It is said that Friday the 13th, though really unlikely to be lucky for you if you are a Knight Templar, is a lucky day once you survive one with no bad luck at all.
So, did I experience any good luck on this infamously unlucky day?
Well, I sold a book. Not today the 13th, but I discovered I sold it on Amazon today.
The weather has been cripplingly cold on my arthritic joints, making it hard to write, draw, or walk for essential exercise to keep my diabetes and arthritis in check. But when I went out for a walk at the usual time, the weather was perfect for it… not too cold, not too warm for how I was dressed, and beautiful sunshine to light my way.
My hemorrhoid has stopped bleeding, so I managed to do some nude meditation today for the first time in months. With friends… but they are only imaginary.
I got a voicemail from a publisher wanting to talk to me about one of my books. I know they will only want to make money in some way that I will have to pay for. I have become cynical about the publishing industry. But it is interest from a publisher in some of my books.
The chalkboard girl is right, It is foolish to believe in good or bad luck. We make our own meaning in life. And that is a superpower.
When I was a kid old enough to begin to see and interact with the real world in the tragic and magical 1960s, the first comic books available to me, long before my parents would allow me to pick up and buy Spiderman and Batman and (shudder) comics with monsters in them, were the kid-friendly comics of the Harvey Brothers.
Now, you have to understand that Harvey Comics had been around since the 1940s and made their money on characters licensed first from the Brookwood Publications company that Alfred Harvey bought out in 1941 to provide the building, equipment, and publishing personnel to start producing comic books.
Robert B. Harvey and Leon Harvey joined the company to help produce titles they now owned the rights too like Black Cat, the Shield, Shock Gibson, and Captain Freedom.
…………………………………………Of course, most of those characters didn’t last very long. Black Cat was the only title still being published by Harvey in the 1950s.
They would go on to license characters from Famous Studios, the animated cartoon works of Max Fleischer and his brother Dave. That’s when the kid- friendly, parent-approved comic books of Fleischer creations like Casper the Friendly Ghost opened up the world of comic books to seven-year-old Mickey circa 1963.
In spite of this cover art, Casper rarely wore clothing.
Now, it is probably obvious that there are many ways that Harvey Comics influenced me as a storyteller later in life. It goes without saying that my dedication to childish humor in stories derives from this comic-book source. The cuteness of characters is another necessity of comic storytelling gleaned from these ripe fields of baby faces. And stories advanced by magical means and absurd sidetracks also come from here. But did you ever notice that Casper and the other ghosts all perform in the nude? Yes, I think my childhood longing to be a nudist began with Casper’s naked adventures. But unlike Casper, my urges along those lines were suppressed and repressed by parents and society as a whole. So watching Casper and Spooky and Pearl (Spooky’s goilfriend) romp naked through comic book hijinks were a sublimated substitution for that childhood desire. (Sure, none of them had genitals, but it wasn’t about that.)
…………………………………………….Of course, there were many other Harvey characters to enjoy that actually did wear clothes. I was particularly fond of Hot Stuff because he made such an art out of burning things and being a bad kid and roasting the backsides of fools and hypocrites with his trident. And he only ever wore a fireproof diaper, so he was almost a nudist too.
There were many other characters licensed by Harvey as well, including Felix the Cat, Little Audrey, Baby Huey, and the characters from Walter Lance Studios like Woody Woodpecker, Andy Panda, and Chilly Willy.
Dell would later take over the comic book rights to Walter Lantz Studios creations.
So, now you know the true story of how my innocent childhood was warped and woven and corrupted by the characters of Harvey Comics.
One really weird thing that teachers do is think about thinking. I mean, how can a person actually teach someone else how to think and how to learn if they don’t themselves understand the underlying processes? Now that I have retired from teaching and spend all my time feeling sorry for myself, I thought I would try thinking about thinking one more time at least. Hey, just because I am retired, it doesn’t mean I can’t still do some of the weird things I used to do as a teacher, right?
