Category Archives: Paffooney

March 20, 2018 · 11:02 am

Aeroquest… Canto 17

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Canto 17 – Wraiths and Pinwheels

      Trav was the kind of guy who easily gets led by the nose if a pretty woman decides she wants him to do something for her.  Dana Cole with her strawberry-blond hair and luminous blue eyes was perfect in the role of that kind of woman.  She got Trav from Flintstone land into the clutches of the dangerous and powerful Synthezoid, Sorcerer 3.  She got him to reveal the location of the Crown of Stars.  She led him by the nose to Sorcerer 3’s hidden starship in a back alley of a slum in the outskirts of Bedrock.

“We will help Sorcerer 3 by giving him the Crown of Stars, and then he will help us get the Hammer of God,” said Dana in Trav’s ear.

“Sounds good,” said Trav, nodding his doody-head stupidly.

“You know,” said the artificial man with a bright electrical spark orbiting his head, “The Crown really belongs to us anyway, since it was stolen from one of our starships at Mingo Downport.”

“Oh, well… ah…ah,” stuttered Trav, “It was actually Tron’s idea.  I’d never heard of Ancient artifacts before that.”

“Yes,” hissed the Synthezoid with a red spark in his pupil-less eyes, “we forgive you for that.”

The spaceship, hidden behind piles of trash cans, was a sleek black merchant clipper, built for traveling fast in the outer darkness and well-defended from pirates with an impressive weapons array.

Sorcerer 3 turned to face Rocko Slaghoople and his two goons, Thing and Thog.  “You know I don’t have room enough for the three of you in this ship.  You told me where to find the Hammer of God, and I need to make sure no one else finds out where it is.  I think it’s time I gave you your rightful reward as we discussed.

“Uh… Thank you,” said Rocko stupidly.

“How nice!  I rarely get thanked for this kind of service!”  He plucked an illegal Skortch Raygun out of his robe and popped the beam three times, once into the head of each of the three cavemen.  All three of them disintegrated with looks of ignorant surprise on their faces.

Trav was a great fan of extremely destructive weapons.  He recognized the weapon for what it was.

“Ooh!  Can I see that Skortch Ray?  I’ve always wanted one of those.  You do know they are illegal in the Galtorr Imperium?”

“Yes, Trav.  I know about Skortch Rays.  They come from a time when only the Telleron Frog People of the Planet Telleri could travel faster than light and that at a very slow pace.  You may not see it just now, however.   We are in a hurry.  I promise to show you exactly how it works after we have retrieved the Crown of Stars.”

“Well!  Let’s get there then, old Jester!”

The sleek black craft was up and out of the planetary gravity well in a matter of minutes.  It effortlessly pulled itself into docking range with the rebuilt space station.

“I’m impressed by what you did with the place in the short time you’ve been here,” said Sorcerer 3.

“Oh, I didn’t do much.  I got Frieda to do it for me!”

“Hmmm, tell me more about your invisible friend Frieda.”

“Oh, well, I…”

Suddenly they realized that the newly opened starport was surrounded by Pinwheel Corsairs.  Now, a Pinwheel Corsair is a deadly fighting vessel.  Each of the spinning pinwheel arms rotating around the cockpit bore a large, ship-to-ship laser.  The green beams could bore a hole in the side of its victims large enough to fly into, and boarding parties could deploy in vacuum suits.  The only defenses against pinwheel lasers were really thick ablative coatings that evaporated as they absorbed the laser fire, and really large sand-casters that could cloud space with opaque bits to block the rays.  Neither defense would work after the first couple of hits.

“So, Trav,” came the familiar voice over the commo system, “this is where you and the Aeros leaped to?”

“Ah!  Tron, old Jester!  I am so happy to see you here.”  Trav put on the view screen before Dana or Sorcerer could stop him.  The one-eyed face of Tron and the beautiful face of Maggie the Knife glared down at them.  “This is my new playmate, Sorcerer 3, and my girlfriend Dana Cole.”

