August 29, 2020 · 6:59 pm

Mickey Plays with Pictures and Paint

Once I was finally able to scan pictures again, I did some scanning of old pictures that only got the camera treatment before on my blog.

But why stop a drawing at just the pen and ink, when there is potential for so much more?

So, I took the Microsoft generic paint program and my generic photo editor to not only this pen and ink of the Jungle Princess, but a few other pictures as well.

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This is what she looks like after being attacked with color by my arthritic old hands. (There was a day when I could have handled intricate details more cleverly, but that was many, many days ago.

Anyway, I have added new dimensions to Leopard Girrrl with color.

Now I need to add more complications to the basic story of the picture.

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Here is an older pen and ink.

This is Dorin Dobbs, one of the dueling plotlines’ protagonists from the novel Catch a Falling Star.

But, of course, Dorin is a more complex character than this old black and white.

So, color needs to be added.

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I had this one actually already painted in…

But in order to use it in this project, I needed to enlarge it to make it fit into the other picture.

Making this unlikely pair work together in a story is one of the challenges of doing surrealist stories. They have to be grounded in realism, but also bring jarringly different things together. Like the Jungle Princess going on an adventure with Norwall’s Lying King.

But, putting these two together is still not enough. Let’s try some other things.

The Jungle Princess together with Tomboy Dilsey Murphy is an unusual pairing.

Or what about the blue faun from Laughing Blue?

Or even Annette Funicello?

Ridiculous, I know. But don’t they look like satin sofa paintings?

And how surreal is that?

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August 28, 2020 · 6:40 pm

The Return of Muck Man

Since I have so far miraculously survived the 2020 pandemic, I have nothing better to do then to relate the whiff-a-typical story of the world’s smelliest superhero as he makes his semi-triumphant return to the public eye… like a horrific mud-ball to the face.

If you recall the newspaper accounts of mild-mannered reporter Dark Bent, or even if you don’t, we recall that Muck Man was put into a community-imposed exile until such time as he would actually take a bath with soap and water. Being unable to find soap and water that was even willing to get within a quarter mile of him, MM started with sand baths in Death Valley until he was finally able to sand-blast away the outer hard crust of his personal odor.

You need to remember too at this point that MM’s super power is olfactory based. He alone among heroes had a personal stench so powerful that criminals would swoon into a coma at the mere mention of his name.

But after significant sand-baths, and once that horrific outer layer was gone, the water spirits were unable to determine who MM really was, and so allowed him to bathe in Lake Michigan where the water’s own funkiness managed to partly hide MM’s rancid smell. His super-scent finally hidden in the folds of Lake Michigan’s highly-polluted, almost water-like contents, MM’s country-encompassing foulness no longer was detectable to MM’s arch-nemesis.

The Monkey King, Dumbold J. Trumpaloo.

Meanwhile the nefarious villain known as the absolute pinnacle of oleaginous corruption, the Monkey King, had hidden his swamp-monstery monsterness in the swamps of Washington D. C. where they were barely discernible in the midst of swamp gas and elephant ideas. His plan to take over the USA was going swimmingly. The Pachyderm Party was uniformly aligned behind him ready to blanket the countryside with toxic elephant poo. And, believing that if they could hold onto power long enough for elephant poo to fossilize into stone, they planned to dominate everything forever.

So, in secret, in his newly smell-reduced Muck Lair, Muck Man began planning the greatest stink-assault ever launched.

“But wait just a second, Dad!” cried Muck Lad. “You will be defeated again if you don’t come to the realization that your super-power and his super-villain’s power are really the same power. You can’t fight stink with stink.”

“Well, then, how do you defeat a super-evil super-villain with super-stink power coming out of his mouth directly from his very good brain?”

“Well…” said Muck Woman (who insists she is Muck Woman, NOT Muck Girl, even though she’s MM’s daughter) “You don’t fight fire with fire… you have to use water. So, get almost-squeaky-clean Uncle Joe B. to hold a convention before his about how the next president should help the country come out of the pandemic with fewer additional deaths and help the economy to recover by taxing the people who can afford to fix the problems, and let the American public compare it to the Monkey King’s elephant-poo festival. That way the villain can practically defeat himself.”

