in professional editorial services and print-on-demand publishers can’t help you make any money at it, even if you are talented and good at story-telling.  The best I can really hope for is to get my books in print and pray that people will discover them and like them after I die, beaten to death for a crust of bread in debtor’s prison.

So, why would anyone in their right mind want to be a writer?

It is entirely possible that I was simply born that way.  I have been drawing cartoons and telling stories since I was about five years old.  Maybe even before that.  I don’t have many clear memories of my pre-school years.  It is possible that I was lost in a library once… or dropped on my head… or in a library and having a book dropped on my head… something set it off if it wasn’t simply in my genes.

I am planning to publish Magical Miss Morgan with Page Publishing.  They are a pay-to-print publisher who are slightly more affordable than I-Universe that I used to get Catch a Falling Star into print.  I feel like I have to get it published before I die because it is the distillation of my entire life as a classroom teacher.  Books like this are important to me.  In the Bible, there are prophets and holy men who are filled with the Word of God, men like Jeremiah, that claim the Word is burning within them, and will burn its way out of them if they don’t speak it.  My stories that I am working at turning into books are like that.  They are consuming me from the inside out.  I have to get them written and printed if I possibly can.

I have recently tried and failed to get novels like Snow Babies, Magical Miss Morgan, and Superchicken published with publishers that don’t charge for their services.   I got several rejections and one contract that came to nothing because of the economic failings of the publisher.  I have tried being infinitely patient.  It doesn’t work.

Cool School Blue

I will try to bargain for the most affordable deal I can to get Magical Miss Morgan into print.  They will apparently let me input artwork into the final cover.  I understand that successful writers tend to starve for at least fifteen years before they see any success and profit.  At best, I have six more years of that to go.  But this, after all, is my life now.  I need to write books and I need to get them published.  I am, unfortunately, a Writer.

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September 6, 2016 · 2:22 pm

Stardusters… Canto 11

You may be wondering why it’s “Canto 11” rather than “Chapter 11”.  Well, my novels are supposed to be like long poems, divided into lyrically composed pieces of verbal music.  Rather conceited, right?  But that isn’t what “literary conceit” has always meant.

Galtorr Primex 1

Canto Eleven – In Golden Wing One at the Initial Landing Site

Farbick set his Golden Wing down gracefully in the garbage-filled lot next to the large, un-destroyed structure.  His ability, unlike that of most Tellerons, came from practice rather than egg-inserted programming from the nurturing computers.

“Oh!  I can see why there were so few life signs from the city,” said Starbright.  “This plaza is full of skeletons.  There must be hundreds of them.”

“Can you tell what they died of?” asked Commander Biznap.

“The air is filled with toxins and pollutants,” said one of the nameless cadets.  “It’s why we will have to wear our protective suits and breath masks to disembark.”

“Could it be that that killed them?” asked Biznap.

“Probably not,” said the other nameless cadet.

“It looks like, because all of the skeletons are intact, that they died of some kind of virulent disease,” said Starbright.  “We can’t tell for sure without further examination, though.”

“We will take every precaution, then,” ordered Commander Biznap.  Farbick thought the order probably reflected the fact that Biznap’s mission on Earth had failed due lack of proper planning and fore-seeing of the unforeseeable.

“Hostile environment suits and skortch pistols?” asked Farbick.  He hated skortch pistols.  They were actually molecular disintegrator rays, and they dissolved you completely, molecule by molecule.  He had himself survived being shot on Earth because Earthers used slug-throwers to shoot lead projectiles into you.  Bad enough, but they gave a slim chance of surviving.  What he thought might be out there, though, made him suggest skortch pistols.  Those icky evil things didn’t need a survivability opportunity if they were really going to attack.

“Yes.  Get dressed and ready quickly.  We need to find them before they find us.”

The team was suited up quickly in heavy-duty Danger Suits, sealed environmental suits with built in A-I intelligence computers and nano-robotic fabric that could repair itself and even treat small wounds.  Each Telleron was handed a lethal, humming skortch pistol, fully charged and ready to burn things into dust and smoke in seconds.  Farbick hoped he was handing them to Tellerons more capable than poor Corebait, a fellow Sindalusian Fmoog who had accidentally skortched himself back on Earth by shooting into an unfortunately positioned mirror.