Tron lifted an eyebrow at the sight of Trav’s new friends.  “You again!” He sighed.  “Goofy, you are playing with the worst kind of fire.”

“And you’re too near the dynamite, love,” added Maggie.

Three pinwheels opened up on the sleek black space clipper.  The boring beams came down from three different angles, blazing bright green light and deadly heat.  Then, by some miracle of technology, the skin of the black clipper absorbed it like a bikini babe soaks up sunlight on the beach.

“Hey, cool!” said Trav.  “How did you do that?  We should be dead by now.”

“Ah, no,” growled Sorcerer 3.  “Tron Blastarr is the one who needs to sweat now!”

Forty black ships materialized out of nowhere.  Wraith Corsairs!  They de-cloaked on cue and took Tron’s pirates by surprise.  Three pinwheels were blasted into debris and dust in seconds, before they could react.  Tron himself was moving from the moment he first spotted Sorcerer 3.  There was no better pilot than Tron Blastarr.  He immediately began taking the wraiths to school.

“Why don’t you just die, Tron?” said Sorcerer with a sneer.

“It’s still your turn, Sorcie, old buddy!” Tron growled back.

The battle had only just begun.

 

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March 15, 2018 · 7:16 pm

Spring Break 2018

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Dawn of March 14, 2018

Spring Break this year has quietly come and is now more than half over.  I have used the time to review and reorient.  A number of things have to change.   The Daylight Savings Time came in on the first weekend, so I have basically been sleeping late by following the same schedule I was the week before.  I will have to somehow adjust everything by an hour before next Monday.  I may be retired, but I still have kids in school and responsibilities that require following a schedule.

I re-read my novel Magical Miss Morgan, and I decided that if I had to make the mistake of using a vanity press again, at least I did it with a book worth the investment.  My book has made $0.43 since it’s release at the start of 2018.

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I have started a lot of long-term projects this week.  I started the process of removing and replacing water-damaged carpets in the Princess’s bedroom and the family room.   I planted a flower bed in the bare ground where we once had a swimming pool.  I repaired the rake to start doing Spring yard-work again, then promptly broke it trying to rake up a winter’s worth of Texas live-oak leaves.  And I went back to painting miniatures again.  Last night my daughter and I spent time at the family room table, her sketching in her sketch book, and me painting HO-scale phone poles.  It was a good time to paint and talk over the important issues, like nightmares, binge-watching shows on Netflix, comic book history, and what we plan to do with our lives when we grow up. I am also working on the final two chapters of The Baby Werewolf this week. That makes nine books at a stage that can be considered to be at least at a “completed-and-almost-ready-to-publish” stage.

Three books are published via an evil publishing house.  Two more are self-published, and four are in manuscript form to be published as soon as editing and design is done through Amazon.

So, I still have an awful lot to do before I lie down and die.  And Spring Break is supposed to help with catching up, the way it always did when I was a teacher.   But this time it has merely added more things to do.  Ah, well…  I guess it’s what keeps me going.

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March 13, 2018 · 2:05 pm

Aeroquest… Adagio 5

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Adagio 5 – Psion Society

     Now, I told you before that I wasn’t a Psion myself.  I, Professor Googol Marou, expert on practically everything, must rely on testimony and speculation to tell you about the Psions themselves.  Strange people they are, with unnatural powers.  Oooh!  Spooky!  It’s little wonder the Galtorr Imperium was so deathly afraid of them.  Still, I suspect that Grand Admiral Brona Tang of the Imperium was himself a Psion, him and all of his clones.  So, I believe that the Imperium only feared Psions they couldn’t control.  It turns out that Ged and Ham were not the only ones to seek escape from persecution of Psions by leaping outside of known space.  It seems it had been going on for so long that an entire Psion Empire had blossomed in the stars just beyond the Imperial Border.

Of the nine billion people living on the planet Don’t Go Here, only a handful were Psions.  The few I came to know well seemed to originate from the cavern-world beneath the surface of the planet that bore more than two thirds of the dense population of the planet.