And so, according to mild-mannered reporter Dark Bent, that’s what Muck Man did to defeat the super-villain again. This time without generating a super-stench. And hopefully that will lead to a less-smelly world.

“But…” complained Muck Man, I was left holding on to the the world’s largest weaponized super-fart. And it exploded in my pants. Now, I have to live with consequences.”

” At least we can take comfort in the fact that Mickey is somehow still alive. And a cleaner world is better for all of us.” proclaimed Muck Woman.

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August 27, 2020 · 7:01 pm

Up and Down, Good and Bad

Lepperd Girrrrl, Jungle Princess

I am in quarantine because of my son’s COVID-positive status, so naturally I am hyper-sensitive to the possibility that I could get the virus and die in just a few days. This morning I woke up to a cough, headache, and sinus drainage that immediately set off alarm bells. Time to start living my last days on Earth…. again.

But I have been thinking about canceling the Pubby subscription I bought before the free ten-day trial period ends tomorrow and they charge my bank account for the whole year. So, before calling an ambulance prematurely and setting the house in a panic, I checked Pubby. One of the two reviewers I thought were both going to stiff me on a review I had earned came through and posted a review. And it was a very literate and convincing five-star review. I was basically thrilled and felt vindicated enough that the other nagging worry felt better too.

This link takes you to the reader-review page.

So, then I took my temperature yet again and got 37.1 degrees Celsius. 37 C is, of course, normal, a fact that I had to look up and then convert to Fahrenheit myself just to be sure. So, I have not had a single instance of fever since long before the quarantine began. And, I was also able to discern that these are the exact same symptoms I had at the end of June that made me go get a COVID test that proved I was negative for the virus after the doctor assured me that taking the test was only a precaution, and I didn’t really have coronavirus symptoms. I still have medication for the allergic reaction I had last time, I remembered trying to do the same clean-up yesterday that I had done the first time I had that reaction.

Since we are on a watch for severe symptoms anyway, I decided to wait until I have a fever or shortness of breath. Exactly what the doctor would tell me to do anyway with the situation whether a test came back positive or negative. I am saving money for the doctor’s phone-call consultation, and saving myself another long trip and long wait in a long, long line. Especially when I don’t feel well enough to drive, and don’t want to risk a healthy family member to drive me. So, while I am sealed in my room waiting to die, I will continue to write and read and try to get more books reviewed. This may be my last day alive. But I am happy and the world looks good even though the Republican National Fear-fest continues to threaten a Trump-family dictatorship.

Oh, and I am continuing to scan artworks as my scanner has temporarily forgotten once again how much it hates me after tax time.

A way to access my artwork from this blog with a simple Google images search.

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August 26, 2020 · 6:47 pm

When the Magic isn’t Enough

Some days it seems like I am losing because it simply isn’t a fair fight. What fight am I talking about? Well, all of them.

Right now I am quarantined in the same house and sharing the same bathroom with my son who is sick with COVID 19. With my incurable diseases and health conditions, that is a life-and-death fight. If I get infected, my already-compromised lungs will fill with liquid and I will drown in my own natural juices.

Of course, I am trying to fight off that possibility as if my life depended upon it. My mother, the Registered Nurse of 40 years, sent a box of masks express mail. She also recommended spraying down the bathroom with Lysol every time one of us uses it. We, of course, couldn’t get the brand-named stuff because there are shortages of cleaning supplies everywhere. We had to settle for a generic bottle of imitation Formula 409. And we have to make it last. My eldest son is still free to roam the earth, so he was drafted to get us the supplies we need. But he only manages to get part of what we need most at more expensive prices than we are used to paying. Still, at four of us in the house, only the original one is sick at the moment.