“Perhaps Cadet Starbright should stay and guard the ship,” Farbick suggested.

“We could easily guard the ship if we stayed too,” said both of the other cadets.

“No,” said Biznap.  “I may need my full available fire-power out there.”

“I couldn’t stay behind and have to worry about the safety of all of the rest of you anyway,” said Starbright bravely.

“Move out,” commanded the Commander.  The team of five moved through the air lock and out into the corpse-filled plaza.

“Turn on your cloaking fields,” Biznap commanded.  One by one, the Telleron commandos winked out of sight behind their invisibility cloaks.  The ship also shivered and disappeared.  “Be ready for anything,” warned Biznap’s voice.

*****

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August 30, 2016 · 3:13 pm

Stardusters… Canto 10

Galtorr Primex 1

Canto Ten – Aboard Golden Wing Sixteen Near an Abandoned Space Station

Looking for interesting places to explore, the tadpole crew of Wing Sixteen spotted the abandoned orbital station before sensors could detect it.  The sensors were set to find life-forms, lizard men in particular, and the instruments all said that none existed on the space platform.  In fact, it was apparently devoid of all life but a few plants.

“Can you dock with that thing?” Tanith asked George Jetson.

“Of course I can.   I am programmed to be the best wing pilot you have ever seen.”

“And you are programmed to be the most modest Telleron we have ever seen too,” said Brekka.

“Or maybe the one with the biggest gonopodium and the smallest brain,” said Menolly.

George just laughed as he focused his instruments on the docking bay.

“What’s a gonopodium?” Alden asked Davalon.

“Father, you would call it a penis on a human,” said Davalon.

“Oh.”  Alden’s forty-year-old sense of propriety turned his twelve-year-old face a bright crimson red.

“Why do you suppose there are no personnel on that station,” Tanith asked everyone in general.

“Maybe there is something wrong with it,” suggested Gracie Morrell.  “Maybe they had to abandon ship.”

“Maybe,” said Davalon, looking carefully at the sensor monitor.  “But I don’t see anything wrong with the on-board systems.  They are all operating like they work perfectly.  That station has air we can breathe, water we can drink, and no alarms are going off anywhere.  It’s as if they abandoned a perfectly good station.”

“Well,” said George Jetson, “we can find the answer by going in and taking a look around.”  He said that just as he pulled a control lever that thrust the wing forward to meet the docking ring and impacted the station so hard that everyone on board was knocked senseless.

“George!  What did you just do?” Davalon asked from his new position prostrate on the floor of the control pit.

“Um, I meant to dock with the docking port, but it appears I may have embedded the wing in the side of the space station.”

“Oh, this can’t be good,” moaned Tanith, rubbing the greenish-brown knobby bruise that now blossomed on her pretty forehead.

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August 23, 2016 · 2:20 pm

Stardusters… Canto 9

Galtorr Primex 1

Canto Nine – Aboard Wing One Under the Cloud Cover

“What do we know about the place below us?” asked Biznap.

“The continent is called as a whole Pincara Bolo,” said Starbright, reading from her monitor.  “In Galactic English that means the deadly wastelands.  According to the Pathfinder’s Geophysical Guidebook it is one of the most densely populated places on this high-population world.  The city directly below us is the regional capitol known as Kabiss Pincaralay, the Ruined Palaces.”

“Why do they call it an awful name like that?” asked Farbick.

“If they are like us, they call it that because they were too stupid to call it by a better name,” answered Starbright.  “The Guidebook says they are a very warlike people and their mega-structures in this city have had to be rebuilt and repaired more times than anyone could keep track of.”

A break in the orange-brown cloud-cover revealed the city beneath them.  It was an endless maze of gutted structures, craters, and smoldering ruins.  There really didn’t seem to be a habitable structure anywhere.

“Life signs?” questioned Biznap.

“Scanners indicate there are only a scarce few small life-forms.  None seem to be any larger than a Skoog Monkey,” said one of the two crewman whose names Biznap had not bothered to learn.    Skoog Monkeys were small furry primates from the planet Misko Skoogalia, a part of the Telleron Empire that had been easily colonized because it had no intelligent creatures on it.  Skoog Monkeys were green-furred and just smart enough to make pleasant pet animals.  They also came in handy as a quick snack on long journeys.

