When you get to your sixties, but are in poor health, you can’t help but obsess about your own mortality. No man lives forever.
That point was driven home yesterday. My aunt, whom I have known for my entire lifetime, had her 80th birthday on Monday. Yesterday she had a heart attack and died. It was sudden. It was shocking. It occurred five days before a planned family reunion of Great Grandma Hinckley’s extensive family of descendants. My aunt, of course, was related to all of us, so there is no way the reunion occurrs without a dark cloud over it.
Of course, there are many dark clouds hovering over us in these times, The threat of nuclear war has returned to terrorize us again in the way it did in the 50’s and 60’s.
The climate crisis threatens to make life on Earth extinct. That could all begin this year with crop failures due to excessive rain and flooding during planting season.
But the corn this year, which world-wide food supplies depend upon because of the versatility of corn oil in foods of all kinds, is taller than I am in July and beginning to sprout tassels. So there is reason to hope.
And our moron criminal president seems to be self-destructing instead of fulfilling the promises of Dr. Strangelove.
And I am reaching the final home stretch on my novel, When the Captain Came Calling. Soon this twenty-year story-telling quest to tell a tale of family struggle and fathers versus daughters will be at an end. I have successfully negotiated the suicide scene. I have also achieved the character balance and plot completion that had eluded me for a handful of years. The story is basically about family resilience in the face of adversity. It is ironically consistent with the adversity my family faces this week.
And this is the week I chose to promote my book Recipes for Gingerbread Children. I had some success giving away copies of Snow Babies four months ago. And I had hoped to do the same for Recipes. It is also a book about resilience in the face of tragedy and adversity.
So, as far as I am concerned, the tree of life is a family tree. We are its branches, it’s knots and warped bark, its parasites and possibilities. And in its final analysis, many leaves are still soaking up the sunshine and nourishing every branch, even the dead ones soon to fall off. And I am not a dead branch yet.
Valerie-squirrel hustled out towards the alley once
more. How do you find your focus and
take back your own mind? Could it
possibly have something to do with not listening to nonsense from the mouth of
a witch? But things that were affecting
her now were things that came in clouds of purple gas from the mouth of the
Tiki idol called Oojie Magoober. Maybe
she had to not listen to him… or it… or whatever the hell it was. She scampered back towards the end of the alley
where she had first crossed paths with the little wooden man.
The alley was unnaturally quiet. She looked all around for Skaggs the cat, or
the dog Barky Bill. Not only could she
not see them with her little squirrel eyes, she couldn’t smell them with her
little squirrel nose. Well, that wasn’t
entirely true. She could smell the
poo-poo smells from the area where she knew the dog had to be because it was
chained up. But Barky Bill was not
boofing out cat warnings, or prowling around.
He was apparently in his little lean-to doghouse by the back door of
Martin’s Bar and Grill.
There were no other squirrels chittering. Valerie-squirrel was also deeply concerned
about what may have happened to Mary-squirrel and Pidney-squirrel. Did Oojie and the cats catch them? Maybe eat them? She shuddered to think such a thought.
So, she crept forward ever more wary and ever more
alert. Her little pointed ears were
perked straight up and listening intently.
She continually looked behind her for stalking cats.
It was eerie how quiet the alley was. Not only were the squirrels quiet, but no
birds were singing. No insects were
buzzing. It was as if Mother Nature was
holding her breath… worried about… something evil about to take place.
Valerie-squirrel timidly put her little nose to the spot in
the alley where the wooden Tiki idol had first appeared. Anyway, she was pretty sure it was the right
spot. But the smells were mostly
unfamiliar. She had not been a squirrel
long enough to really know what the smells all stood for.
Skaggs was on top of her before she could even look up from
sniffing the dirt. Cruel cat claws
pricked deeply into squirrel muscles and her squirrel heart practically
exploded with instant terror.
“Well, well, pretty little one. I wonder how beautifully you are going to
taste.”
“No! You cannot eat
me!”
