Category Archives: Paffooney
Hidden Kingdom (Chapter 1 Complete)
Filed under comic strips, fairies, Hidden Kingdom, humor, Paffooney
Blogging Advice
The only advice I am actually qualified to give here is… don’t take any blogging advice from me as worth more than diddly-squoot.
That being said, my blog views are gradually going up year after year. I am followed by readers all over the world, and some of them actually read my blog regularly, rather than just looking at the pictures and occasionally hitting the like button.
I have not yet, however, learned to throw the moose. I started this blog in order to promote my published writing. I now have seven published books available on Amazon. I made $2.60 in royalties during 2018 so far. So, as a marketing ploy, it has been a total failure.
But as a tool in my writing life, here are some things I definitely count as benefits;
Writing a blog post every day makes the ideas flow more easily and does away with any threat of writer’s block.
Writing every day is practice and it makes me a better writer.
I have learned how to engage with an actual audience.
I am able to try out various writing ideas without worrying about success or failure.
So, all of these things add value and keep me at this blogging thing which didn’t exist in my early life when I was planning for becoming a writer when I left teaching.
If you are tempted to make the huge mistake of following my advice and emulating me, I would warn you, I do not make a living as a writer, and I never will. I am a writer in the same way I am a diabetic. I can’t help it. I wouldn’t change it even if it were possible. I have a body of work that I intend to continue to build on until I am no more. The creation of it is a necessity of my existence. And I certainly don’t regret a single syllable, though what happens to it when I am gone is not important to me in any way that matters. I hope my children will keep it as a legacy, but I only do it because it shapes the story of my life.
And so, I continue to throw meese (or mooses… or moosi… or whatever the hell the funniest plural of “moose” is) and continue not to knock down any pins.
Filed under blog posting, humor, Paffooney, Uncategorized, writing, writing teacher
Another New Novel Cover
My morning was used up making a cover for The Baby Werewolf out of old works of art and art-editing programs. I will soon start the final edit and formatting of the book, and I hope to publish it in December. It is a related story to the one I just published, Recipes for Gingerbread Children. The two books share some of the same characters, events, and even dialogue. The two stories, however, have a very different focus and thematic approach to what happened. It is a gothic novel with humorous overtones. The Baby Werewolf himself is not really a werewolf. He is a boy with hypertrichosis, the werewolf-hair genetic disorder that gave Jo-Jo the Dog-faced Boy his carnival freak all-over fur. The story is a first-person narrative told by three different characters who all were in Recipes. Torrie Brownfield, the Baby Werewolf himself, is one of the three narrators. I can’t wait to see how this two-novel story arc comes together, and if anybody at all will actually read it.
Filed under art editing, artwork, humor, Paffooney
Closing In On It
I am reaching the point that I am almost ready to self-publish another novel. I am only 30 pages away from having Recipes for Gingerbread Children fully edited and formatted.
Do you know that feeling of dread you get when you go back to a completed manuscript that you have left in the cooler for a bit? You don’t? Is it because you have never done that? Or because you have never dreaded it? I was terrified that, as good and wonderful as I thought the story was when I wrote it, the impression was a false one based on self-delusion and narcissism. I dreamed in my nightmare about re-reading it and realizing it was total garbage and a total re-write would be necessary.
Well, I was worried about nothing. On rereading it, I discovered that the things I was sure I had messed up on were executed well. The story was precisely the way it was supposed to be after mulling it over and plotting for more than twenty years. The structure I built it on still seems to work beautifully, and the key themes are still present for the reader to interpret as he or she sees fit.
There is nudity, violence, and horror in this book, but not done in a way that leaves the wrong message in a young reader’s mind. In fact, it answers questions about life that, as a former school teacher, I strongly believe are on young people’s minds. It has characters who are nudists and want others to become nudists too. It has stories about Nazis and concentration camps. It also has fairy tales that are almost as gruesome as those of the Brothers Grimm.
The main character and focus of the story is an old German woman who is a Holocaust survivor, a story-teller, and a baker of gingerbread. The character is based on an old woman who lived in our little town when I was a boy. But though the character is inspired by a real person, the real Old German Lady was not a nudist, nor, as far as I know, a storyteller. So, most of what you learn about Gretel Stein in this story is really about a story-teller who is me. I promise, however, that I did not wear a dress at any point while researching for this book.
It will be a story about fairies fighting to have a place in the modern world though they have shrunken in importance to the size of mice and insects. It is about finding the courage within yourself necessary to survive a terrible thing like the Holocaust. It is about self-sacrifice. It is about love. It is also about baking cookies and telling stories. There’s a werewolf in it. There are also two twin sisters in it who are nudists and spend a lot of the story naked. It is about standing up for yourself and becoming the hero of your own story.