“Odd,” said Biznap.  “One would expect a capitol city with so many buildings to be better inhabited than that.  Surely they are masking their presence from our scanners, somehow.”

“Really, I doubt that,” said the stupid cadet.  “This planet is listed as Tech Level Nine just like the planet Earth.  It is a society just beginning to discover the capability of space travel.  We are Tech Level Fourteen, and should be invisible to their primitive detection devices.  They can’t have developed much beyond primitive sonar and radar capability.”

“What?”

“Sound waves and radio waves bounced off objects for the purposes of detection,” supplied Starbright to the Commander.

“There!  Straight ahead!” said Farbick.  “I see a big, intact, domed structure with what appear to be electric lights.  That has to mean some kind of people.”

Biznap looked and saw it too.  It was an impressively large structure, larger than things like football stadiums back on Earth.  Usually Tellerons tried to avoid such things as population centers, but if they had any hope of finding a population at all, it would probably be there.

“Okay,” said Biznap, “Land near there.  We have to risk contact sooner or later.  It might as well be here and now.”

*****

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August 16, 2016 · 2:59 pm

Stardusters… Canto 8

Galtorr Primex 1

Canto Eight – The Stolen Golden Wing

“We can’t steal a spaceship!” complained Davalon.  “That just isn’t right.”

“Well, they are not just going to give us one!” said Brekka hotly.

George Jetson ran the security card through the lock and popped open the rear hatch to Golden Wing Sixteen.  He turned and smiled at the other tadpoles.  “Will you be satisfied if I get permission from Mister Studpopper?  We are using his security card, after all.”

“How are you going to do that?” asked Davalon.

“We will ask him.  Studpopper is really stupid for a green-skinned Telleron.”

“We really shouldn’t be doing this,” recommended Alden Morrell.  He was trying his hardest to sound like a reasonable adult, but his twelve-year-old reconstituted body betrayed him, making him squeak like a frightened child.

“Don’t be such a baby, Alden,” said Gracie Morrell.  “We are both responsible adults.  We can watch over the children and make everything come out all right.”

Alden looked at his beautiful child-wife.  She had the slim young body of a ten-year-old child.  But she was right.  The intelligence and wisdom of a thirty-eight-year-old were there in her beautiful brown eyes.  She had been through so much… she had even died back on Earth.  How could he not believe that she was a capable adult, even in a childlike form?

“We will be okay, Dav,” said Tanith.  “We are not experienced, but the knowledge of how to do this is implanted in our memories by our electronic education.  We will be careful, and we will do things right.”

It looked to Alden as if Davalon was unconvinced, yet swayed by Tanith’s beauty even more so than her reasonable confidence.  Tanith, Brekka, and Menolly took hold of Davalon and pulled him into the wing after George had already disappeared inside.  Gracie guided Alden up the ramp and through the hatch after them.

Golden Wing Sixteen was just as inspiring on the inside as any of the other spacecraft had been.  Alden was in awe of a vessel that could safely transport them through outer space.  He remembered watching Carl Sagan on PBS in his series Cosmos.  It was amazing that he now had the chance to live what Sagan had talked about, exploring new worlds that humans from Earth had never seen before.  The metal craft was shiny even on the inside, glowing with electro-magnetic energy and other-worldly radiance.

“I can call Studpopper from here,” said George Jetson from the pilot chair.  He reached down to the com-panel and flipped a toggle switch.  “Mister Studpopper?  This is Golden Wing Sixteen, requesting that you cycle the vehicle airlock on flight deck ten.”

“Wait, what are you going to say to him?” Davalon cautioned.

“Oh, any lie will do,” said George with a grin.

“Why is flight deck ten active?” came Studpopper’s voice over the com.  “Golden Wing One already left from deck four.”

“We’re flying back-up.  You know, just in case something goes wrong and we have to bring the crew of One back on board because of some unforeseen emergency,” lied George.

“Which Officer am I speaking to?” asked Studpopper.