“Let’s see now… are you not a squirrel and significantly
smaller than me?”
“Yes… but…”
“And do I not have you pinned down helplessly under my
claws?”
“Yes… but…”
“BOOF! Boof! Boof! Boof! Yipe!”
Barky Bill came rocketing out from hiding, leaping for the
terrible, awful, wicked cat. With full
force he reached the end of his chain and practically tore his own head off
straining against the chain-enforced back flip that came next.
“Ah, very clever, stupid dog. You thought if I couldn’t see you hiding
under that old piece of carpet I would never know you were there. But you forgot, that you are chained there,
and you never go anywhere else. And I
never forget where the maximum chain reach is.”
“You can’t eat her, cat!”
“You surprise me, stupid dog. I didn’t know you could animal-talk.”
“I can’t. I’m just a
stupid dog. But you can’t eat her. She’s not really a squirrel. You can tell by the smell. She’s really a human girl. You must leave her alone!”
“Ah, but the point is, she thinks she’s a squirrel. If she thinks she’s a squirrel, then I think
I can eat her. I also think she will be
delicious.”
Valerie-squirrel was suddenly aware of the real meaning
behind the cat’s words. “She thinks
she’s a squirrel…,” the cat said. But
what had Mazie said? Something about her
focus… Yes. Someone had definitely used magic to convince
her that she was a squirrel. But she
wasn’t a squirrel. Barky Bill knew she
was a real girl because of her smell.
And if she still smelled like a human…
Suddenly Valerie Clarke was lying there in the dirt in the
middle of the alley by the Main Street water tower, as naked as the day that
she was born. She was a human girl… all
girl… and definitely too large to be eaten by a cat.
Shocked, Skaggs leaped splay-footed into the air. He was totally taken by surprise by his
prey’s sudden change of form. He came
down awkwardly and nearly didn’t land on his feet.
“You… you can’t do that!
Only witches have the power to see through spells!”
Valerie, now herself again, was feeling very woozy and
uncoordinated. She tried to get up from
the ground and failed, only managing to sit up in the alley dirt.
“The laws of magic cannot be broken by such as you… such a
weak-willed…”
“BOOF! Boof! Boof!”
Barky Bill lunged out to the fullest possible stretch of the chain, and
then the chain snapped. The dog had the
ugly white cat with the mismatched eyes neck-first in his jaws. The jaws tightened and you could hear Skaggs’
neck-bones snap. The cat went limp.
“I told you I would kill and eat this cat.”
“Yes, you did. Thank
you, Barky Bill. But how are you talking
with a cat in your mouth?”
“Oh, dogs can’t talk, miss. You know that.” “Yes, I suppose you are right.” Valerie was drained in every fiber of her bare body. She smiled weakly at the dog, and then everything went black.
*********************************Remember, this is promotion week for Recipes for Gingerbread Children********************
I recently got my very first unsolicited review on a book I had written when Mr. Ted Bun, one of the leaders of the nudist writer group on Twitter gave me a five star review on Recipes for Gingerbread Children.
I was grateful and reviewed one of his books on Twitter in return.
But it was totally unsolicited. I didn’t even know any of my book promotions had penetrated such an odd corner of the internet. The story does have nudists in it, but that is not what the book is really about. Mr. Bun acknowledged that much in his review, and still liked it and called it well-written.
My first Amazon book promotion, offering the Kindle version of Snow Babies for free, produced the same kind of fruit. I started by sending a paperback copy to the girl I grew up with that I named the main character after. Valerie read the book to her grandchildren and then sent me this message;
Valerie– Hi Michael! I wanted to let you know that I finished reading your book a couple of days ago, and that I thought it was really good! You used so many colorful descriptions of the characters, that I felt like I could really picture the whole scene! I also enjoyed how you used several people’s names and surrounding towns from our past that brought back good memories. It kept my interest and made me excited to keep reading to see how things turned out! I appreciated how you ended it, too! Thanks again, so much for sharing it with me. I plan to share it with a friend of mine to read and then return to me! Do the Rowan and Belmond libraries have copies of your books? I would be happy to talk to the Belmond library about it, if you haven’t already! I will spread the word, and keep writing! Val
Me– I donated a couple of books to Rowan and one to Belmond. But I have written a lot more since
They don’t have Snow Babies. I am so glad you liked the book. It is one of the best things I have ever written.