Most of the Psions in our galaxy lived on the worlds of Zanatas and Zarane in the Phoebus IV Star System.  It was a good 40 light years beyond Don’t Go Here in the Unknown Regions.  It took at least 10 Jumps in space to get there with a good starship, and the Don’t Go Hereians had no ships at all.  The Psion Colony Worlds were Tfriash, Kvarii VI, and Rhaskoo.  All three worlds were many light years further away.  You may have noticed that they are also hard to say.  They seemed to have a thing for names with too few vowels in them. Kinda like Poles and Czechs, I suppose.

So the fact that Don’t Go Here had a Psion Master living on it was nothing short of a miracle.  The thing is, though, that Tkriashav was himself capable of telepathy, teleportation, and clairvoyance.  He had been anticipating Ged Aero’s arrival on Don’t Go Here since well before he found himself marooned upon the planet.

I like Tkriashav.  I count him as a friend of mine.  But I find him creepy in many ways.  It is very unsettling to be around someone who can, in a sudden flash of insight, at any moment reveal to you the manner and place of your death.  Oooh!  Spooky again!  Some things I really wish I didn’t know.

Tkriashav had been the mentor and teacher of several Psions as he lived on the planet Don’t Go Here.  He had brought his sister’s family along on the space voyage that had resulted in his being marooned on the planet.  Young Friashquazatl, Freddie they called him, was a shape-changer like Ged.  He was Tkriashav’s nephew and Tkriashav had raised him since he was an infant, teaching him to control his power.

Tara Salongi, the beautiful girl who saved Ged’s life the first time he completely transformed into another species, was a gifted telepath.  Tkriashav had taught her how to use her mind power to heal and to help.  She was probably the one student he was proudest of.  Bam-Bam Salongi’s only daughter was destined to be one of the most important Psions in the history of known space.  That should raise some tremendous expectations in your humble imaginations.

The Psions themselves were only about two percent of the population of their own empire, but their planets were fertile and heavily populated.  A large number of people with mind powers were available there to accomplish things that ordinary people could only dream of doing.  Therefore, one has to conclude that Ged Aero was not only the right man on the right planet at the right time, but gifted with the right powers and teaching skills as well.  Teaching skills, you say?  Yes, he was a scout, a hunter, a spacer, and a psion before he met Tkriashav.  But after meeting him, he became the most important teacher in all of known space.

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March 11, 2018 · 3:58 pm

Messing Up With Mickey

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The way I handle the computer tends to be the way I handle life as a whole.  Thirteen tabs open at the same time, eleven of them not responding, and me cussing the machine for not working properly.

Spring has come.  In fact, Spring Break has come.  My daughter the Princess and I were planning to plant flowers in the yard where the pool used to be.  We started work yesterday spreading compost on the flower bed and churning the soil.  But we should’ve done it sooner.  It was too much for tired muscles to finish yesterday.  Then the rains came last night.  It would’ve been perfect to plant the seeds yesterday, then have God water them naturally at night.  But plans don’t go anywhere near perfectly.  Thirteen tabs are open and twelve are not responding.

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In my novel, The Baby Werewolf, the murderer is now unmasked and he has started on his final killing spree.  But as I was supposed to write the next Canto the last two nights, I found myself overwhelmed and overtired.  I got no further writing done.  I vowed to do it tonight, but the time change has left me no less tired and overwhelmed.  Thirteen tabs not responding.

So here I sit, paralyzed by entropy and worriedly contemplating the eventual heat death of the universe.  What to do?  What to do?

Mickey’s inevitable answer… Mickey opens a new tab and keeps on writing.  Did you think he had an actual plan for the rest of his life?  Of course not.  He planned on retiring from teaching and writing for about three years, and then dropping dead from one of his six incurable diseases.  Guess what?  This June will be four complete years.  Who knows how many more?