“This is special cadet Jetson,” replied George.  “Captain Xiar populated the back-up wing with expendable tadpoles for a crew.”

“Oh, okay,” said Studpopper.  The atmosphere in the flight deck vehicle airlock immediately began to be sucked out by the recyclers.  The force field that separated the wing from open space disappeared and let the cold dark vacuum of space infiltrate.

“What did you mean when you told him Captain Xiar populated this wing?” Davalon asked.

“All the Tellerons on board this wing are children of Xiar,” said George.  “He literally populated this space ship.”

Alden nodded.  This adventure was going to happen, and it looked like a very bad end might be looming in the very near future.

*****

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August 9, 2016 · 4:31 pm

Stardusters… Canto Seven

Galtorr Primex 1

Canto Seven – The First Golden Wing

Farbick was aboard the golden wing to serve both as pilot and navigator, though he was fully aware that Commander Biznap could also do both.  He watched the three cadets strap in to the secondary seats behind the cockpit.  They were all wearing red shirts over their cadet uniforms, and Farbick wasn’t sure that it didn’t reveal a Star-Trek joke in very poor taste.

“Well, Farbick, old Fmoog, the Galtorrian Adventure is about to begin,” said Biznap, strapping himself into the cockpit seat next to Farbick.

“It may be more enlightening than you fear, Commander,” said Farbick.

“Fear?  I’m not afraid.  I’m just cautious.”

“Well, I’m afraid,” Farbick admitted.  “I was lucky enough to survive the Earth invasion fiasco, but this time more is at stake.  It isn’t just my life on the line.  Our whole population could be seriously decimated or even destroyed.”

“I don’t see why you’d be concerned about anybody but yourself,” said Commander Biznap.  “What does it benefit you to worry about anybody but you?”

“I could argue that I wouldn’t have survived on Earth if it hadn’t been for my friendship with young Davalon.  I was saved from death on Earth partially because Davalon cared enough to come looking for me when I was shot by the Earther policeman.”

“It isn’t normal behavior for a Telleron to care about a tadpole.  They are so easy to replace that it seems pointless.”

“They are not easy to replace if you consider them as individuals.  What would you feel if you lost Harmony Castille?”

Biznap opened his mouth, but the retort never came out.  He must’ve been thinking about what life would be like if he no longer had the one being in all the universe he actually seemed to care about besides himself.

The golden wing spiraled down through the cloud cover into the denser part of the atmosphere of Galtorr Prime.  Warning buzzers went off.

“The warning is because of the presence of acid rain,” said Starbright from the seat behind.

“In the name of Charlie!” swore Commander Biznap, “this world appears to be horribly polluted!”

That almost appeared to be an understatement.  The clouds around them boiled with storm winds and were a sickly yellow-green in hue.  Lightning was accompanied by flaming puffs of ignited methane.  The wing’s instruments indicated high concentrations of various poisons.

“Do we abort the mission?” asked Farbick.

“No.  We take the risk of landing.  We have environment suits.  We need to find a place to live in all of this mess.  Cadets?  Does anyone find any evidence of the native population?”

“Negative, sir,” said one of the nameless cadets.  “Is it possible they have polluted themselves to extinction?”

“I’d say it’s not only possible,” said Commander Biznap, “but it is highly likely.”

“We are definitely going to have to look out for one another on the surface,” warned Farbick.

“I will definitely watch your back, Mister Farbick, sir,” said Starbright.  “Some of us have learned the lessons about loving your fellow Tellerons from the Earthers on our crew, especially Mrs. Castille.”  Farbick looked at her, and her green face bloomed with a beautiful smile.

*****

(Pictured Above; Commander Farbick (on left) and Starbright)

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July 19, 2016 · 10:53 am

Stardusters… Canto Four

Galtorr Primex 1

Canto Four – In the Classroom on Level Six

“Okay,” said Harmony Castille in her Sunday-school-teacher voice, “The most important lesson is this; Jesus says we must love God with all our heart, and love our neighbor as we love ourselves.  He says this law supersedes all others.  If we obey such a law, we will never break any other reasonable law either.”

“Are you saying that Earther monkey people have only one law?” asked Xiar with bulging, surprised eyes.

