Mike Murphy and Blueberry Bates are recurring characters in my hometown novels. So far they have appeared in The Bicycle-Wheel Genius and Magical Miss Morgan, both of which are now published and available through Amazon.
The Bicycle-Wheel Genius is now available on Amazon through this link;
The first book documents their star-crossed romance, beginning as ten-year-olds and following through until they are going on thirteen. Blueberry is a girl with a terrible secret. She is not like other girls and has to protect this secret, which will only become harder and harder to contain as time goes on. She lives with her father who barely notices her, an aunt, her father’s sister, who knows the secret and punishes Blueberry for it, and her two older sisters who cherish her and dote on her, and probably are the only reason…
Grandpa and Grandma Aldrich lived on the family farm outside of town, a little more than two miles from the tiny farm town of Rowan, Iowa. I walked it more than once. It was faster to walk the railroad tracks between the two places. About a mile and three quarters as the crow flies… three hours as the boy investigates the critters in the weeds, throws rocks at dragonflies, and listens to the birdsong along the way. But the point is, my maternal grandparents lived close enough to have a profound influence on my young life. Much of what they loved became what I love. And every Saturday night, they loved to watch the Lawrence Welk Show. And that show had highlights that we longed to see again and again… on a show that never really went into reruns. We lived to see Jo Ann Castle play the old…
My first two years as a teacher, the kids all thought I looked like Bob Denver, the star of Gilligan’s Island, which was available to them to watch in re-runs on TV every afternoon after school in the early 1980’s.
My classroom was nicknamed “Gilligan’s Island” and I was called Mr. Gilligan behind my back. But I embraced the nickname. Hey, a tropical island in the Pacific with two beautiful single girls? And by the time they dropped the nickname and started calling me Batman instead, I had two girlfriends at the same time, one a beautiful blond.
They did me a favor. Now, when I need a quiet place in the “let’s pretend” centers of my old brain, I naturally go back to Gilligan’s Island, my island, and stretch out on the beach.
When conservative cultural warriors, Twitter Trolls, or dyspeptic gasbags like Rush Limbaugh call you a “Special Snowflake”, I have discovered, to my chagrin, that they don’t mean it as a compliment. In their self-centered, egotistical world you have to be as emotionally tough and able to “take it” as they believe (somewhat erroneously to my way of thinking) they themselves are. They have no time for political correctness, safe spaces, or, apparently, manners polite enough not to get you killed on the mean streets where they never go. Being a retired school teacher who was once in charge of fragile young psyches trying to negotiate a cruel Darwinian world, I think I disagree with them.
Have you ever tried to draw a snowflake? Believe me, it is difficult. Snowflakes are hexagonal star-shapes with enough lace and filigrees in them to make it a nightmare to draw it with painfully arthritic…
Being an artist is a matter of genetics, luck, and loads of practice. I began drawing when I was only four or five years old. I drew skulls and skeletons, crocodiles and deer on everything. My kindergarten and first grade teachers were constantly gritting their teeth over the marked-up margins of every workbook and worksheet. I drew and colored on everything. I eventually got rather good, drawing in pencil, crayon, ink, and as you see here, colored pencil. I loved to draw the people and things around me. I also drew the things of my imagination. I drew my best girl, Alicia, and I drew the half-cobra half-man that lived in the secret cavern under our house. I drew a picture of the house across the underpass from Grandma Mary’s house. I drew cardinals, and I drew Snoopy cartoons. I drew my sports heroes in football and hockey, Donny…
There is reason to believe I have to reroute some of the back roads on the road map of my thinking parts. I have been spending a lot of time in Elizabethan England lately due to my obsession with who I think Shakespeare really was. There are a lot of dark alleys to be plumbed on that section of the map. I really admire the Roland Emmerich film Anonymous about Edward deVere, the Earl of Oxford being the real writer behind the works of Shakespeare, but I do recognize that it is a work a fiction, and an altered-history work of fantasy fiction at that. So I find myself not yet ready to tackle that particular essay in the Shakespeare series as yet. More think time and creative-mixing time is needed. I need to stop at one of the quaint little mental inns on that particular Elizabethan back…
While walking the dog yesterday, we struck up a conversation about writing and being a writer that proved once and for all that DOGS REALLY DON’T KNOW HOW TO WRITE!
She turned around on the end of her leash and looked at me with that woeful you-don’t-feed-me-enough look on her little well-fed face. “You know, I was reading your blog today, and I think I know how to make you a well-known writer and best-selling author.”
“Oh, really?” I said. “Since when do you know anything about being a writer or marketing fiction?”
“Well, you do remember that I wrote a couple of blog posts for you already.”
“True. But I can’t afford to do that again. You type with your tongue and it leaves the keyboard all sticky. I haven’t gotten it truly clean and working properly again since that last time. If you are…
One has to worry about mortality on a day like today. I have chest pains and aches again. I can barely write to keep the posts going. I can’t afford a doctor’s visit before Friday. I also can’t afford to be hospitalized again or to be put on insulin, both real possibilities. I really can’t even afford to just drop dead. Maybe the villain is just a man in a rubber mask. But probably not. Time will tell. Should I survive, I would like to write about the cartoonist Winsor McCay and the filmmaker Stanley Kubrick. There is writing to be done. So, I really can’t have a heart attack today. Reschedule it. That’s the ticket.
