My father is going into hospice care. Parkinson’s disease is winning against him. I am stuck in Texas until the results of my COVID 19 test come back. Needless to say, my heart is broken. I need magic to fix it now. Where do you find that kind of power? This is where I am looking today.
These are acapella songs. No instruments. Only voice. It comes straight from the heart. Out through the mouth and into the ever-present ether. Life may come to an end, but the sound of it continues… never-ending. Even God does not make a song unsung once it has been made real.
I have been watching these videos on my laptop, lying on my sickbed, and crying at the beauty, the truth, and the depths of sadness in my soul. It hurts to lose a parent. My father was born in 1930. In October of this year, his life-song will reach 90 years of age. It hurts now. But songs are never unsung once they finish. In this I find comfort.
I hope you will actually listen to these. I add a lot of music to my posts, and I never notice any reports of someone clicking on the videos. But these musicians; Pentatonix, Home Free, Peter Hollens, and BYU Vocal Point all have that magic… the power to both lift you up towards God and to make you weep for the bittersweet tragedy that is the experience of being alive and knowing… well, that every book has a final chapter, every song has a final note, and every life…
I don’t have to finish that thought, do I? Now is a proper time for sadness, for trepidation, for listening to music like this… and for remembering love. And I am not through crying just yet.
WordPress has put in a new feature for finding old photos from Posts Past.
This allows me to pull from past years much more easily than the scroll-down feature I have been using. Thus, art from 2017.
This is from the Star Wars Role-playing game that we stopped playing in 2008.the Murphy family (well, three of them anyway)The disintegrator pistol from Catch a Falling Star“The Wise Thaumaturge Visits Cymril”Eventual cover art for Magical Miss MorganI painted this miniature lead wizard, as well as made the castle from cardboard and paper.I also painted the buildings in the background, acrylic on plaster.“Their Most Feared Offensive Player Could Beat Them By Herself”All of these works of art are done by me, whether they are drawn, painted, or photographed.
This has been a look back at pictures posted in 2017, starting in December, and going back in time to January. There is at least one picture from every month.
Today I had to go and get myself tested for the virus that threatens us all.
I’m pretty sure if it is a viral or bacterial infection, it is allergy-related and nothing to do with the deadly plague that sits heavily on the world around us. But if you have to consult a doctor about things like this in this particularly grave spot on the road to history, their mandated response is to stick a swab so far up your nose that they can scrape the backside of your brain with it to find out just how twisted and diseased you are (or, depending on how many twists and swirls they give the swab, how crazy and perturbed you are soon to become.)
Perhaps eating tarantulas raw will cure it… After all, you believed the Trumpalumpa when he said take oxychloroquin.
I will have to wait five to seven days for an answer, positive or negative, and that will delay going to Iowa, if not prevent it completely.
Valerie Clarke at the church in Norwall (Rowan, Iowa)
In order to take the torture-test to see if I have or have not the fatal disease, I had to drive to an obscure spot along LBJ Highway, a church it seems, so I was fully drained and tired before taking the nose-mining test of horror. Number Two son was with me to keep me alive, but he could not drive because Progressive wants to further bankrupt us rather than let him drive one of our two vehicles. He is in an age group where, it seems, all the other drivers let him down, rather than allow his own maturity and experience to set the price.
So, this post is quick and complain-y because I am now too sick to write something happy about today. And I must wait for five to seven business days for the license to continue living, or the death sentence the positive test will ultimately probably be.
At least the nurses that stuck swabs up my nostril are promising to pray for me.
Yesterday my 89-year-old father went into the hospital. He suffers from Parkinson’s Disease and a heart no longer strong enough to keep his blood pressure up. Apparently yesterday he lost the ability, possibly only temporarily, to recognize my mother.
This is not a good time to lose my father. There is never a good time, but now my health is failing. I had to make deals with relatives to get someone to drive me up to Iowa for the annual visit to the family farm during the pandemic which is now spiraling out of control in Texas. My wife and I are both diabetics and at risk. If we accidentally take COVID 19 up to Iowa, I could wipe out all four of us. And I developed a cough and chest pain overnight. At least now I can make a case for getting a COVID test.