“I’m saying that if you can break a law without also breaking God’s first law, then it wasn’t a sensible law in the first place.”

“So, how do you obey this first law?” asked Farbick, the Fmoogish Lead Science Officer.

“That’s simple too,” said the beautiful young blond woman who had once been a wrinkled old Sunday school teacher.  “We call it the Golden Rule.  It says that we must do unto others as we would have them do unto us.”

“How do you do an unto?” asked Studpopper, the communications junior officer of very limited intelligence.

“It means…” said Harmony, being used to the stupidity and hard-headedness of children, “If I don’t want you to hit me, then I don’t hit you first.  If I don’t want you to call me names and hurt my feelings, then I don’t call you a brainless stupid-head first,”

“Thank you for not calling me a brainless stupid-head,” said brainless stupid-head Studpopper stupidly… but politely.

“You are welcome,” said Harmony.

“But what if someone hits you first?” asked Farbick.

Harmony appreciated the fact that Farbick was quite clever and insightful for a Telleron.  “Well,” she replied, “we are trying to teach them what is right by example.  If someone hits me in the cheek, I would turn the other cheek.”

“Wouldn’t they just hit you again?” asked Farbick,

“Do you mean a face-cheek?  Or a behind sort of cheek?” asked Studpopper the stupid-head.

Harmony ignored the emerald-faced buffoon and answered Farbick instead.  “Sometimes they will hit you again, but you must persist in your belief, and continue to only show them patience and love.  Against the love of God, no cruel servant of chaos can stand.”

“They hit you on the butt twice?” asked Studpopper.

“They hit you on the part of your anatomy where you brain is located,” said Harmony acidly.

“Oh, you do mean the butt cheek!”

“Yes, of course I do,” the Sunday school teacher said sarcastically.

“Wait a minute,” said Xiar.  “I haven’t examined Studpopper that closely, but my brain is in my head.”

“”I like your first law,” said Farbick.  “I’m not sure it is practical and would really work, but it is more reasonable and moral than any of the laws of the Tellerons that I am aware of.”

“Yeah,” said Xiar, “Galtorrians will hit first and then eat your cheek.  Your idea of love conquering all will only turn you into gourmet monkey burgers.”

“We will see.  My God is all powerful.”

“Charlie the Crocodile God says to eat or be eaten,” said Studpopper with a stupid grin on his froggy face.

“Charlie?” asked Harmony.

“His name is actually Chaka-Boogen-Baall,” said Biznap who had been watching the whole lesson with some amusement.  “When we learned Galactic English from your old television shows, we found it easier to call him Charlie.  He’s really more of a mythic monster representing fear of death.  Not the same as this guy you call God.”

Harmony smiled at her Telleron lover.  He didn’t believe as easily as she would like, but at least he was supportive.

“Are you sure that these lessons will help us deal with the Galtorrians?” asked Xiar.  “I’m not sure I see the benefits.”

“Do you consider them people?” Harmony asked.

“I suppose we do,” said Farbick, “People with big teeth and scaly bodies.”

“Then they are subjects of the true God and live by his rules.”

“The rules of physics and biology,” said Farbick.  “I grant you that those rules are universal.”

“The rules of God’s love are no less universal,” insisted Harmony.

“I hope you are right,” said Farbick.  “It sounds like a universe we should all want to live in.”

*****

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Harmony Castille the Sunday School Teacher and her husband Commander Biznap

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July 5, 2016 · 3:39 pm

Stardusters… Canto Two

I am trying to follow through with my insane writing plan to post a chapter from this unfinished Sci-Fi novel every Tuesday.  So, here is the second installment of my comedy about the end of the world if it was a lizard world, which it isn’t… or, at least, we hope it isn’t.

Galtorr Primex 1

Canto Two – Xiar’s Captain’s Quarters

“What do you mean by Galtorr Prime?” shouted Captain Xiar at his first officer and his first officer’s Earther primate wife.  The Captain had inherited his rank rather than earned it, so he firmly believed that shouting was the key ingredient in good leadership.  “We can’t be at Galtorr Prime.  That’s the worst place for us to be.”

“This was not the plan, Captain,” said Biznap.  “We arrived here by accident.”

“Well, reverse the process.  Even going back to Earth is better than here!”