But, being stuck in the house in separate rooms from everybody else gives me lots of time to work on my career as a storyteller. I am about at the halfway point of writing The Wizard in his Keep. And re-composing the old AeroQuest stories is coming along nicely too, as you can see from yesterday’s Canto excerpt from AeroQuest 4 : The Amazing Aero Brothers. Amazingly, I had my best day ever on a free-book promotion of AeroQuest 2 : Planet of the White Spider. For some reason I don’t understand, 18 people all clicked on a free copy of the book in about one hour on Sunday. I set a personal record that day for books given away.

But my success as an author still has to be evaluated as… a good novelist who hardly anyone has ever read. Including relatives. The review service, Pubby, is so far a bust. I got one five-star review. And that one is suspect because the reader’s eight-word review had one spelling error in it… unless “complexing” is a word that I am just not aware of. The next two reviews that I earned with points for my reviews of the work of others are both going to have their deadlines expire without reviewing the book (Snow Babies).

And it doesn’t matter how hard I work at marketing according to the rules, my books have no chance. If you are not paying a major book publisher to get your book published, as I did with Catch a Falling Star with I-Universe/Penguin Books, they are not otherwise accepting unsolicited manuscripts. Good agents don’t accept new unknown clients either. Being a writer in 2020 means working hard at your craft so other people can make more money off the content you produce than you do. In fact, you are mostly telling stories for free to mostly nobody.

But this old wizard is not defeated until he is dead, or even longer, as wizards often cast spells that linger long after they are gone. The problem is, he may be dead by next week.

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August 25, 2020 · 3:33 pm

AeroQuest 4… Canto 109

Canto 109 – Whoa, Gnarly, Dude!

The crew of the Megadeth were busy playing beer pong in the main lounge of the starship when suddenly Dr. Hooey, Time Knight and man of mystery, mysteriously showed up at the door to the lounge.

“Oh, hey, Big-nosed Dude!  Nice to see ya an’ all, but you ain’t supposed to be here.  Not without the Megadeth tellin’ us that ya entered the ship!” said Nikki Sixx with a rather non-sober glint in his eyes.

“I am not going to argue with anyone here.  I know this timeline like the back of my hand.  You are going to agree to take me to the Battle of Coventry.  It is necessary that you do this.  And the book in the archives says that you have done it every time you were asked in every reality.  I realize that I am not Shan Sasaki and this is the first reality that you have been asked by me for this favor.  Still…”

 “Wha…?” said Cold Death, shaking his green mohawk both stupidly and drunkenly in the same shake.

“What my esteemed colleague is trying to say is that we not only don’t know who you are, but we do not have any sort of authorization from any of our superior officers for the sort of transportation mission you are presently seeking.”

“Ah, yes.  You are the one who speaks more coherently when you are drunk.  You are the one named Vince Niell.  You are the one I need to be talking to.”

“Whoa, gnarly dude!” said Nikki Sixx.  “You can acktually unnerstan’ him when he’s drunk?”

“Actually, Mr. Time Knight, sir, I spell my name Vince Neill when I am drunk.”

“Oh?  And why is that?”

“The only reason I spell it wrong to begin with is because some kid playing a role-playing game with the writer of this story named me with the wrong spelling long ago.”

“Yes, and the writer left it spelled wrong as a joke.  I know all of that.  But that’s why you have to do this.  The writer needs a Deux ex Machina solution to an upcoming problem that he can’t figure out another way to solve.”

“Wha…?” commented Cold Death stupidly as his ping pong ball missed all the cups and he was forced to drink five cups of Antarian Ale all at once.

“You know, you are playing beer pong all wrong,” Hooey said.

“Yeah… but we like it bedder dis way,” said Nikki.  “But what the Cold Man wansta say is, whatta hell is Dooz-x-Mockeena?”

“It means God in the Box, my inebriated minion.   The author can’t think of any way to solve a problem but to pull an answer out of his anal sphincter.”

“Whoa, gnarly, Dude!”

“Yes, you said that already,” reminded Hooey, concerned about too much repetition of dialogue in an already tepid tale.  “So, you’ll do this for me, Vince?”