I know a post like this goes against the rules for a good blog post. It is entirely too personal and self-focused. But it is necessary sometimes to confess your fears before you confront them. I have had my father and mother in my life for the entirety of my 64 years. They have both lived good, long, and fruitful lives. And a time for passing comes to us all. I have been far luckier in holding back the night than the vast majority of people. But the only immortality we can ever hope to have is through passing on the small part of the universal story that belongs only to each of us individually. “I am a child of the universe. No less than the trees and the stars, I have a right to be here. And whether or not it is clear to me (And at this moment… it is not) the universe is unfolding… as it should” – a paraphrase from Desiderata.
It is getting harder and harder to climb the new day’s hill to get to the summit where I can reasonably get a good look at the road ahead. At almost-64, I can see the road ahead is far shorter and much darker than the highway stretching out behind me. It is not so much a matter of how much time I have spent on the road as it is a matter of the wear and tear the mileage has caused.
This weekend I had another depressing free-book promotion where, in five days, I only moved five books, one purchase, and four free books. I have made $0.45 as an author for the month of June.
I was recently given another bit of good advice from a successful author. He said that I shouldn’t be in such a rush to publish. He suggested taking more time with my writing. Hold on to it longer. Polish it and love it more. And now that I have reached sixteen books published on my author’s page, I have basically beaten the grim reaper in the question of whether or not he was ever going to silence me and my author’s voice. I can afford to live with the next one longer.
But the last one, A Field Guide to Fauns, practically wrote itself. It went fast from inspiration to publication simply because the writer in me was on fire and full of love and life and laughter that had to boil over into hot print exactly as quickly as it did. The additional writing time afforded me by the pandemic and quarantine didn’t hurt either. Once in print, my nudist friends loved it.
This next one has the potential to boil and brew and pop out of me in the same accelerated way as that last one did. Of course, it has been percolating inside my brain basically since the Summer of 1974. So, this is no rushed job. The Wizard in his Keep is a story of a man who tries to take the children of the sister of his childhood best friend to a place of safety when their parents are killed in a car wreck. But the only safe place he has to offer is in the world of his imagination. A world he has bizarrely made real. And that best friend comes searching for the children. And so does a predator who seeks to do them all grievous harm.
In many ways, it is a story already written.
So, I am rekindling the flame that keeps the story-pot boiling. And more of it is already cooking. And I am recovering from the cool winds of disappointment, as well as the dark stormclouds of the nearing future.
Things were a bit crazy on the surface of Outpost as the airless planet began preparing for the coming space battle with Admiral Tang and the Imperial Fleet. But King Killer was certain it had to be like eating cake and ice cream down there compared to what he had to do up in orbit.
He paced back and forth in front of the ten pilots he had lined up on the flight deck of his command ship.
“You men are the cream of the crop of new pilots. You are already designated as wing commanders. And the ranks of ship captains and vice admirals above you are completely empty and waiting to be filled. And yet, between the ten of you, you have already crashed twenty ships. And you are lucky those were these bulky Triceratops cruisers. Their Ancient tech makes them practically indestructible and easy to repair. Every pilot who has crashed a Pterosaur fighter so far, all two hundred and fifty-three of them, are dead. And their ships are destroyed.”
All five cavemen from Don’t Go Here, and all three M’uduai from what King was calling Squidworld, and the idiot from Geogenesis, and the rockman from Dekastria nodded their stupid heads at the same time.
“Do you actually understand me? Or do your heads just do that because you see the others do it?”
“Yes, Admiral Killer, Sir!” they chimed in unison.
“Zukkuua. Kuakuua Killer, Kua!” shouted the rockman who didn’t know Galactic English yet.
“You mean, yes, you understand me? Or, yes, you are just imitating the others?”
“We understand you, Admiral Killer, sir!”
“Slikka ku Kikk kik?” said the rockman. Then he appeared to be thinking about it. “Zukkuua, Kuakuua Killer, Kua!”
“What did he say?” King asked.
“He said he understands, but wonders if you understand him?” said the caveman in the thick reading glasses.
“Teach him Galactic English, dammit!”
“Uh, yessir! Admiral Killer, sir!”