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March 10, 2018 · 9:37 pm

Role-Playing Games in the Classroom

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Zeus, the god of Storms and the Sky

In the early 90’s a fellow teacher became acutely aware of the effect the role-playing games I was playing at home after school had on the cognitive abilities of the fatherless boys I was constantly entertaining.  She suggested that maybe, if it was working at home with a few students and former students, it could also work in the classroom with all students.

This, of course was a daunting classroom activity to carry out, but enough of a creative challenge to my story telling abilities that I simply had to try.

I began with a cheap RPG book about adventuring D&D style with characters from Greek Myth.  This was an opportunity not only to play adventure games, but to teach a little bit about history and a lot about mythology.

So I created generic character sheets using my own personal copier, my own copy paper, and my own overhead projector plastic overlays.

I created adventures that could be conducted on the overhead with dice and each kid having their own set of skills and useful items.  We conducted Olympic games and included mythological creatures like Tritons and Centaurs as player characters.  We learned about the city of Olympia, the city of Argos, the city of Corinth, Athens, Sparta, and even Atlantis.

I let students draw their character from a hat on strips of paper that contained a boy option and a girl option.  I even let students trade for the character they wanted and we learned negotiating skills along with problem-solving skills.

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                                                                                     Demeter, goddess of fertility (which you can’t say in a junior high classroom, so goddess of crops and farming.)

Most of the stories were driven by a kidnapping where the beautiful daughter of one of the players was kidnapped immediately after the Olympic medals were awarded.  The villain would take her to his evil island base, and the players would have to work together to buy or steal a boat.  Gods and goddesses could be called on to intervene, and sometimes they actually did.  Another story line began with the sack of Troy, during which the players either murder or witness the death of a young Trojan boy who just happens to be Heracles’ son.

That story took the players on a quest of penance to visit the underworld and retrieve the boy in the same way that Orpheus tried to rescue his lady love Eurydice.  Potentially, Heracles would even join the quest himself if none of the player characters were the actual killer.  And, of course, all sorts of encounters with monsters would ensue.

 

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I ended up using about as much of my personal resources as a story-teller and a cartoonist to create those adventures as I had available.  But I had students tell me that the week of classroom time spent playing that problem-solving myth game was one of the most memorable learning experiences they ever had.  I never tried it with a high school class, only middle school, and then mostly with 7th graders.  But I think the experiment was very successful from about 1992 to 2004, and it taught me even more about teaching than it ever taught them about mythology.

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March 9, 2018 · 4:05 pm

Really? …Fairies?

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I have always thought of myself as a science fiction writer.  I admit that in 2006 I realized that my province was not serious science fiction, but rather humor-driven science fiction.

In 2015 I wrote Magical Miss Morgan, a novel about being a teacher, but basically also a fairy tale.  So, I guess, with fairies invading my fiction and magically taking over at least half the stories they are part of, I am turning into a fantasy humorist rather than a straight science fiction writer.

I am at the moment re-reading my novel Magical Miss Morgan for Goodreads.com now that it has reached publication in 2018.  I am experiencing all the cringes and all the “oh, no!’s” of being a writer in print.  You end up thinking, “How could I have been so stupid as to write THAT?” way more often than is good for your continued mental well-being.  But I am also still tickled by and laughing at the best jokes and funnies in the novel, at least enough to know it is (however self-delusional it is to say this) still a good book.

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But that book is not the end of the fairy invasion.  Oh, no.  In 2016 I wrote the book Recipes for Gingerbread Children.  This book was not only about an old German woman and holocaust survivor who is a very good teller of fairy tales, but also about the fairies of Tellosia who live nearby and invisibly attend to her constantly.  She even creates for them a whole race of magical gingerbread men fairies.

This book is currently a part of the Inkitt novel contest and is available to read for free on their site this month.  Here is the link; Recipes for Gingerbread Children.  You can actually read the whole thing, and hopefully review it to help me get the needed buzz to get it published through Inkitt.

So, why fairies?  I have to admit… I don’t know.  I think I have been be-spelled, bewitched, and serious glammered with pixie dust.