Valerie– You can be proud of your hard work! Next time I’m in the library, I will take Snow Babies with me and show them. I know they like to support local authors! 🙂
Me– Thank you for the help. I really appreciate it.
Then I find this tweet on Twitter from a fellow author who responded to my book promotion week.
She read Snow Babies and loved it and shared this review with me before she posted it on Amazon.
Headline: This book has a potential to become a classic
The story takes you to Norwall, a secluded midwestern town
where people are expecting a snow blizzard to arrive in couple of hours. Among
strangers coming to the town during the blizzard are four very special boys, a
hobo, a bus driver, a drunken old lady, a stupid salesman, a couple of
newly-weds and a lady following the four boys. Each of them, as well as the
local people, has their own interesting story and their stories start to intertwine
while the town gets buried in snow.
Some from the locals and the newcomers start to see white
naked kids in the snow. In the course of events, they learn that those white
kids are so called “snow babies”. According to what people say, those who see
snow babies, are supposed to die during the blizzard.
The author has a talent for depicting situations in an
impressive manner, so they can be humorous and touching at the same time. His mature narrative style enables you to learn
deeply but in a light way about individual characters and understand their
motives. Interesting are the hobo´s droppings of philosophical reflections and
life wisdoms from Walt Whitman’s book. Simultaneously, in connection with snow
babies, the author keeps you in suspense until the end. The story is not
predictable, and the ending left me smiling and absorbed in thought.
I honestly fell in love with this book from the first page. It is like a fresh breeze compared to a number of today’s books written in similar patterns.
*****
I am amazed that people are beginning to read my books and like them… even love them. I wasn’t expecting that to happen until after I was dead. It is a good feeling that took me by surprise.
If I am not going to publish a Hidden Kingdom page every Saturday, I am going to commit to a feature where I post artwork on Saturday. Saturday art fairs are a thing. And I have gotten far more interest in my artwork from WordPress than I ever have from a local art show. So what if I can’t win blue ribbons online?
Cartoons are basically art with words added… often stupid words… for laughs.
Being able to draw gives your imagination wings to fly with.
Art is my religion.
There is a certain magical quality about the way that over time you can build a portfolio of many parts, and pictures have many uses.
Is it possible that artworks taken all together are like an autobiography??
In some sense, every portrait the artist draws is a self portrait. Every scene, object, and image is a part of the artist’s ultimate story.
Imaginations can be both electric and powerful.
Not everything is as alien as it seems at first.
So, do you like my gallery? You can always leave a comment or an insult. You are the viewer, and what you do with this is entirely up to you.
Valerie-squirrel, despite the almost endless supply of
squirrel energy provided by a fast-pumping squirrel heart, was panting and out
of breath as she stopped at the corner of Cecily Dettbarn’s porch roof. She needed to catch her breath, but she could
see Mazie Haire’s Gingerbread House on the other side of the Norwall water
tower, just across the street. Even
better, she hadn’t seen Skaggs the cat for at least two blocks.
The evil cat had nearly caught her as she ran along the
fence back at the Kellogg place. When he
had lunged at her, he missed, and he toppled into the concrete birdbath that
sat between the fence and Mrs. Kellogg’s big bay window on the west side of the
house. She hadn’t seen the cat since she
had left him behind there, sputtering cat-curses and spitting out old sparrow
feathers.
Valerie-squirrel had gone back up into the trees to travel
the rest of the way north on Whitten Avenue, and then from maple to maple along
the north side of main street.