And the most exciting thing for me is, soon this book will be available from Amazon.
Filed under fairies, humor, novel writing, Paffooney
Resolving Unsolvables
This week saw two difficult problems arise that took a whole lot of problem-solving, panic, and unbelievable luck to solve. I had considerable evidence that my laptop computer was fatally infected with a trojan virus in spite of the subscription I had to Norton anti-virus software. And on top of that, I had to renew my driver’s license since yesterday was my birthday. And not an ordinary renew-by-computer sort of thing, but a dreaded trip to the horrid hated DMV.
The DMV was a thorny problem because Texas is a Red State and fully committed to keeping certain people with the wrong color skin, the wrong sort of last name, or the wrong size of bank account from acquiring picture IDs for the purposes of the foul crime of voting for Democrats. So, specifically, of the long list of things you were supposed to bring to get a license renewed, the birth certificate was a problem for me. I have a birth certificate, but because of a courthouse fire in Iowa in the 1970’s, it was only a photocopy of a handwritten replacement document. They had warned me when I called and asked that this would never do. I had to have an authenticated copy issued by the records department of the State of Iowa. So, I spent 50 dollars on an expedited official document by express mail, still likely to arrive after the expiration date of my license.
Of course, once I lucked out and received the document only three business days after I requested it, I discovered that the DMV had been moved from the location I had relied on for almost ten years. And when I did find the DMV office and waited in the cold in the early morning for the doors to open, I discovered that the DMV I had found didn’t actually issue driver’s licenses. Bummer. I had to try again the next day ten miles further away in Lewisville.
I fully expected to be turned away again that day for some unforeseen and petty reason. Instead, I found the opposite to be true. They saw an old white guy walking with a cane and thought, “Oh, Republican voter!” I was moved to the front of the line. The Indian lady ahead of me was not given a license because she did not have both a birth certificate and a valid passport. But I got my license with only the expiring license to prove my identity. They didn’t even need to see the birth certificate.
The computer virus was just as frustrating. The only option was to try to find the right software to remove the bug by using the infected computer to purchase one online. Since Norton had been overwhelmed, I went with McAfee and, fortunately, got a year’s subscription for 60% off the regular price. I downloaded it, spent three agonizing days on a full scan, then got a result of zero problems found and fixed. So, as further programs began crashing, I called their tech support and got a guy with a heavy Indian accent to remotely fix the problems for me. In three hours of time, he miraculously restored my computer and even removed some other unwanted programs slowing my computer which I had been unable to remove myself. It turned out that the problem may have been caused by another anti-virus program whom I accidentally downloaded with another program package, but then I refused to pay for the upgrade when it reported that it had found five seriously infected files on my computer. You can’t be too careful when downloading things from the internet, though being careful and vigilant is almost impossible when there are so many horrible things out there that you never suspected people might be capable of.
Anyway, I survived both ordeals and still managed to finish a novel manuscript and got closer to publishing another one.
Filed under angry rant, humor, Paffooney
Aeroquest… Scherzo 4
Scherzo 4 – Rolling a Twenty
“So, Trav Dalgoda does it again. Your total roll of the dice with your skill of plus eight added to it is an impossible success of twenty. You fly the burning spaceship into a curly-patterned rendezvous with the Leaping Shadowcat.”
“That’s a load of bull-puckie, Mr. M!” said Arturo. “He always rolls a perfect twelve on two six-sided dice!”
“You agreed that he could use his jack-of-all-trades skill to do this.”
“But it’s a plus eight! That is just too unfair for a skill you can use to do almost anything.”
“You let me spend all my adventure points on that one skill,” Eddie said.
“He’s right you know. And besides, if he were to fail that role, then the two ships could crash, killing your two characters as well as his.”
“And mine too!” said Amanda. “Trav rescued Madonna from the slaver pirates of Mingo remember.”
“Yes,” said the game master, “and her little blue son too.”
“Aw, that little bugger is just an NPC that you put into the story. I really don’t care if he dies.”
“Eeuw, cold-hearted woman!” said Eddie.
At that moment, Dr.Hooey opened the front door of the young teacher’s apartment.
“Oh, hello. My time machine must’ve had another brain fart and brought me to the wrong time and relative dimension.”
“Wait a minute,” said Eddie, “Who the hell are you?”
“Yes, exactly, but maybe hell is a bit too strong. My name is Dr. Hooey. I am looking for a place to leave a baby from the distant future.”
“A baby?” Amanda gasped.
“Oh, yes. And who are you, young lady?”
“I’m Amanda Lilliput and this is my boyfriend Arturo Castrovalva.”
“Would you like to raise a baby from the future?”
“Um… no, thank you.”