“Well…” Biznap scraped the floor with his foot.  “The thing is… we can’t.”

“What?  Why?”

“We corrected a fundamental flaw in the program that has been there for over a hundred years.  The astrogator has been rebooted with a new primary Sleer seed.  It can’t find the coordinates for Barnard’s Star or for Earth either one.   It will just calculate up a spot in empty space.  We have been travelling using the wrong coordinates for more than a century.”

“Why can’t we go back to those coordinates?”

“They are now gone from the system.”

“How could this happen?”

Harmony Castille, the beautiful blonde Sunday school teacher, raised her hand.  “It’s my fault.  I corrected the math and caused the system to operate on new coordinates.”

“Really, Captain,” said Biznap. “It turns out we have been operating with faulty math for too long.  Now that we’re doing it right, the machine won’t go back to the old, wrong system.  We would have to map out new coordinates all over again.  Re-explore the entire empire.”

“So you are telling me we have no choice but to live in orbit around the most dangerous planet in existence?”

“No, it is worse than that.  No longer recycling protein by eating our tadpoles means we have to find new food sources on the planet below.  We are going to have to establish a downport colony to continue to survive and grow as a community.”

Xiar sat down on his resting pad thoroughly stunned.  His new wife, Shalar, beautiful and green and wearing only the satin robe made for her by the Morrells, put both arms around Xiar’s thick green neck.

“What do we know about the Galtorrians, dearest?” she asked innocently.  Hugging behaviors were entirely new to Tellerons.  They had seen humans do it countless times on Earther television, such as the I Love Lucy show that Tellerons loved so deeply, but they had never practiced it until Alden and Gracie Morrell had adopted Xiar’s son Davalon who Xiar had nearly marooned on Earth (accidentally).  They had shown him how to do it as they showed him how to actually be a good parent.  Xiar found it totally alien… but he liked it.

“I don’t really know.  We have to get Farbick to work on it right away, but I believe they are lizard-men who eat meat and fight wars.”

“We knew the Earthers ate meat and fought wars,” reminded Shalar.  “They didn’t turn out to be so terrible.  In fact, we learned a lot about them.   They were very kind and generous to us.”

“Do you really think we can be so badly mistaken about two races we believed to be our enemies?  One was unlikely enough.”

“I really fear we are not mistaken this time,” said Biznap.

“Do we have their broadcasts to monitor?” asked Shalar, “We had a wealth of information at the tips of our sucker pads last time thanks to the broadcasts.”

“No signals at all,” sighed Harmony.  “It’s like they haven’t invented TV or radio yet.”

“Maybe our superior technology will help us this time,” suggested Biznap.

“Not when guided by stupid brains,” moaned Xiar.  “This time we are surely lost.”

“Don’t give up before trying,” said Harmony.  “The Lord helps those who help themselves.”

“I don’t know who your Lord is,” said Xiar, “But fire up the ritual laser lights and let’s get praying.  We need all the help we can get.  Do we need to consider sacrificing a few tadpoles or junior officers?  What appeases your god?”

“Ach!  Educating heathens can be such a trial!” swore Harmony.  “Let me get my Bible.  I have some serious educating to do.”

*****

So, there you have chapter two, which probably makes no sense whatsoever, unless you read chapter one… or possibly bought and read my published novel Catch a Falling Star.  Tricky about shameless self-promotion, ain’t I?

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January 11, 2015 · 2:40 am

Faeries

Donner n Silkie

In my book The Magical Miss Morgan, the teacher, Miss Francis Morgan, has to deal not only with a crisis in her personal teaching world, but a crisis brewing in the magical fairy kingdom of Tellosia.  The fairies have come seeking Francis’ aid because she, as a teacher, has direct access to children and can affect what they believe in.  You see, the fairies suffer from a general lack of belief in fairies, something that has been plaguing them more and more as the modern world makes it more and more difficult for children to actually believe.  Soon they will wink out of existence for lack of believers.  Francis’ younger brother, Milt, is a wizard.  He knows some fairies personally, and he has told them that Francis can help them.  So, because Milt revealed her to them, the Erlking, leader of the fairies of Tellosia, has sent three chosen representatives to plead for her help.