“Okay, now, these men will be your teachers, as they are some of the finest pilots anywhere on the frontier.”
King indicated the three pilots standing behind him.
“Elvis the Cruel has more kills in battle than any other pilot I have ever heard about. With the Pinwheel Corsairs he has killed more than nine hundred space ships and more than a thousand ground targets.”
Elvis stepped forward, gave a jaunty salute, and then said, with a cigarette stub hanging off his lip, “Thank ya, thank ya very much.”
All ten pilots clapped.
“Apache Scout has been the number-two pilot in the Lady Knights Corsair Band for fifteen years. He was one of the most effective fighters in the First Battle of White Palm. He also helped plan the overall battle plan for that invasion.”
The huge, well-muscled descendant of old Earth Apaches stepped forward and saluted with a stern face.
The pilots all saluted back and then clapped.
“And I hope the third trainer, Vince Niell will be the most help to you. He started as a rookie pilot from Don’t Go Here. He took up piloting aboard the first starship designed by Ancient technology, the Megadeath. He has swiftly become a peerless pilot, maneuvering that ship in ways I have never seen done before.”
Vince, still wearing his mirrored sunglasses inside the spaceship’s fighter flight deck, stepped forward and saluted.
They all saluted back and clapped.
“Perhaps, Admiral Vince, you can tell us a little bit about how you learned to pilot your ship in combat?”
“Um… yeah, well, you see, sir… um… Actually, the ship kinda taught me herself. I kinda developed a close working relationship with my baby and she sorta does whatever I can picture in my head for her to do.”
“Wait a minute!” King’s head was suddenly swimming in a sea of shock. “You mean your ship is telepathic?”
“Um, yeah. I think it’s kinda a feature of all these Ancient starships. The Triceratops I tried out after Tron first brought them here seemed to read my mind as easily as the Megadeath does.”
King Killer hit his own forehead with his gloved fist. Why was he just now hearing this? He had a sudden urge to punch Dr. Hooey in the face again. Too bad the stupid Time Knight was not present. And too bad the problem wasn’t really his fault.
“Willy! Willy Culver! Get out here this instant!”
The man who wasn’t supposed to survive the imprisonment on the planet Stanley came out of the tool room obediently. King punched him in the eye and knocked him out cold. King knew there was a good reason he had saved that man’s life.
“Okay. You all heard Admiral Niell’s advice. The next time you fly, think at your stupid starship until the damned thing thinks back!”
In 1927 in the mythical land of Austria, where they seem to know how to make candy… a condensed form of peppermint was created in a lozenge form and then placed into a plastic toy dispenser. The spells that were cast to make this magical item probably had nothing to do with toad warts and bat wings and eye of newt. It has more to do with Mickey Mouse, then Katzenjammer Kids, and Marvel Super Heroes. I have been caught under the spells of a PEZ fixation since childhood. I remember begging for a Bugs Bunny dispenser in Merle Hay Mall in Des Moines when I was probably six years old. My parents wisely said no hundreds of times when I was a kid. Who wanted to spend a nickel on a penny’s worth of candy? Just for a Pez dispenser. If they ever caved to my begging, even once…
Posting every day keeps the imaginary writing muscles toned and renews my basic energy levels. But it also becomes a chore on certain days. Like today. The weather has got me down with arthritis woes. Typing like this is it not as easy as it should be. And when I have to labor at it to make the paragraphs flow, sometimes I just turn it all into rambling babbling. I spin my mental wheels and get nowhere.
I can use this post to tell you, however, that I have now started a new work-in-progress. I have already pounded out the first four thousand words of The Wizard in His Keep.
This is the final story in the arc of the character Milt Morgan. This story has been gestating in my brain since 1995. Though, if I am honest, it began with fantasies I had back in fifth grade. The main character, Milt Morgan, is half me and half the other Mike from our gang back in Rowan in the 1960’s. Back when Mike and Michael were sometimes good friends and sometimes the brains behind evil plans and terrible tricks. He supplied the devious know-how, and I provided the creative spark that lit the schemes on fire.
But this story is advanced to the computer age.