This time I made a map to aid me in my quest to follow the twists and turns of how Mickey thinks and how Mickey learns. Don’t worry, though. I didn’t actually cut Mickey’s head in half to be able to make this map. I used the magical tool of imagination. Some folks might call it story-telling… or bald-face lying.
Now, a brain surgeon would be concerned that my brain maps out in boxes. He would identify it as a seriously deformed brain. It is not supposed to be all rectangular spaces and stairs. It probably indicates a severe medical need for corrective surgery… or possibly complete amputation. But we are not going to concern ourselves with trying to save Mickey from himself right now. That is far too complex a topic to tackle in a 500-word daily post. We are just discussing the basics of operation.
You see the three little guys in the control room? They are an indication that not only did I steal an idea from the Disney/Pixar Movie Inside Out, but I apparently have too few guys doing the job up there compared to the movie version. (It probably makes sense though that a young girl like the one in the movie has a much more sensible configuration in her brain than someone who was a middle school teacher for 24 years. Seriously, that job can do a bit of damage.) The three little guys are not actually Moe, Curly, and Larry, though that wouldn’t be far from descriptive accuracy. They are Impulsive Ignatz, currently in the driver’s seat (or else I wouldn’t be writing this), Proper Percy the Planner, and Pompositous Felixian Checkerbob, the fact-checker and perfectionist (also labeled the inner nerd… I am told not everyone has one of these). They are the three little guys that run around in frantic circles in my head trying to deal with a constant flow of input and output, trying to make sense of everything, and routinely failing miserably.
I shouldn’t forget the other two little guys in my head, Sleepytime Tim in the Dream Center, and little Batty up in the attic. I have no earthly idea how either of them function, or what in the heck they are supposed to do. But there they are. The other three run up and down stairs all day, locating magic mushrooms and random knowledge in the many file cabinets, record collections, book stacks, and odd greasy containers that are stored all around in the many nooks and crannies of Mickey’s mind. They collect stuff through the eyes and ears, and it is also their responsibility to chuck things out through the stupidity broadcaster at various inopportune times. It is also a good idea for them to avoid the lizard brain of the limbic system in the basement. It is easily angered and might eat them.
So now you should be able to fully understand how Mickey thinks. (Or not… a qualifier I was forced to put in by Checkerbob.)
When you make the mistake of admitting to others that you are a writer, they immediately assume you know things that are kept secret from “normal” people. For instance, they will simply assume that you can tell them where you get your ideas for writing. Well, I am fairly sure that I got the idea for this post from watching a YouTube video in which the Master, Neil Gaiman, says that every author has a joke answer for that one with enough sarcastic wit in it to punish the asker with public humiliation.
I asked the dog if she knew any jokes like that which I could use to prepare for someone asking me that question in public. She said, “You could tell them that your family dog tells you what to write every day.”
“No,” I said, “people would never believe it.”
“Well, it is supposed to be a joke. But you are right. No one would ever think you were actually smart enough to write down what a dog tells you.”
“Yes, it’s a good thing for me that you know how to speak in English. I could never translate and transcribe Barkinese.”
So, I began thinking of where some of my best ideas came from.
Dreams
Some of my stories come directly from dreams that I had. The nightmare about being chased down a street in Rowan at midnight by a large black dog with red eyes was an actual dream I had in the 1970s. So was the nightmare of the werewolf climbing out of the TV during a late-night viewing of Lon Chaney in The Wolfman.
Those two dreams together were the start of the story that became my recently published novel, The Baby Werewolf. Both dreams visit the protagonist in the story I wrote almost as if they were his dreams and not actually mine.
Events
Snow Babies, the best novel I have ever written, was based on two different blizzards I experienced, first as a child in the 1960’s, and then again as a high school kid in the 1970s. Each blizzard involved being snowed in for a week at someone else’s house. As a child, I was stuck at Grandpa’s farm place until the snow plows could finally do their work and open the gravel roads. As a teen, I was stuck in Great Grandma’s retirement apartment near the high school in Belmond.