“May I ask what you people are actually doing?”
“It’s a science fiction role-playing game. These former students of mine are all playing space-faring characters in a space adventure set in the distant future,” said the goofy-looking teacher.
“Oh, my. That is somewhat worrisome. Are you sure you don’t want a space baby from the future?”
“Oh, I do!” said Eddie.
“No, he really doesn’t,” said the teacher. “Thank you anyway.”
So Dr. Hooey left and closed the door behind him.
“That was weird,” said Arturo.
“Mr. M, I need to make a new character for the game,” said Eddie. “He will be a time traveler, and I will call him Dr. Hooey.”
”
‘
Filed under aliens, goofiness, humor, novel, NOVEL WRITING, Paffooney, science fiction
Living On After Writing
I finished a novel over the weekend. It was one of those novels that you have to write before you die because anything short of finishing it would leave your whole life incomplete.
So, now that it is finished, I can go ahead and die, right?
Well, of course, it is not as simple as that. I created a cover for it. But it is not proofread and formatted and I have to give it time to cool down, being fresh out of the oven, before I read it over again, make adjustments, and publish it. And I have two other novel drafts that haven’t yet reached the published state of being. So, I better put off dying for just a bit. Any clown can tell you that giving birth to a novel that you have been composing for 4o years and writing down for six months takes a lot out of you. And you have to stop and take a breath. At least one. Before you forge ahead with the next one. I do have Recipes for Gingerbread Children already formatted and I am working through the final edit. I am still in poor health yet and could drop dead at any moment. My computer is all funky from some sort of virus, hopefully not computer flu… or computer black death. So, I am still in a mad rush to beat an unknown deadline beyond which I am really dead.
I don’t have the luxury of dying yet.
I have to deal with the death of another beloved character, I can’t seem to write a comedy adventure novel without killing somebody at the end of it. Shakespearian comedies all end in marriages, and it is the tragedies that end in mass deaths. But like any clown, I have most things backward in my life. You learn that as a teacher in public schools, you really are just another form of professional fool pursuing your profession foolishly. That is kinda what life is for. And it doesn’t change when you retire and try to become a foolish writer of foolish novels to leave behind as a foolish legacy to a whole foolish world.
But, as for the question of whether there is life after writing… I really don’t know, and I am still not ready to find out.
Another Novel Done
I finished another rough draft novel last night. And when I say rough draft, I really mean I have pieced it together at a rate of about 500 words a night, about two nights per Canto (What Mickey inexplicably calls a chapter), with revisions and editing already complete. Of course, there is no such thing as a final draft. The majority of my novels have been plotted and planned and created over the last 40 years of my life. I will continue twiddling, correcting, and messing with all of my novels until I drop dead. But this draft I just finished is actually 95% finished and almost ready for publication. The books I have lined up now for a final effort are Recipes for Gingerbread Children, The Baby Werewolf, and finally including Sing Sad Songs. Look for all three of them soon.
Filed under announcement, novel, NOVEL WRITING, Paffooney
Ravel’s Bolero
One of the first pieces of classical music to grab me by the ears and absolutely force me to love a piece of music with no words was Ravel’s Bolero.
Miss Malek played it on a phonograph for us in the basement of the Rowan Schoolhouse when I was in 3rd grade back in the fall of 1965. Shortly after that, my father bought a record of it for our record player at home. I must have listened to it a hundred times before 4th grade. It was the first piece of music I learned to listen to with pictures creating themselves in my mind. Here’s the basic picture in fact;
Yes, it suggests to me that life is a long plodding march toward inevitable battle, a battle that one day will end in defeat and death. No one lives forever and no song continues without end. But there is beauty, pageantry, and color to be felt and filled with along the way. And the march is not without purpose. What music we will create along the way! It is glorious to be alive and provide the drumbeat for the march of the creations of your soul, your children and the words you come to live by. I do not intend to retreat to the castle as many would do. I will not cower as I await the conclusion. I will march to meet it in a glorious crescendo. And that, dear reader, is what Maurice Ravel’s Bolero is about, as far as I am concerned.
Filed under artists I admire, artwork, classical music, colored pencil, insight, inspiration, Paffooney
Clowns Complete
Clowns in Color
Clowns Complete
Clowns with Smelly,
Great Big Feet!
The picture I have been working on of the clowns of Sing Sad Songs is now finished.
These are the clowns;
- Mr. Dickens (Boz) the clown of character
- Mr. Shakespeare (the Bard) the clown of creativity
- Mr. Disney (Diz) the clown of comedy
- Mr. Poe (with his pet raven Nevermore) the clown of consequences
Filed under clowns, colored pencil, humor, novel, Paffooney
Catch a Falling Star 