Milt Morgan is 50% me and 50% my best nemesis, Mike Bridges
In 1996, Milt Morgan was a 34-year-old video game designer living a double life in a high-tech, state-of-the-art computer lab. It is then that he mysteriously kidnaps the three children of his child-hood friend’s sister and takes them away to a magical world that only two people in the entire world have the keys to. Milt is the Wizard. The other Key-Master is Daniel Quilp, the Necromancer. A battle for the soul of the world must take place, and Daisy, Johnny, and Mortie Brown are a part of it.
Anyway, the words are beginning to pile up again. And again I have made something out of nothing. My book promotion is still going on until tomorrow. The link above can still get you a free e-book copy until after midnight tomorrow. And nobody, it seems, still wants my book for free. (How’s that for a pathos pitch?) We’ll see how it all ends tomorrow.
Johnny Brown in Purple Glammis (the Magical Kingdom)
I am running another free-book promotion this month, once again for Recipes for Gingerbread Children. Same song, third verse. It seems no one wants this book. I can’t even give it away for free.
I suppose it might have something to do with the fact that there are nudists in the story. It’s true, the Cobble Twins are teenage girls who love to be naked. And in the story, they spend time at Grandma Gretel’s house walking around with no clothes on. And when they get their junior high friends to visit Gretel, eat her gingerbread cookies, and listen to her stories, they also try to convince their friends to get naked too. But, really, it is a part of the charm of those two characters. It is not a pornographic story, and they basically fail in promoting nudism among eighth graders.
But nudism has a slightly different meaning for Gretel Stein. She barely escaped the showers at Auschwitz. It is the hardest story she has to tell.
Sherry and Shelly Cobble
I am roundly disappointed. I have every reason to believe I am a good writer and this is a good book. But how can I get people to agree if no one is willing to read it? I have to just keep trying. The book is still free until Tuesday midnight.
It is Saturday again, and it is time to share some more artwork. I am trying to come up with a theme. But I guess I am basically going through my gallery and picking stuff at random.
I am just guessing here, but maybe I can find pictures here of daily life at home, no matter how weird that home might be.
Okay, so, really weird home life…It is life at home… if your home is a farm.This is life at home… if you live on a pirate ship.Life at home… if you are circus clowns.
Maybe I don’t have a clear artistical idea of what a home life really looks like, but, after all, home is where the heart lives.
Catch a Falling Star 
Re-bubbling the Old Enthusiasm
It is getting harder and harder to climb the new day’s hill to get to the summit where I can reasonably get a good look at the road ahead. At almost-64, I can see the road ahead is far shorter and much darker than the highway stretching out behind me. It is not so much a matter of how much time I have spent on the road as it is a matter of the wear and tear the mileage has caused.
This weekend I had another depressing free-book promotion where, in five days, I only moved five books, one purchase, and four free books. I have made $0.45 as an author for the month of June.
I was recently given another bit of good advice from a successful author. He said that I shouldn’t be in such a rush to publish. He suggested taking more time with my writing. Hold on to it longer. Polish it and love it more. And now that I have reached sixteen books published on my author’s page, I have basically beaten the grim reaper in the question of whether or not he was ever going to silence me and my author’s voice. I can afford to live with the next one longer.
But the last one, A Field Guide to Fauns, practically wrote itself. It went fast from inspiration to publication simply because the writer in me was on fire and full of love and life and laughter that had to boil over into hot print exactly as quickly as it did. The additional writing time afforded me by the pandemic and quarantine didn’t hurt either. Once in print, my nudist friends loved it.
This next one has the potential to boil and brew and pop out of me in the same accelerated way as that last one did. Of course, it has been percolating inside my brain basically since the Summer of 1974. So, this is no rushed job. The Wizard in his Keep is a story of a man who tries to take the children of the sister of his childhood best friend to a place of safety when their parents are killed in a car wreck. But the only safe place he has to offer is in the world of his imagination. A world he has bizarrely made real. And that best friend comes searching for the children. And so does a predator who seeks to do them all grievous harm.
In many ways, it is a story already written.
So, I am rekindling the flame that keeps the story-pot boiling. And more of it is already cooking. And I am recovering from the cool winds of disappointment, as well as the dark stormclouds of the nearing future.
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