That novel also is based on the next source of ideas;
Characters
I can’t think of any story I have written that isn’t based on real people I have known in one way or another. Valerie in the novel above is based on three different girls I have known or taught. One of those three is my own daughter. The four orphans on the bus in that story are all boys from my junior high classes in the 1980s.
Lucky Catbird Sandman, the hobo who wears the quilted coat of many colors, is based on the poet Walt Whitman, whom I knew well in a past life, and my own shiftless, storyteller self. Some characters are just so key to a story idea that they themselves are the reason for a book to exist.
In conclusion, the dog doesn’t really know what she’s talking about. None of these things are really where I get my ideas. But I am out of time. I will have to write about the bottle imp another day. No, really. A magical imp trapped in a bottle. You can make one of those give you ideas for novels with only a slight risk to your life and soul.
I am still having a hard time writing words daily. I used to pump out a good 1,000+ words daily. Now, there are some days with a re-posted old post and only a couple of lines of something new for an entire day. Glaucoma, arthritis, post-Covid depression, and glitchy laptops keep me from being as productive as once I was.
This post is less than I wanted to write, but today I finished another writing project for a book of short stories about nudists that I am writing for another group project organized by a nudist writer in France. I don’t know if the surge of words in the last couple of days will cure the problem, but as the title says, I am still swimming in the sea of sentences.
It’s true… 24 years of my life was spent in the Jungles of Junior High fighting for my life against predatory seventh graders, monkey people, lizard people, and general craziness. If my pictures are loony, and my stories are insane, it is because I have endured where no sane man should ever venture. The pink raptor, by the way… one of my best students.
“I will publish a book,” he said quietly in a soft voice that nobody could hear.
Since I am not quite ready to die, I resolve to stay alive for another year.
I will try to be naked more.
I will save wear and tear on clothing.
I will be more immersed in the environment.
With climate change, I probably won’t freeze to death. But I do live in Texas where suffering in a way that is contrary to expectations is what the government requires of everybody but the richest folks.
I will draw more naked people because I am a nudist and aspire to make an art book about drawing nudes.
I will talk to dogs more. They have lots of things to say. And they have a unique point of view. And not many old coots like me can actually interpret what dogs say in Barkese. There is an evil schnauzer on our block that keeps barking at other dogs about how he buys stocks in dog food companies and plans to use his profits to make cats illegal in Texas. I feel compelled to expose the plot.
I will continue to be obsessed with writing creative and imaginative stories for children, but never avoiding being frank and honest about adult topics because, even if the child reading the book I have written is under the age of twenty-one, they need to know things adults know in this world because if they don’t, what they don’t know can hurt them. And it is confusing enough when I am being frank and they thought I was being Mickey. That confuses children older than 21 especially.
And so, I will set out on the adventure that is 2023. And I will try to keep all my resolutions… and probably not be able to keep any of them… but I will try really hard… especially the talking to dogs thing.
I recently was advised by a fellow blogger to offer a few writing tips on my blog as a way to painlessly market my writing. Okay, I’m a writing teacher, so I can do that. But in my own writing I have hit a snag. Yes, there are things much, much bigger than my humble skill as a writer.
My current novel project, the Bicycle-Wheel Genius has grown into a science-fiction monster. It is not only about a scientist who has secret government connections, but about time travel and people changing into rabbits… or rabbits into people… or boys into girls… dogs and cats living together… No, that is Ghostbusters.
But it has reached a point where the most important theme is incredibly clear and difficult to deal with. The theme I find myself weaving into this story is; “All men are basically good.” Gongah! Wotta theme to try to write! Do I believe it? Of course I do. Can I put the story together in such a way that I illustrate it to the reader’s satisfaction? Of course I can’t. So what do I do? This story has some of the best villains and evil people in it that I have ever written. I can’t kill them off to solve the story’s plot problems (Well, I can, but I don’t want to). I have to show how evil can be redeemed.
