I now hold in my hands my author’s copy of Sing Sad Songs, my ninth young adult novel. It is a romantic tragedy filled with love and death, magic, clowns, and angels. It is meant to make you laugh, cry, and fall in love. It is not the first novel in my hometown series, but it is one of the best.
Filed under announcement, novel, publishing
So, I have done it again. I published novel number nine. The first for 2019.
Here is the Amazon link;
Sing Sad Songs Amazon blurb;
Francois is now an orphan. He was in the car with his mother and father and twin sister when it went over the edge of the cliff, but somehow he survived. The only survivor. And even worse news, his only living relatives able to take him in live in Iowa in the United States, not in France, the only home he has ever known. So, what can a boy do about such a tragic situation? Well, Francois puts clown paint on his face and starts to sing. He can sing only sad songs. His heart is broken. But people hear his beautiful voice and begin falling in love with him. Soon the only one who does not love Francois is a secret serial killer who stalks young boys, leaving their poisoned bodies with a teddy bear for comfort in their coming life as a ghost. It is safe to say this is not exactly a happy comedy. But can despair be overcome by sheer beauty?
There is a certain amount of satisfaction in this publication effort. When I retired as a school teacher, I promised myself I would at least get to the publication of this book before I left this Earth and became a ghost writer… literally. So, now, if I can publish the next novel, Fools and Their Toys, it will be a step beyond my original goal. My legacy for my family will never be a monetary one, but at least I have this to leave behind.
Filed under announcement, clowns, humor, novel, novel plans, NOVEL WRITING, publishing
When I am trying to organize some book magic, I tend to light the scented candles in my bedroom and get out the old sketchbook, as well as some fairly recently purchased pens and ink. Yes, I mean, I do storybook magic by drawing. This explanation comes from a teacher who no longer has any class, a nudist who never goes naked anymore, an atheist who believes in God, and a wiseguy who knows he’s really a fool. Magic is 99% hard work and 1% drawing pictures.
So, if you have drawn the proper conclusion from that first paragraph that Mickey is being a stupid old idiot again and he doesn’t really know anything about magic. I beg to differ. I started experiencing symptoms of prostate cancer and indications of another serious lung infection brewing up a couple of years ago. I decided then not to take my complaints to the doctor because I have no money left to spend on health care for myself. Either diagnosis, if it is accurate, is a death sentence for me under Trumpcare. I would rather simply drop dead unawares than have to live with an actual looming deadline that, once passed, I would truly be dead from. So, I have gone about my daily duties and flights of fancy without worry. And, miraculously, I woke up this morning still being alive and able to write. That is magic, isn’t it? I think it is.
The foolish novel notion I am working on now is what you see recent noodlings of in this post. The stitch witches you see above, Warricka and Bibby-joon, are the magical dressmakers that made an appearance in one of the fairy tale portions of Recipes for Gingerbread Children. That book can be found at this link; https://www.amazon.com/Recipes-Gingerbread-Children-Michael-Beyer-ebook/dp/B07KQTMN7R/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1546994890&sr=8-1&keywords=michael+beyer+books+recipes+for+gingerbread+children
I discovered I can put pen and ink drawings into self-published Kindle books, even the paperback versions. I tested the theory out with the candle drawing that follows. I put it on the dedication page of my novel The Baby Werewolf. That is the companion novel to Recipes and my most recently published book. It can be found at this link; https://www.amazon.com/Baby-Werewolf-Michael-Beyer-ebook/dp/B07LFRXR3G/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1546994589&sr=8-1&keywords=michael+beyer+books+the+baby+werewolf
Both books are free if you buy them through Kindle Unlimited.
My inevitable conclusion to this experimenting was that I can create a book from black and white drawings and mix in paragraphs that tell all about Tellosia, the fairy kingdom that exists within my boyhood hometown in Iowa. A sort of field guide, if you get what I’m getting at. And I could mix in the black and white graphic novel I have been working on for more than a quarter of a century, The Hidden Kingdom. It might actually attract some readers based on my artwork and its reputed popularity with people who don’t have to actually pay for it. It might be a way to actually sell some books. So, I am going to try it, and you can’t stop me.
