Category Archives: Paffooney

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.

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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.

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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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September 5, 2016 · 4:06 pm

Making Hay

I call this post “Making Hay” as a goofy farmer reference.  I spent an hour this morning weed-whacking the yard that hasn’t had any attention for the month of August.  I know… lazy me… lazy arthritic, diabetic, lung-diseased me.  At the end of the hour I had a quarter of the yard weed-whacked and a great pile of hay lying in the middle of the sidewalk where it has no right to be according to the city.  And, of course, I did not have any energy left to rake it up.

So I came inside to re-learn how to breathe, to stop losing fifty percent of my body weight in sweat, and to rest my aching bones.  And while I was recovering, or possibly re-animating myself, I decided to try re-photographing an old work of art.  My portrait of Prinz Flute, the wizard-prince of Tellosia, is difficult to photograph because the colored pencil has a developed a sheen to it over time that reflects glare every time I try to photograph it.  The result isn’t that great.  But hey, I’m tired from making hay.

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August 30, 2016 · 3:13 pm

Stardusters… Canto 10

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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 26, 2016 · 5:54 pm

Paffoonies Still Working

This is actually a writer’s literary site meant to promote novels, and one day possibly earn money from writing instead of simply filling my closets with prose and old manuscripts (along with the wife’s many, many shoes).  But since I am also an amateur artist of the irradiated subspecies known as “cartoonist”, I also have many visuals to share.  I think in pictures as often as I think in words.  So one of the features of this blog is that I tag artwork with a made-up word I coined myself.  It allows the curious (or those immune to nightmares) to get an almost instant idea of how afflicted I am with cartoon-ism.

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Yes, I tested it out.  If you do a picture search on Google using the words “Beyer Paffooney” you get a free gallery of my artwork, the good, the bad, and the ugly.  You might even find my picture of Clint Eastwood… but beware, he shoots first if you try to “make his day”.  If you are brave… or foolish enough to try it, it should come up something like this;

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So, there you have it.  A cheap and easy 200-word post from a bad idea that’s still out there working.

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August 25, 2016 · 3:30 pm

The Dog is in the Doghouse

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My name is Jade Beyer, and I’m the loyal, lovable family dog (at least, I hope I still am).  I am writing today’s post because Dad is mad at me.  And I should point out that it takes a lot of effort for me write Dad’s post for him.  I can’t really type with my paws because I hit lots of letters all at once when I do that.  I found a way, however, to roll up my tongue and punch a single letter at a time.  And the dog slobber  only makes the computer spark and fritz a little bit more than usual.  So he should really appreciate me for going to all that effort.

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You see, yesterday, after lunch was over, I got up on the table to look for left-over people food.   Eating enough people food turns you into a people, as I’m sure you already knew.  Really, it’s true!  Otherwise, how could a family dog like me learn to read and write so good?  Anyway, while looking for people food, I found a clear plastic thing in the shape of Henry’s teeth next to his empty plate.  It smelled like Henry.  And I love Henry.  So, I chewed on the thing that smelled just like Henry because I love him.  How was I supposed to know that a new retainer costs $350?  People pay ridiculous amounts of money for stuff that Henry just puts in his own mouth anyway.  It doesn’t justify my family re-telling that awful story about when Uncle Maligaya was a boy in the Philippines and he let his friends talk him into cooking and eating the family dog.  I really don’t like that story.

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A portrait of me as the people I’m meant to be

And this morning, Dad got back from driving the Princess to her new school all grumpy because of traffic and stupid Texas drivers who don’t know how to signal for a lane change but definitely know how to cut you off in the drop-off lane.  I offered to drive for him.  But he’s still mad at me.  And he reminded me that the last time I drove the car, I accidentally ran over three cats.  (I told him the reason for that is because I have no thumbs and can’t hold the steering wheel properly.  But that might not be entirely true.  Mr. Tinkles is evil and deserved to die.)  So, we settled on me writing his post for today so he could have time to call the orthodontist and make an appointment to get a new retainer made.  And if it doesn’t turn out to be any good as a piece of literature, well, it’s because I am dog, and apparently not a very good  dog.  (I’m really not clear on what “I’m going to make dog burgers out of that @#$%&! dog!” actually means.)

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August 24, 2016 · 3:48 pm

The Many People That Are Me

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Yes, I am a wizard.  That is a complicated thing to say.  It is complicated because a wizard has to be a wise man, and wisdom has to begin with the idea that you know practically nothing about anything… but you can find out.  So one version of me has to be my wizard D&D character, the wizard Eli Tragedy.  This is because I know practically nothing about anything… but I am willing to not be stupid and look stuff up before I tell you anything and pretend it is a wise thing to say.

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I have been thinking about who I am because I want to re-do my About the Author page.   And that leads to the difficulty of explaining who Mickey actually is.  You see, I am actually lots of different people in my head.  Mickey is the cartoonist, the humorist, the clown.  He is not the every-day me.  He is the goofy and foofy and lovey-to-drawie part of me.  And yes, I know some of those are not real words.  Mickey is like that.  He speaks Mickian Goof Speak.  I have no control over that part of him.  I am not certain where this Mickey-part of my soul originated, but it may be the result of too much TV when I was a kid.

And of course there is the Teacher-Me, Reluctant Rabbit, the person who stood in front of groups of twelve-thirteen-and-fourteen-year-olds for three decades and tap-danced, told stories, stood on my head, and begged them to internalize at least a lesson or two of what I tried to teach them.