My cast of characters include the scientist himself, calmly dealing with time travelers, invading aliens, government assassins, and a group of young boys known as the Norwall Pirates. There is a time traveler who appeared in a book within a book in my novel Catch a Falling Star. There is also an alien space navigator who has been shot by a local Iowa Deputy Marshall and stranded on Earth. Another character is an artificial man, an automaton who has been crafted as a government assassin made from alien technology. Okay, I know you don’t believe I can make serious science fiction out of such crazy-quilt characters, especially with a primary theme like the one I’ve claimed. So, I have to confess that it is not serious in any way, shape, or form. It is a silly fantasy comedy.
So, how do I generate a theme as big and bold and important as the goodness of all men? Well, here’s a secret recipe;
Take one genius who has lost all the people he loves and has to start over with new friends and, eventually, new family.
Add a brother-in-law with mental health issues and financial dependency.
Add a group of young boys hungry for adventure and new experiences and a little bit short on common sense.
Add a paranoid evil government that has secrets it will kill to protect (the factual part of the story).
Mix well.
Add vinegar.
Boil at 350 degrees for a year.
Of course, if you thought I was giving you real writing advice, then SURPRISE! It turns out I have been making it all up as I go along. That’s how you do it. You write and write, knit it all together tenuously, and then edit the heck out of it, hoping to make sense of the whole thing.
This has been a year of two steps forward and three steps back.
My quality of life is headed down the backside of the mountain. My eyes are afflicted with glaucoma and color blindness, things that permanently take away from my ability to see. I stand to lose the ability to draw and paint, to drive a car, to cook my own food, and numerous other things I have taken for granted for a lifetime.
My body is eroding in many other ways too. I have now had osteoarthritis for 48 years since I was diagnosed with it at the age of 18. I can still walk (with a cane) because I have exercised my joints repeatedly and daily in order to keep my joints flexible and workable, in spite of the pain that has cut into my quality of sleep more this year than any previous year. I have had diabetes since 2020 and still am not on insulin because of carefully monitoring my diet and the exercise that keeps my arthritis at bay.
The only book I managed to publish was The Necromancer’s Apprentice back in February of 2022. It has typos in the final text that I have not yet been able to correct. Most of those occurred during the final proofreading and editing because not only are my arthritic fingers routinely landing wrong, my laptop likes to glitch due to accidentally repurposed keys that teleport letters to pages not on my screen for some obscure reason involving the ctrl and Windows keys being accidentally brushed by arthritic fingers that apparently have more static electricity on them than I would believe is possible. I have had to slowly learn how to undo these things with a brain that is increasingly slowed and forgetful.
My storytelling has slowed to a crawl. I don’t get as many words written in a week. Of course, I have too many projects going at the same time. I have three novels in progress. He Rose on a Golden Wing is a long one that will probably end up being the longest one I have ever written. The Education of Poppensparkle was about three chapters from being a finished novella when I stopped working on it temporarily back in August. I have the AeroQuest novel number 4 in the final proofreading stage but haven’t finished the proofreading because of difficulties of seeing the text and format settings properly. And I started a new obsession project, The Haunted Toy Store.
My blog is headed downhill now too for the first time since it was begun in 2013. The high point last year was 31,106 views and 17,676 visitors. This year, with two days left, I have only 24,346 views and 12,499 visitors. This probably happened because I posted too many nudes in the blog and wrote a novel about nudists and alienated all my fundamentalist Christian readers who see such things as inappropriate rather than innocent or artistic. And the increased interactions with online nudists has probably put me in the disapproving spotlight of the algorithm
Nudists, however, turn out to be good and loyal readers. I have sold more books and made more money from books than any previous year. And not just my nudist stories. My most popopular books are non-nudist stories. Snow Babies, about surviving a blizzard is at the top of the list. My teacher story, Magical Miss Morgan, and my computer-science-fiction book The Wizard in his Keep, are also vying for most read and most positively reviewed.
.And so, I suppose, that it has been a good year after all, though my condition and prospects for the future are possibly at a point of percipitous decline until the end of the road.
Catch a Falling Star 