Filed under fairies, Hidden Kingdom, novel plans, NOVEL WRITING, Paffooney, pen and ink, publishing
Yes, I published another one within a month of its companion book. The Baby Werewolf is the other part of the story from Recipes for Gingerbread Children. I hold the first copy in my hands today. It is my 8th published novel that I am actually proud of having written.
Filed under announcement, novel, NOVEL WRITING, publishing
Filed under announcement, publishing
For those of you who are breathlessly following the weekly episodes from my first published mess of a novel, I apologize that I am not following through on my regular Tuesday feature today. Of course, I know that the number of regular followers of this novel is actually zero. Understandable because of what a confusing mess it is. But I need to explain things anyway.
This whole saga began back in 2006 when I had time on my hands from being laid off from my teaching job by the Wicked Witch of Creek Valley. I had two years worth of substitute teaching because said witch first hired me for my teaching philosophy, and then fired me for implementing it in my classroom. (She had never actually been a teacher herself, just an administrator.) I found myself with ample time to do a lot of writing, and I created my first published novel. It was inspired by Frank Herbert’s Dune saga combined with Douglas Adams’s Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy series. So, naturally, it was doomed from the very start because it had too many characters in a long and rambling plot that was three novels too long in only one novel.
And on top of those serious rookie-writer mistakes, I added getting it published long before I actually had it ready for publishing with a fly-by-night publishing house called Publish America whom I can safely ridicule and defame here after they have been sued by authors numerous times because my contract with them expired in 2014, well after the company had morphed and changed its name to avoid paying any of their authors damages. They did all the things they were accused of in lawsuits to my book. They published it without reading it (proven by some of their authors who copied and pasted Wikipedia pages and got the company to publish that in book form). They screwed up my chapter numbers and font styles intentionally to get me to pay for publishable revisions. And they marketed my book only to friends and family for five times the price of a normal paperback. They were the worst publishers I ever dealt with. But in the end, I didn’t pay them a cent. My relatives, however, bought the horrible book and refused ever after to fall for buying another Mickey Book.
The result is a large pile of garbage chapters with some good things and funny moments in them that I can use to mess around with, rewrite, reorganize, post here weekly, and eventually form into new novels. That’s why I claim that this Tuesday feature is about novel writing in categories and tags. I will take the first part of this mess and whip it up into a new book called Aeroquest 1: Stars and Stones.
It will have the whole first adventure on the planet Don’t Go Here where the entire planet’s population is trying to live within an episode of the Flintstones cartoon show. It will reach the point where the three main characters will split up and go their separate ways, Ged Aero becoming the prophesied teacher of Psions known as the White Spider, Ham Aero becoming the rebel hero in the fight against the Imperium, and Trav “Goofy” Dalgoda taking his chaotic clown act to depths of dangerous depravity. I am not, of course, trying to claim it will be good for anything. But never let it be said that Mickey ever wasted a really bad idea. Or even a really, really bad idea. Or a terrible idea. Or… well, you get the picture if you were fool enough to read this far. If you put in that kind of effort, you certainly deserve to give yourself a “Yay me!” in the comments.
Filed under aliens, artwork, goofiness, humor, novel, novel plans, NOVEL WRITING, Paffooney, publishing, satire, science fiction
My goal, as I learn how to be a better self-published author, is to do all my own artwork. This is one of the advantages I have over working with the other publishers I have published books with. Page Publishing, to be fair, did use my artwork. But they also controlled the cover design (since that was what I was paying for).
Planning to publish two more novels this winter, I am working ahead to create effective covers. So let me show you how I fumbled together a cover today.
Here are the artwork elements that I started with;
I then put the elements together with a photo-editing program.
I then added the finishing touches with the paint program.