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Teacher

And the wizard part of me was just barely wise enough to realize that a teacher can open doors, but you can’t shove a kid through.  They have to take the critical learning step themselves.  They have to want to learn something.  But even though they actually do the learning themselves, they will come back to me in later years saying, “Oh, thank you, you taught me so much!” when really all I did was be a guide on the side and stayed out of their way.

And, of course, there is the Cowboy Me.  I live in Texas.  I was a Belmond Bronco in high school, but I became a Cotulla Cowboy for 24 years of my teaching career.  I ended up as a Naaman Forest Ranger.  I have worn the hat a lot in my life, being as much of a straight shooter as the Shakiest Gun In The West can be, always trying to shoot the six-guns out of the bad guy’s hands rather than shoot people.

So how do I explain a thing like that?  Probably the way I just did it (ironically).  I should use Paffoonies I have created over time and waffle about stupid stuff that might make people laugh when they realize how self-contradictory it is.  And I should say it like I mean it… because I probably do.

 

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August 23, 2016 · 2:20 pm

Stardusters… Canto 9

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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 22, 2016 · 3:22 pm

Return of the School Daze

Today, school starts, and my two over-large babies are toddling off to two different campuses on opposite sides of the city.  My wife, of course, is still teaching and has a job to get to, so the responsibility for getting happy little kids to happy little schools (more accurately, big, nasty-smelling gathering spots for belligerent and borderline delinquent teenagers) is mine alone.

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Seriously, it was not a good way to start the day.  I got out of bed feeling moderately ill as the mold spores in the air have been heavy enough to really give the gift of swelling to my COPD restricted lungs.  I grabbed breakfast, an egg burrito with salsa, and quickly discovered the salsa had at least three ingredients in it that I am allergic to (not fatally allergic like a peanut allergy, just GAWD-I-HAVE-TO-VOMIT!!! allergic).

I got in the car after delivering my breakfast to the upstairs toilet, and was only a pale shade of green still, when wifey calls the Princess and I, three blocks down the road, and makes us come back for a first-day-of-school photo, which she now possesses ten of, kindergarten through ninth grade.  So, still determined to get there early, a new school that I had never taken a kid to before, we immediately ran into a pile of rush-hour traffic on Josey Lane.  The road crew had put out cones to indicate another mindless digging project so they could laugh at fuming, frustrated motorists while they stood by the side of the road and had donuts and coffee.  The school is less than a mile from my house, but the traffic jam was easily going to last for an hour or more and make us late, so we executed plan B.  I used Google Maps to chart a route that was only three times as long, and we got there in about fifteen minutes.

Blue and Mike in color

But the school parking lot was a worse design for drop-offs than the one I had been teaching at for seven years before I retired.  It had loads of entry access, but limited exits.  In other words, it is a place for parents and old elephants to go when they are ready to die.  It might’ve been easier to get out of if there hadn’t been so many old junk cars with human skeletons in them dispersed throughout the parking lot.  45 minutes later, I got out, but not before the engine overheated on my little Ford pony.  And I just had a new coolant pump and thermostat put in a week ago.  Ah, well… this is going to be an interesting year.

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August 21, 2016 · 4:33 pm

The Family That Slays Trolls Together…

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As a family, we play Dungeons and Dragons.  Well, all of us, that is, except Mom.  It’s basically against her religion and means the Jehovah’s Witness version of Hell for us. (Which is a spiritual condition where God refuses to talk to you, and play checkers with you, and then you die.)  But let’s not discuss that here.  I don’t need her to start thinking about reasons to divorce me.  She accepts that it is a thing we do and like and keep mostly to ourselves.  (I just rolled a 15 on a twenty-sided dice to succeed in that charm-enemy spell and avert disaster.)

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As a family we have chosen to use the Eberron campaign available from Wizards of the Coast, the company that now publishes all official D&D stuff.  It is a medieval/Renaissance sort of setting where magic is every-day common and takes the place of science in the real world.

I get to be game master and creator of the basic plots and stories.  My three kids, Dorin, Henry, and the Princess are the player characters who interact with the world and determine the outcomes of the adventures through the rolling of Dungeon Dice.

I want to assure you at this point that my eldest son does not actually have a watermelon for a head.  Maybe metaphorically, but he is easily the smartest and most likely to be a leader of my three kids.  His character routinely pursues ideas like replacing his arms with magical metal arms, or grafting additional arms on his body.  He has chosen the phoenix to be the symbol on his personal flag and coat of arms, but his artifice roll to create the magical ship’s flag turned out to make it look more like a pigeon that someone set on fire.  (You have to watch out for those rolls of “1” on a 20-sided dice.)

Henry, my middle child, likes to play a halfling.  The little hobbit-like character is the one called upon to disarm all the tiger traps and poison-arrow traps that line the dungeon tunnels ahead.  He is a problem-solver in real life.  And he wants to be an architect.  In D&D games, he is often the first one to run up to danger and look it in the blood-shot eye.

Every D&D group needs a wizard or some other magic-user.  Ours has Mira, the Kalashtar mind- wizard.  My daughter’s character can use mind powers to float in the air, pick up and throw things with her mind alone, and figure out ways to do things using as little physical effort as possible.  Oh, and she loves to eat chocolate.  (The character, I mean… or is it actually the daughter?  I don’t know.  It is sometimes hard to tell them apart.)

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In our last adventure, we went to investigate the evil doings going in Evernight Keep, a castle in the country of Aundair.  We were able to not only defeat the evil mind-flayer, Dr. Zorgo, who had turned everyone into golems in the castle, but also to win the castle and the title of the Duke of Passage.  Now that they own a castle, my little band of adventurers will have to defend it, and I know of one old game master who will definitely throw all kinds of evil challenges at them.

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