“Yes.  On the basis of that rationale.  But Captain Tommy Lee and Ensign Pamela are both on the planet giving a concert tonight.”

“That’s fine.  I have it on the authority of the Library of All Time that tonight is the real start of their fame and singing career.  We don’t need them.”

“Okay then.  I am inappropriately, and without following proper protocol, going to agree to your commands.  But only because I am totally, stupidly drunk at the moment due to our horrible misinterpretation of the standard rules of beer pong.”

“That works for me.”

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August 24, 2020 · 7:25 pm

Andre Norton, Sci-Fi Royalty

It began for me in 1977 with this wrap-around cover illustration. I knew there were a lot of this guy’s books on the shelves of the college bookstore along with works by Robert E. Howard, Roger Zelazney, and Theodore Sturgeon. And I knew this guy had also written paperback books under the name “Andrew North”, a name I had seen on the twenty-five cent novels in the drugstore where you could buy the really good pulp fiction novels only slightly used.

I had never before bought one of his books. And the book money I had for the fall quarter at Iowa State was supposed to all go towards the book-list given to me as a Junior-level English major. But the naked kid on the cover had a wired-up collar around his neck. And I had only recently recovered long-suppressed memories of being a victim of a sexual assault. I had to have it. I had to know what that illustration had to do with the story inside.

So, I bought a book that I judged by its cover.

And it was not the wrong thing to do.

The main character was a boy named Jony, the naked boy on the cover of the book. He is taken by alien beings as a study specimen along with his mother, the pregnant woman on the back of the wrap-around illustration. The story starts with Jony in a cage, treated like an animal. His mother, also a study specimen has been mated to a Neanderthal-like humanoid specimen who cannot speak, and she has given birth to twins, a boy, and a girl. They are kept in separate cages by their inhuman captors.

Jony manages a mass escape, taking his mother and his younger siblings with him, and releasing as many of the other study specimens as he can. Luckily they escape onto a very earth-like planet. But unluckily, the mother is in very poor health and dies soon after escaping. Jony is then responsible for his little brother and sister in a wilderness that is not empty of others. Luckily, the others they first run afoul of are the bear-like ursine aliens who share their need to not be recaptured by the zoo-keeper aliens.

It was a perfect novel for me. I identified strongly with the main character, who had been violated in a very personal way by monsters. And then had to build a new life in a world full of potential other-monsters. Andre Norton shared my pain and helped me overcome it.

But she also fooled me big-time. She was not a he.

She was a librarian and editor of pulp fiction who wrote enough sci-fi and fantasy in the 50’s, 60’s, and 70’s to finally become a full-time author.

She was already on book number 29 when she retired from being a librarian to write full time.

And I would go on to own and read several of her other books, which were good, but never quite lived up to that first one I read. Of course, that may have been because of the timing and circumstance that led me to a book that I actually needed to read. That book set me on the road to recovery from my personal darkness. And it may have sparked in me the need to eventually become a nudist. And more important than that, it may have led me to a lifelong need to teach reading.

Andre Norton was a real writer. And she made me one too. Though I never knew who she really was until after I bought that book because of the picture on the cover. And I never got around to properly thanking her for all of that… Until this very moment.

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August 23, 2020 · 10:49 pm

It Came in the Mail!

While being still locked down for the pandemic due to health problems, I finished and published my book of essays. I hold the first copy in my hands.

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August 23, 2020 · 3:12 pm

Doom Looms… Yet Again

My number two son is coronavirus positive. All four of us who live in the house are now under quarantine for fourteen days (at a minimum). I have six incurable diseases, three of which; diabetes, hypertension, and COPD, the virus uses as the window to climb in and assassinate you.

We are not supposed to share a bathroom with the ill person, which is hard to do with only one bathroom. Nobody is seriously considering peeing outdoors.

We are all now wearing masks in the house. Well, except for my wife who insists she can’t breathe with a mask on all day (though she does it for her job as a Texas school teacher.) And she is a diabetic too.