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March 8, 2018 · 4:42 pm

Uber Dooby Doo

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Yes, I am an Uber driver.   I have combined passenger fares and meal deliveries 118 times in the 4 months I have been doing this.   I have made a few hundred dollars in that time that have at least temporarily allowed me to continue to buy food for my family as I try to pay off my bankruptcy debts.

And there is absolutely no way to explain why anybody in their right mind would ever want to do such a job, so I won’t try that.  I will, instead, try to explain why someone like me who taught middle school long enough to get brain damage actually kinda enjoys it.

You see, a teacher does his job each day by standing in front of a motley mob of hormone-crazed immature higher primates and talking to them with the insane hope that they might actually listen, and even more insanely believe that they will learn something from it.  And as a side benefit, you get to listen to them talking to each other and to you.  You learn about who they are, come to appreciate them as unique individuals, and sometimes even love them (though never in a way that will get you thrown in prison; rather, only through Christian agape-type love).

Driving Uber is the same thing with all the responsibilities and consequences greatly reduced.  You take somebody somewhere, talk to them if they want to talk, don’t talk to them if they are giving off “Shut-up!” radiation, or just deliver food to them, and then Uber gives you money… like magic.

I can effectively Uber drive because I spent seven years driving all the way to Garland, Texas from Carrollton in order to do my teaching job.  Forty-five stop lights and a thirty-five-minute to three-hour commute.  That’s a lot of city driving for practice.  And of course it is driving experience in Texas where any idiot who can get behind the wheel is allowed to drive, and many of them have guns.  I have learned how to do defensive driving pro-actively and aggressively.

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I have put up with paying passengers who are backseat drivers and complain about every passing motorist and lane change. I have experienced an Uber navigator app that sends you to the wrong location routinely and sometimes advises you to make a u-turn in the middle of a major highway intersection.  I have had to juggle two meal deliveries at once on opposite sides of the city.  I have also driven drunks to liquor stores to buy more crazy sauce.  (You wouldn’t believe what kind of wild stories you can hear from drunk guys.)  And restaurant managers that I’ve worked for more than once are often relieved to see me rather some of the drivers they have to deal with.

So here’s my assessment of life as an Uber driver.  I don’t make much money, but I can make enough.  The hours are good because I can drive at any time of day or night and for as long as I feel like doing it.  I don’t have to do it at all if I don’t want to.  So it is practically a perfect job for retired and sickly crazy old me.

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March 7, 2018 · 5:09 pm

Blue Waves, Blue Birds, and Red Hope

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My political opinions are worth about as much as the intestinal gas they are made of.   That being said, at least I don’t light them on fire in the manner my conservative friends with Tea Party hemorrhoids do.  Living in the Red State of Texas and being mildly liberal has forced me to listen to incessant streams of flaming insults and invective.  It seems “liberal” is a bad word in Texas.  We are apparently the primary cause of everything that’s wrong with the world.  If you just have more conservative views, like having gleeful titter-fits over tax cuts for rich folks no matter how much they will hurt the working poor in the long run, then you are a good person, and Jesus loves you, and we forgive your three divorces, unpaid alimony and child support, and that Mexican-American you killed with your concealed carry because of the Stand-Your-Ground law.

But, my intestinal gas is bubbling after yesterday’s primary elections in Texas.   Huffines lost the Republican primary to Paxton.  Why is this significant, you may ask?  Because the most corrupt and richest candidate did not win.  Texas tradition is totally upended.  And while both of them campaigned with lots of mud and bad words (yes, they actually called each other “liberals”), one of them is against both higher property taxes and reduced funding of education (which is the primary cause of higher property taxes).   Paxton at least sounds like she is for spending more money on public education (heresy to the traditional Republican view of education).  So there are signs of change in the Republican landscape.

And it appears that things are changing color in the reddest of Red States.  Beto O’Rourke, the Democratic candidate for Ted Cruz’s Senate seat, solidified his chances in November by becoming the Democratic Party victor in the primary.  And so far his small-donor contributions have come in waves, giving him a fund-raising lead over the Republican Party’s most hated lizard-man Senator.  There is a feeling of a rising blue tide coming to sweep away Republican anchor stakes like Cruz and Pete Sessions.  Democrats may actually win despite Republican cheating through voter suppression, gerrymandering, and corrupt dark money.