Now, looking carefully all around for signs of danger and
lurking cats, she climbed down the trellis on the side of the Dettbarn
house. She then sniffed the air and
scampered quickly across the street to tall grass under the water tower.
“Boof! Boof! Boof!” barked Barky Bill from the end of his
chain behind Martin’s Bar and Grill.
“What does boof mean, stupid dog?” Valerie-squirrel thought
in the direction of the stupid dog.
“Well, it means boof,
or possibly bark in dog
language. How is it you don’t know that
already? You are a dog, aren’t you?”
Valerie-squirrel was stunned. “I thought the cat told me dogs can’t
speak. You’re Barky Bill, aren’t you?”
“I answer to that, yeah.
But also, Stupid Dog, and Ijit Dog, and Damned Dog… and some other
strange words that end in dog.”
“Skaggs the cat told me you couldn’t speak.”
“Yeah. The cat’s
right. Dumb dogs can’t speak.”
“But you’re talking to me now. What do you mean dogs can’t speak?”
“You are a dog, ain’t ya?
Dogs can talk to other dogs. We
do it by waggin’ tails and sniffin’ butts and stuff. You know about that, right?”
“I’m not a dog. I am
a girl, actually. Valerie Clarke. But I’ve been turned into a squirrel by black
magic.”
“Oh, yeah. You are a
squirrel! I can smell you from here. But not the eating kind of squirrel. I can smell that you are not a real
squirrel.”
“Do you smell the cat?
Skaggs? He was chasing me, trying
to kill me.”
“No. I hate the dumb
cat. I will kill him some day. I don’t smell him now… no.”
“Good. Promise you
won’t eat me if I go over to the Gingerbread House?”
“The witch’s house?
You don’t want to go there.”
“Yes, I do. And I
don’t want you to attack me when I try to get there.”
“Oh, I would never eat you.
You smell like the prettiest little
squirrel-girl that ever lived in this town.
I will protect you. I will boof
at the cat if he comes near. And one day
I will kill him. But I could never eat
you. Barky Bill is a good boy, yes, he
is.”
Valerie-squirrel was a little worried that Barky Bill might
not be completely sane as dogs go. She
didn’t know if she dared run past too close to the chained and perpetually
angry dog. So, giving him the widest possible
berth she could manage, she slipped under the water tower and down the alley
behind main street into the back yard of the Gingerbread House.
“Boof!
Boof! Boof-boof-boof-boof!” was how
Barky Bill ended their brief conversation.
One of the things I was taught by the good people of I-Universe Publishing is that writers do Twitter. They set me up with a Twitter account that never got followed by real people and got no traction of any definable kind.
There are obviously magic spells out there somewhere that help you sell copies of your beloved first real novel if only you are willing to go on Twitter to engage… to sell yourself and your books… to trolls… and nudists and other writers and nudists who are writers… and, inexplicably, the Norwegian Branch of the Tom Hiddleston as Loki Fan Club. In order to do this I ended up having to establish my own Twitter account to handle what the I-Universe account couldn’t. What a mistake that was!
I have after six years finally gotten past the 2,000 follower mark. I have sold a precious few copies of more than one of my books. And I have learned what a horrific alternate universe Twitter actually is.
Trying to sell my books to Twitter followers who seem like the kind of person interested in reading YA novels full of humor and fantasy and goofy stuff, obviously generates more marriage proposals than sales.
Apparently, young women on Twitter are looking for husbands and lovers online. It you answer their direct messages thinking they are women interested in your writing, they will aggressively try to convince you that they have fallen in love with you, one even saying this without asking for a better picture of me than the cartoon I use to portray myself. They ignore the fact that you have been married for a quarter of a century. They ignore the protestations that you are only on Twitter to sell books, and ask you to send them money for an airplane ticket so they can come to where you live and have an affair with you… even though you protest that you are married and don’t have money for airplane tickets even if you wanted to have an affair with a young lady who could be your granddaughter age-wise. One essential function on Twitter is learning how to block someone. Ooh! That was a lifesaver. Learning who not to answer is useful too.