The leader of the trio is Donner.  He is the dragonfly-winged pixie who is a leader of the wasp-riders.  At three full inches in height, he is one of the biggest and most leader-ish of the fairies, the reason he was chosen to head the mission.  He speaks very much in the old style and has a hard time getting his ideas across to a creative teacher-type from the 1990’s.

Silkie, the Storybook, is a beautiful fairy who, because she is a Storybook fairy, is immortal.  She has been immortal since Hans Christian Andersen used her adventures that she had related to him to create the story of Little Tiny or Thumbelina in 1835.  Any time a fairy is immortalized by a human author, that fairy becomes a Storybook and is destined to live forever.  She is very old and very wise, but also very human-looking and very-very small.

Garriss, the third fairy, is a wisp.  Wisps are elemental beings made of fire, water, stone, or air.  They are rumored to be incredibly stupid, because their little brains are composed entirely of one element.  Garriss is a fire wisp.  He has a temper because his brain is made of fire.  Torchy, also pictured, is also rather stupid and foolish.  But fire wisps prove to have a very warm heart.

So, if you can stand fairy tales at all, I hope you will clap your hands and believe in the fairies in my book.  I intend to submit it to the Chanticleer Book Reviews’ YA Novel Contest in April of 2015.  The hand clapping should definitely help… unless James M. Barrie lied to us in his book Peter Pan.

Garriss n Torchy

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December 12, 2014 · 9:31 pm

My Own Race of Aliens

In Catch a Falling Star, the only good novel I have actually in print so far, I have a race of aliens called the Tellerons.  They are an unusual sort of green men from Mars.   They are green,and they have a base on Mars, but they are from a distant star system in the local group and the swampy world called Telleri that orbits that far star.  The ones in my book come from the space station their empire established in the Barnard’s Star system, where the characters in my stories were all born.  They are also not men.  They are amphibianoid beings, frog people.  They have never set foot on the home planet.  Here are two aliens who are crucial characters in Catch a Falling Star.

My Art 2 of Davalon

These two are Farbick the Navigator and young Davalon the tadpole.  Farbick is a very wise and loving male Telleron who gets foully treated for his racial differences.  I know you and I can’t really tell by looking, but his race is Sindalusian Fmoog.  You can tell by the yellowish cast to his amphibian face.  Oh, and there’s something funny with his ears.  Davalon is the son of the Telleron captain, Xiar.  He loves Farbick who has been more of a father figure to him than Xiar has.  Dav is unusually bright for a Telleron, just as Farbick is recognizably more competent than others of the Fmoogish race.  You might actually think, if they were the only two Tellerons you ever met, that their people are highly inquisitive, intelligent, and have no racial prejudices at all.  Of course you would be highly incorrect and most sincerely wrong.

I have started work on a sequel to Catch a Falling Star.  I am calling it Stardusters and Lizard Men.  It follows the crew of Xiar the Slightly Irregular’s Base Ship in their adventures following the invasion of Earth.  They accidentally fix the on-board computer systems by correcting a math error in navigation that had been present for more than 100 years of star travel in the Telleron Empire.  Of course this means that all of their space coordinates for every destination they know are wrong.  And so, without hope of ever returning anywhere else in the universe, they arrive at Galtorr Prime, the planet of the infamous carnivorous  reptile people.  They will have to colonize or die.  And the Galtorrians are just like Earthers, except, they have a society that is even more corrupt, greedy, prejudiced, and hateful (if such a thing is even possible).  I hope to show in this story what human society may become on the path we are currently following, so it will be a kind of post-apocalyptic bit of science fiction set on a world that is not Earth.

My Art

These two female Telleron tadpoles are Brekka and Menolly.  They are dancing to Mickey Mouse Club music because Tellerons, quite naturally, have been totally corrupted by Earther television shows.  Galactic English, the language all Tellerons speak, is based on the language of old I Love Lucy television episodes, the favorite show on the home-worlds of the entire empire.

George Jetson

Meet George Jetson.  He is named after one of his father’s favorite shows from the 1960’s.  He is one of the Telleron tadpoles that will take the lead in exploring the dark and dangerous planet of the lizard-guys.

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