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But the point of this whole long intestinal-gas-fueled display of political insight is not that I want the Red State of Texas to turn completely blue.  I think that too many liberals is just as much of a problem and a breeding ground for corruption as too many conservatives.  The biggest problem has been that the blue donkeys and the red elephants haven’t done much but hate each other and call each other names for too long.

We need two sides to have a decent debate that can hammer out the kind of decently balanced solutions that solves problems for everybody.  Texas Republicans have been in complete control for too long.  They ignore problems like equitable school funding, racial problems in law enforcement, and income inequality.  They give all their attention to smoothing the way for corporations and money-making interests.  As long as the rich guys are happy, the world is good for Republicans.  We need to balance the Republicans again with more moderate policies and beliefs.  If you look at the political platform of the Republican Eisenhower Presidency and compare that to the Democratic Obama Presidency, you can see that they are very much the same.  I think the chaos that the current Presidency has brought to the Republican Party has already produced some hopeful signs of the reversal of some of their most hostile and heartless positions.  The high priests of greed and corruption that have taken over the Republicans since Nixon are beginning to experience rebellion among their acolytes.  Republican pundits, thinkers, and operatives whom I actually respect are turning away from Trumpism and denouncing it in the mass media.  Some of them have even left the party.

But I am not hoping for the death of the Republican Party.  I am hoping for a fundamental change in who they are and what they support.  I think recent election results are strengthening that hope.  We need them to renounce their Gordon Gecko religion of “Greed is good!”  We need them to turn away from the corruption, anger, and intractable stupidity of the Tea Party.  We need decent moderate Republicans to return to prominence once again.

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March 6, 2018 · 3:07 am

Aeroquest… Canto 16

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Canto 16 – Tkriashav

At Tara’s house Ged made the attempt to regain his former self.  He’d never completely transformed before into such an inhuman creature, at least not so completely at the cellular level, and he wasn’t entirely sure how to turn back into his old self.  It was a struggle to keep a human mind distinct from the saurian mind he now possessed.  Holding onto his real self for dear life, he found an empty room in the synthetic rock house and lay down in the middle of the floor.  He began to quake and shiver.  Scaly skin peeled away and piles of flesh sloughed off.  He reshaped bone and muscle.  When he was finished, the flesh he had shed was all around him, a pile of slowly evaporating green ooze.  He himself couldn’t do anything but lay on the floor, an emaciated sculpture of his former self.  He had no energy or willpower left.

Tara and Ham found him there after an hour.

“Ged!” cried Ham.  “Are you all right?”

“He’s dying,” said Tara, fingers to Ged’s forehead and eyes closed.  “He has to have food to replace the body mass he’s lost in transforming.  His mind is also a mess.”

“What food do we have for him?”  Ham had brought no supplies with him on this masquerade, after all, he didn’t have pockets, and Ged could see him panicking again like he always did as a child.

“Don’t worry.  I have a pigosaurus in a pen out back.  Go tell my father, Bam-Bam, to butcher it, and then you bring all the edible parts up here.  I’ll have his mind straightened out by then.”

Ham was pale.  He nodded and then took off like an arrow shot out of a bow.

“Psions have to work together,” Tara said soothingly to Ged.  “I’m going to enter your mind.  I have the power to help you with the kind of thinking a shape-changer has to do.   I can restore the human thought patterns you lost your hold on.  Don’t worry, I’ve done this before.”

Ged couldn’t speak, but he knew this girl could read minds.  He tried thinking hard at her.  <“Have you met my kind before?”>

“Yes,” she said, answering the thought.  “Xavier has asked me to orient one other shape-changer.  He was a lot younger than you, though, and not so traumatized by the change.  I’m going to have to use a risky method on you.  While I’m inside your head, we need to be making love.  Body to body contact with a release of endorphins are both needed.”