Pirates often take your money via selling you insurance.
And women are not the only ones with dangerous schemes to take your money away from you.
I was Twitter-friended by Arab royalty. Prince Hamdan of Brunei wanted to give me money as part of his charity work to salvage the image of his royal family. He offered to put thousands of dollars of oil money in my bank account just because he liked me and felt sorry for me. All I had to do was give him my online bank account number. I may have told Arabian royalty that I had a fatal disease that made me forget all my bank account numbers and would cause me to die before he could get a reply sent back to me. I stupidly gave him no bank information what-so-ever. And my bank account audibly breathed a sigh of relief.
So, I have successfully now used Twitter to sell copies of Snow Babies and Recipes for Gingerbread Children. I have become a member of Twitter’s #writingcommunity. I have also become a member of a group called Writers Without Clothes. (#FF#naturist fiction by: @Mr_Ted_Bun, @buffprofwally, @CalowAndrew, @AuthorMatBlack, @NakedDan, @smdenham3 and @mbeyer51 (growing list!)) They offered me a chance to join their group because they liked the nudists in my book Recipes for Gingerbread Children, and because they learned I have written for nudist websites and do much of my writing in the nude. I recently also got a tweet from a fellow author who is reading Snow Babies and loves it. She says it is a well-written book, high praise from another published author.
So, I intend to keep writing… right up until the end… and maybe I can learn how to use Twitter from beyond the grave so I can keep my writing alive and my future ghost-tweets can make you all horrified enough to be compelled to buy my books. They say my books are funny, even the nudist parts, and maybe I can make more Tom Hiddleston jokes to keep that part of my Twitter following happy too.
If you are foolish enough to look for me on Twitter, you can find me at @mbeyer51.
As a comic cartoonist sort of artist named Mickey, I was as a teenager obsessed with making artsy goofy books. One of those was unaccountably called Dreams of the Mastiff. These surrealistic picturations are examples from that silly Donald-Duck thing.
This page is supposed to explain the title. So I guess all of the following pages are somehow supposed to be from the nighttime brain of the dog in the nursery.
And what is this supposed to be about? My old-man memory has not a single clue.
It occurred to me long ago that both Fantasy and Science Fiction were surreal by nature. What is the story behind Black Peter? Ich weiss nicht! I do not know! Old-man memory again.
Inexplicable Sci-Fi from this little surrealist art-book-thing.
And more of the same…
Now back to cockroaches from doggy dreams…
…And mice, monkeys, and tea-drinking ladybird beetles…
…And what…? The whole world in a nutshell?
To a thing I used in two novels, Catch a Falling Star and The Baby Werewolf.
I offer no explanations or excuses for these nonsensical and unaccountable things. I am not sorry I once did them, if you want to know the truth… but I probably should be.
I must confess that I chose to be a surrealist from about the time I discovered the artwork of Salvador Dali at the age of fifteen. I did a report on Dali and Surrealism for 9th grade Art Class. I wanted to be a surrealist because I realized that surrealists got to draw really weird stuff and then pretend it meant something real in the modern real world. So let me show you some of my weirder high school surrealist messings on paper.
Of course, like most teenagers, I was obsessed with death and mortality at a time in which I had not yet learned how to live and stay alive… one of the serious dangers of being a teenage half-brain in a post invention-of-the-atom-bomb world.
So, I start this gruesome dissection of teen-y art apoplexy with a depressingly angst-y picture and poem about the urgency of nameless coming doom.
And at the same time I was basically an angst-y pre-Goth Goth, I was also a lollipop Disneyphile romantic… A pre-My-Little-Pony Brony as it were. I was goofy as all get out and determined to latch onto all the big-eyed art ideals of the many girls I stalked and watched and comprehended incorrectly while never, ever talking to even one of them. (Well, not counting sisters and the several non-aggressive Mickey-lovers who were chasing me and courting me while I was totally oblivious to facts of it.)