What are the chances that I will still be alive in two weeks? Well, I am proceeding with the idea that I have a zero percent chance myself. I will do what I can to swim with the current. Like a good Taoist, I will not try to change the natural order of things. I have been retired now for six years, not by choice, but because of health problems. I am actuarily supposed to be dead five years ago. Heck, I had the H1N1 virus twice (both strains). The fact that I am still alive now means that I am very hard to kill.

So, I am expecting to die soon, but doing everything in my power to paddle the boat to safety in the raging river of Doom, Gloom, and rumors of Boom.

But my regrets are few. It has been a very good run. I have had a lotta laughs over 64 years. I taught for 31 years. I have written 16 novels and one book of essays. I am about halfway finished with my next novel.

I have to thank Walt Kelly’s Pogo for allowing me to steal these illustrations.

My next novel is called The Wizard in his Keep. It is about three kids who are orphaned by a car wreck, then rescued by a family friend. Their weird “Uncle” Milt Morgan has been helping to create a virtual-reality computer game called The Legend of Hoodwink. He takes them to live inside the game world. And there they discover that things have gone terribly wrong for the computer game and the company that designed it. And it’s possible that the game has been contaminated with real magic somehow. And there may no longer be any way out of the game ever again.

This book may well be my own Mystery of Edwin Drood (the last, unfinished book by Charles Dickens.) It is somehow perfect, then, that this novel was inspired by The Old Curiosity Shop, and has many Dickens references in it.

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Filed under battling depression, commentary, family, feeling sorry for myself, health, humor, illness, Paffooney

August 22, 2020 · 6:30 pm

Saturdays are Coming Faster and Faster

I suppose with the threat of Coronavirus hanging over the house, the days are getting shorter because the end of time for me is drawing nearer. I have just started a subscription with Pubby, an online company that lets you review the books of others. And in return, they will review yours. That’s a plan that will only bear fruit if it has enough time to grow.

I, of course, started with Snow Babies. It may not be the best that I have written, but it’s at least close, and it is my favorite.

Sing Sad Songs will be the second one I will add.

The first review I got was a five-star review. But the reader read it apparently only in one day, rather than the four days I gave him. (That is the most that Pubby allows.) I would really rather get a lower score if I knew that the reader was actually reading and not just skimming.

The novel covers and illustrations I have included here for Saturday Art Day are all other books I think are worthwhile getting reviewed. It takes a while though to earn enough points by reading and reviewing to get another review on one of my books. They say that once you buy a subscription, the reviews are free. But they are not. You have to earn points to get them. In other words, you have to work for it.

These first few all have four or five star reviews on them already, before Pubby. But some of them have nudist characters in them doing nudist activities, and that may cause them to do poorly with people who think you shouldn’t even read about people having no clothes on. The one directly above got a five star review, but it is set in a nudist park and it was a nudist who reviewed it.

This book has not yet been read by anyone but me, as far as I know.

I can finally get a review on Magical Miss Morgan too, now that I got back my publishing rights from Page Publishing and republished it on Amazon.

And this weekend I have a free promotion going on this book, the second in the AeroQuest series. You can click on the BUY ON AMAZON button and buy it in Kindle format for zero dollars.

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August 21, 2020 · 8:51 pm

Coping For Now

Yeah… Life is mostly not fair. Today I had to take number 2 son to the testing site near Parkland Hospital in Dallas. He got the COVID test because a prisoner at the county jail where he works as a guard tested positive, and then Henry started showing symptoms at home, and was too sick to work by Wednesday evening. The Sheriff’s Office is very concerned. He got in for a test faster than most people can, and the Sheriff’s Office is paying for it.

Of course, I am already exposed. And I have three health conditions normally associated with COVID deaths in people my age. Still, I don’t feel sick yet. And I had H1N1 twice, both strains of it. It is possible that I have leftover resistance and t-cells from that. But I am done feeling sorry for myself. Time to get more writing done.

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