<“I can’t do that!  You’re just a young girl.  It’s immoral, and I’m a moral man!”>

“You could die, and I’m not giving you any choice.  Don’t worry, it won’t hurt a bit.”

Her leopard-skins dropped to the floor and for the next half hour Ged was in a dreamy sort of paradise.  Tara was in his head while he was inside… well, you know.  His exhausted state changed into a feeling of pure euphoria.

When Ham got back with the meat, Ged was sitting up, ready to wolf the food down ravenously.  He finished a meal large enough for five men, his normal shape returning with a few raptor muscles left over in his legs and chest.  Tara had to eat heartily also.

“Ged, you had me worried!” Ham said.  “But now you look better than ever.”

“I feel better than ever.”  Ged turned to Tara.  “What we did, uh… I apologize.  I will never forgive myself.”

“Why?” said Tara innocently.  “It was only done to help you.”

“It was just wrong,” said Ged woefully.

“I was surprised to find that you are still so pure after all these years.  I think it’s sweet to be so shy and dedicated to your moral beliefs.”

“You mean,” said Ged, blushing, “you weren’t the same as me, innocent in that way?”

“Not in the way you think of it.  But don’t despair, love.  Your spirit is still as bright and pure as it was before.  You just have a small part of me in your head now.  We will always be a part of each other from now on, and marriage and family have nothing to do with it.  It is more of a spiritual connection.  In times of great stress, you can probably call out to me mentally, and I will hear.”

“I don’t understand.”

Suddenly a cloud of sulphurous smoke filled the room.  With a strange popping sound, a man appeared.  He looked like Mephistopheles in a turban.  He had slanted eyes and a devilish Van Dyke goatee.  He bowed to the three of them regally.

“Ah, I am honored to make the acquaintance of Ged Aero, the White Spider reborn.  I am Xavier Tkriashav, the Master of the Secret Society of Psions.”

“What?  Who…?” sputtered Ged.

“Where?  How?” sputtered Ham.

“Welcome, Master,” said Tara, still not dressed.  She got up off the floor and gave the man a hug and kiss.  Ged couldn’t help but think he knew a darned sight more about this situation and this man than he wanted to.  The strange fellow was already inside his head like an unwelcome flea, sucking at the marrow of his mind.

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March 2, 2018 · 5:00 pm

Writing Myself To Life

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I have been working on my novel The Baby Werewolf, and I am now in the final phase, working on the climax and crisis point.  And I surprised myself.  The killer monologues to the main characters who have now become his intended next victims.  I have played this out over and over in the twenty-two years I have been writing this book.  Last night, for the first time ever, the hero character laughs in this scene instead of the cringing fear that had always been there before.

How is such a thing possible?  What changed?  I have been writing and rewriting this story since 1996.  But it goes much deeper and darker than that.  This story went on my have-to-write list in 1966 when an older, stronger boy who lived near my home trapped me in a place out-of-sight of others and stripped me, gaining some horrible kind of pleasure by inflicting pain on my private parts.  Recovery from that has taken half a century.  The recovery itself probably explains why I struggled so long to pull this story together in a finished form.

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There are things about my writing life that are undeniable.  First of all, I have to write.  There is really no other choice for me.  My mind will never know rest or peace without being able to spin out the paragraphs and essays and stories that make it possible to know those things.  Nothing is real if I can’t write it out.  Secondly, I am a humorist.  If I can never be funny at all, can never write a joke, then I will descend into madness.  My sense of humor not only shields me and serves as my suit of armor, it heals me when I suffer psychic wounds.  This book is a horror story, but like many of the best horror stories, it relies on humor to drive every scene and knit the plot together.  And it was a breakthrough for me to have the hero character laugh instead of cringe in the critical scene.  It allows me to live again.  And love again.  And the real monster that caused this book to be, is now forgiven.  The world continues to turn.  The picture is now complete.  And soon, the novel will be too.

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