But I was also aware of a spiritual something that lurked in my church-going Sunday self that needed to metaphorically tackle ideas of God and life-after-death notions of something that I knew in my head weren’t really real, but were necessary to the heart I possessed and its dire need for love and life and laughter.
And then too, I was seriously teaching myself to draw. And I drew things like nudes from pictures in National Geographic and Post magazines… but of course, only non-sexualized nudes like kids playing soccer in the nude and in the rain in a school yard in Indonesia so they don’t get their school uniforms soaked.
But what is Surrealism that I can accomplish it any way as an Art movement that is really probably in the past and not relevant to anything in the real world now? Well, what I always thought it was… was a way of seeing the world through a rose-colored lens of imagination (with flying purple jelly-bean spots in it). It is a way of taking my Mickey-and-Goofy strangeness and mixing it into the Donald-Duck Soup of Art. It is a way to simply be true to myself rather than the truth nature insists on putting in front of my face.
Valerie-squirrel found that even though she had rapidly
ascended through the hollows of the brickwork, dodging obstacles, squeezing
through narrows, and working her paws at a high rate of speed, she reached the
top with energy to spare. Her
squirrel-body was almost infinitely flexible and full of muscle. What skateboard miracles she could perform if
her body were only like that as a human!
But she came out under the eaves of the Philips’ house and
was soon racing across the roof. She
leaped into the branches of the tall maple that stood in front of Mary’s
house. The leaves were mostly yellow
with fall color, but bright reds and scarlet colors tipped the five points of
almost every leaf. The view was amazing
from the heights of the tree, especially because of her squirrel eyes that gave
her very nearly a 360-degree view around her.
It was like three-dimensional vision warped into surround-see super-reality. And yet, as amazing as the view was, her
squirrel heart knew despair because the Pidney and Mary squirrels were nowhere
to be seen. Had cats eaten them already? She shuddered to think it. Was it up to her to save them? Could they somehow save her?
There was no squirrel-plan that made sense at that
moment. Her instincts were screaming at
her to run and climb and jump… and eat nuts.
But how could any of that be helpful?
Especially eating nuts?
She knew this predicament had to be the result of magic,
probably evil magic. How could she turn
herself back into a human girl? The only
real magic she was aware of before this terrible curse was the magic revealed
to her by the witch, Mazie Haire.
Somehow she had to go and find the Haire woman, and somehow she had to
make the woman understand, through a stream of screamed-out squirrel curses,
chreeks, and chit-it-its, that magically somehow the witch would interpret,
what had happened to Valerie, and that she needed the old witch to change her
back. But how to get there?
“I see you up there!”
The cat’s voice startled her because, even though she could clearly see
the cat on the ground far below, it sounded as loud as if she were face to face
with the ugly old cat. She calmed herself
with the realization that the cat was somehow telepathic.
She looked intently at the cat, wiggled her blond tail, and
thought intensely in its general direction.
“Can you read minds, damned old cat?” she heard herself say.
“I can hear you animal-talking,” said Skaggs from below. “I can’t hear what you’re thinking. But I don’t need to know that to know you must come down from that tree to get the help you need.”
She ran along a maple branch and launched herself through
the air, landing in a branch of the elm tree next door in the Pixeley’s
yard. “I can travel from tree to tree!”
she cried out with her mind.
“Not all the way to where you need to go. There is too much space for you to cross to
go north to the witch’s house.”
“How did you know I wanted to go there?”
“Where else would you go in your present situation? You need that old witch’s magic to undo what
Oojie did. Am I right?”
“You are about as wrong as anything could be… because you
are… you’re evil! Evil is always wrong!”
“I am not evil. But I will admit, to a squirrel a cat surely seems evil.”
“I will find a way.” She leaped down onto the red tar-paper shingles of the Pixeley house. There was no tree near enough going to the north, but there were bushes around the house. And there was a line of pine trees in Tom Kellogg’s yard to the north.