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.
Life is like moose bowling because… In order to knock down all the pins, you have to learn how to throw a moose.
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.
Dr. Hooey proved
to be as wild and eccentric a character as Trav Dalgoda. He wore outlandish clothing and said
remarkably stupid things without a moment’s hesitation. He was not pretty to look at with a big nose
and uncombed hair. He was consistently
frazzled and at his wit’s end. Still, he
was probably the highest-level problem-solver that Tron had ever met.
Outside the
pyramid that no one had been able to detect two miles outside the borders of Oasis City,
Hooey was hunkered down next to Tron and Hassan as the wind blew fierce,
stinging sand all around the base of the pyramid.
Dr. Hooey
“I don’t know how you found this thing, Hooey!” said Tron, having to yell over the roar of the storm. “It seems like this sandstorm never ends. It’s been here since my people arrived within scanner range of the planet.”
“I think it’s more or less permanent. All I had to do to find it is scan for a focus of artificial radiant energy large enough to create a concealed feature of the planet, like this one.”
The King of
Killers came back to his leader, running with his head bent down into the
wind. He had a breath mask on to keep
the sand out of his lungs, and brought three more for Tron, Hooey, and Hassan.
“The doorway seems
to be over there,” he yelled, pointing with the breath mask on his chin while
he handed out the remaining masks to the others.
“Okay, King. Lead the way!” ordered Tron.
Tron had his laser
pistols attached to the powerpack on his back.
The King had an ACR hanging
from the leather strap over his back, while Hassan had a net-pistol that had a
one-shot net trap loaded. Hooey carried
a thing that looked like a small plastic water gun that he called his really
big gun.
The four men ran
to the pyramid door, hands up to protect their faces from the cruel white
sand. King brought them to a dark alcove
in the base of the pyramid.
“This is where we
go in!” hollered King. “I don’t know
what’s in there. My sensors read nothing
at all, not even the stone that it should be reading!”
Worried, the group
inched forward into the darkness. Tron
took over the lead and allowed King to drop back and cover the rear. Hooey hovered over Tron’s right shoulder,
while Hassan limped along on his new leg to Tron’s left, trying to get used to
the unfamiliar device.
“I do hope there
are no mummies in here. I hate battling
the living dead!” said Hooey firmly.
“How could a man
of science be stupid enough to think that mummies could ever come to life?”
asked Tron, rolling his eyes, the artificial one looking more disgusted than
the natural one.
“Pretty easily!”
remarked Hooey. “Look there!”
In the long
Gallery ahead, hard to see in the dim light, four shapes lurched toward
them. They were skull-faced and
bandaged. Mummies come to life!
“No. I’m not sitting still for this crud!” growled
King. “I have a wife to get back
to.” The infamous King of Killers rushed
to the front and tried to prove that he deserved his ruthless nickname. He went fully automatic with his ACR and sprayed bullets all over the approaching undead
creatures. Bone splintered and wiring
sparked. Two of the creatures fell
completely to pieces. A third one lost
its head, but still kept stumbling forward.
“There’s something
fishy about these mummies,” grumbled Tron.
“They walk too much like movie monsters to be real. And what’s with all the electrical sparking?”
The two wounded
mummies kept coming towards King even though men who were punctured that much
by armor-piercing shells should have died and fallen still. King tried feverishly to load another clip of
ammo, but before he could, a mummy grabbed his shoulder. Electricity shot out of the bandaged hand and
King went unconscious, his hair smoking profusely.
“Hooey!” shouted
Tron, about to demand that the Time Knight do something.
Dr. Hooey stood
and pointed his little plastic water pistol.
He sprayed the two remaining mummies and completely shorted out their
control circuits. They fell in smoking
piles of bones.
Tron rushed
forward to help his fallen man. King
Killer would live, but he’d had a nasty shock.
“What were those
things, Hooey? Tell me straight, or I
might have to shoot you.”
Hassan picked up a
severed hand wrapped in rotted bandages and took a close look. “Rot warriors,” said the Space Elf. “They are Mechanoids made from completely
dead men.” He handed the boney hand to
Tron.
The bones were
inlaid with glittering microcircuitry that you could only really see up
close. A nearby skull yielded up a
wrecked computer processor. The main
control pod was found in the chest cavity.
“The perfect
soldiers,” said Tron. “They’re too dumb
to question orders.”
“Yes,” said Hooey,
“and designed to put a real scare into any locals who might come in here.”
“What do you
suppose they are protecting?” asked Hassan.
“Oh, I already
know,” said Hooey. “They are protecting
a Galtorrian agent of Count Nefaria called the Lizard Lady. She’s here in this complex somewhere.”
“You already know
what’s supposed to happen here, don’t you?” said Tron. “That’s how you knew to bring the water
pistol.”
“Well… In a sense,
that’s true.”
“All right, King
is already hurt. Spill it, Doctor. What will happen next?”
“Patience, Tron,
my boy, only time can really tell.”
Mike Murphy and Blueberry Bates are recurring characters in my hometown novels. So far they have appeared in The Bicycle-Wheel Genius and Magical Miss Morgan, both of which are now published and available through Amazon.
My dog Jade 
Catch a Falling Star 