I can probably be satisfied with this result. But I am a fickle artsy-fartsy type who will probably fuss it all up well before I actually use it.
Filed under art editing, novel plans, Paffooney, publishing, Uncategorized
I published another danged novel on Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing.
Filed under announcement, publishing, writing humor
Mickey is hopelessly addicted to writing. He keeps writing and publishing these story-things we refer to as novels. We are searching for some kind of five-step program to cure Mickey, but we have been forced to conclude the disease is probably incurable.
The book has now gone live on Amazon in its Kindle e-book form. The paperback version is still pending.
Here’s a link to the book on Amazon.
In an attempt to understand Mickey’s addiction problem from a diagnostic perspective, we intend to present evidence here to arrive at a conclusion about what’s fundamentally wrong with Mickey.
Superchicken, the main character of the book, bears the same nickname that Mickey himself was called repeatedly and without mercy when he was in junior high school and high school. Mickey claims that Edward-Andrew Campbell is not him in fictional form, but we find that generally hard to believe, and we can point to considerable evidence that the character has many of Mickey’s own characteristics. It is disturbing to note that on the cover picture, the derby-hatted character called Milt Morgan in the book, is a self-portrait of Mickey himself drawn from an old school photo. Milt Morgan in the book is highly imaginative, obsessed with magic, and a creator of truly insane and somewhat wicked plans. It is disturbingly reminiscent of Mickey himself.
And then there is the whole nudism connection. The Cobble Sisters in the book are dedicated nudists and manage to talk the Superchicken into going to a nudist camp with their nudist family, though he didn’t know what they were signing him up for until he gets to the campground and sees all the naked people.
It is not a coincidence that Mickey had a girlfriend whose sister lived in a nudist apartment complex, and he was himself taken by surprise when she took him to visit there. Besides, Mickey has even confessed in his goofy blog to visiting a nudist camp himself in recent times.
So, as you can plainly see, we now have new evidence that Mickey is in need of some kind of intervention to help him get over this sinister malady of the mind. One thing we can do is suggest you find the book on Amazon and read it for yourself. Maybe, just maybe, you will be the one who comes up with the solution to Mickey’s endless novel-writing nonsense. This is a problem that may well turn out to be terminal if something is not done about it soon.
Filed under foolishness, humor, magic, novel, NOVEL WRITING, nudes, Paffooney, publishing
Catch a Falling Star 
Videos Now? Really, Mickey?
I suppose it was inevitable, given my spectacularly bad luck at marketing. that I would have to move into new ways of self-promoting and marketing my books. So, I decided I had to move on into the realm of YouTube video blogging. I can handle this, right? It is just talking to people on video. I don’t expect to be as skilled as some of the other content creators you find there, but if I can get some people to be foolish enough to click on my videos, I might… well… you know, sell a book.
My goodness! That was certainly more difficult than I thought it would be. Of course, I only did one take. After all, as a teacher. you don’t normally get do-overs. I know some of you do videos, and you know how to do them a lot smoother than that, and time them better too. But I am trying to teach a really old dog new tricks here. (My age expressed in dog years is 434.) I will get better with practice. And since the first video is always expected to be the worst video, I anticipate having nowhere to go but up.
Well, maybe the second one is worse. I can’t help it. I am old and not exactly media savvy. I know too that video editing software is available to make things better. But I don’t really have the time and money to spare on that right now. Seriously, even five dollars is too much to spend on this blog post. But perhaps it will add to my two huge paychecks from Amazon this month, one of $0.85 and the other at $0.35, to help me afford better in the future. Creativity can help you through a lot of things. But technology you can’t afford ain’t one of them. And I hope you weren’t too badly traumatized by my hairy old face. We’ll try again next week, next Thursday most likely, and hopefully do a bit better.
2
Leave a comment
Filed under blog posting, commentary, feeling sorry for myself, goofy thoughts, humor, novel, novel writing, publishing, sharing from YouTube