Don’t make the mistake of thinking I have any advice to offer about how to do what I am doing. First of all, I can’t claim to be successful at it. Also, I am doing it all by instinct, not by study and planning. All I am really doing this for is to show you my favorite pictures.
for The Boy… Forever
I basically draw the pictures before I write the story down in paragraphs. The story exists already in my head, and the pictures help it gel in my mind before it comes out in fiction form.
An illustration for AeroQuest 2; Planet of the White Spider
The Baby Werewolf
I particularly enjoy drawing the characters, giving them actual, physical substance so that they exist not only in my stupid old head, but also on the page or on the screen to allow them to be in front of my eyes.
Snow Babiesfrom Superchicken From Sing Sad Songs
The Book Cover itself
Being able to illustrate can be a way into producing covers for myself that have as much chance at catching the reader’s eye as anything else that I do.
People tell me that my artwork is enchanting and that they like it.
They are, hopefully, not all lying when they say that.
Magical Miss MorganRecipes for Gingerbread ChildrenThe Bicycle-Wheel Genius
Yes, it happens a lot when you are an aging diabetic. I have moved into that time of life when my six incurable diseases are much harder to bear, and can potentially be the last act in my personal play. So, what do I do when these things move in close to take a bite of me? I appreciate my life harder.
I have lived for over six decades now. I was a child when Walt Disney was still alive, and when men first landed on the moon. I experienced a few of the things that make the story of human life on earth a corking good story, well worth the read.
In some ways the study of human history is one of the most insight-inducing things you can do with your life. There are all kinds of things that were done by stupid kings, and suffering and the buffering of suffering done by heroes, and things that were explored, and knowledge uncovered, and people who have lived and loved and laughed. There was once a Joan of Arc, a Groucho and Harpo Marx, a wizard named Isaac Newton, and a Great Clown who may have been Emmett Kelly, or may have been Red Skelton, or even, possibly, Marcel Marceau.
And, what if mankind has already chosen a course of suicide on a planetary scale? The decision was made back in the 1970’s by the fossil fuel industry that short-term profits were more important than preserving our atmosphere and environment. We are now beginning to reap the whirlwind that they sowed back then, threatening to turn this planet into a Venus-like hell of heat and acid rain. Are we all gonna die?
Human beings are highly adaptable, inventive, and fully capable of finding ways to survive. That will probably be tested, but until it is all completely over, we still have a chance.
But everybody dies… eventually. All people have an expiration date. All civilizations, people, creatures, and even planets themselves have a beginning, middle, and end. And just because something is ended, it doesn’t follow that all its existence, meaning, and importance are gone. My Grandma Beyer has been gone for nearly 20 years. And yet, she is still real. I and my children could not exist without her. And that will still be true when all of us are dead.
So, I have to say, all in all, it is worth it. No matter what happens next.
I have never been a better writer, artist, or story-teller than I am right now. This is the culmination of my life, even if it ends tomorrow. I will keep living day-by-day… living… loving… and laughing. Appreciating the opportunity to exist at all. And therein lies the value of my life
I am not one who can stand to watch Republican debates. I know the clown car is full to busting, but I can’s stand the idea that one of those narrow-minded, fact-free, duplicitous Bozos could end up being the next president. (Or fascist dictator, when you consider what “fascist” actually means, and what former President Carter has said about the U.S. not being a democracy any more.) If one of those clowns wins it, the true power will once again reside with the unseen ring master, like it was with the rodeo-clown George W. Bush and his secret puppet-master, Dick Cheney. And I pay enough attention to know that Donald Trump was so insulting to women during the debate, that Democrats can pick Beelzebub to run as their candidate and women still won’t vote Republican.
I watched the final Jon Stewart Daily Show instead. Stewart is more liberal than I…
This will be used for several things. Most importantly it will become a part of the cover I make for my Work In Progress, The Boy… Forever.
The villain of this story claims to be an undead Chinese wizard. It is a claim that may be totally bogus, but it is a part of the idea of his villainy that needs to be illustrated to help me get to the roots of my theme; “No man lives forever. But if they accidentally do, it helps to be secretly a dragon in human form.”
Rowan, Iowa is a place full of memories. I was a boy there, from the time I was four and began remembering life until I was 24 and life in the real world moved to distant parts the focus of what I called “Home”.
As my life continues, long past the time I figured I would be allowed to live by my six incurable diseases, I find myself living more and more inside my own head. Truly, my failing physical health has isolated me more and more from the people I know and have relationships with. Instead of spending hours upon hours at work every week, I find myself confined to my bedroom where I maintain breathable air, doing little beyond reading and writing, watching movies and shows on Netflix, dreaming, remembering, and imagining. My “real-world” life has been ever the less active and ever more confined to a small space. But in my head, the opposite is true. I have lived in memory; revisiting places that have been changed or torn down since, and spending time with people whom I still see as children even though they are now grown in real life with children of their own, and spending time talking to people who live no more, anywhere but in my memory.
Some of those to whom I am talking are actually me, fictionalized versions of me, imagined as if something different had happened to me, or I had chosen different roads less traveled than the ones I actually walked upon.
Some are, naturally, people whom I have loved, seen through different colored lenses than I saw them when I saw them with my physical eyes.
And it is most definitely possible to see and re-interpret the things that happened to us in a very different light than the ones I saw it all in during the 1960’s and 1970’s. It helps to be able to put on the old time-traveler’s glasses to look again, not at how it really was, but how it really ought to be.
Everything I have just rambled on about in run-on sentences of purple paisley prose, is writer-thinking. It is the very thing that most probably goes on in your head too, since you are likely only reading this blog post because you are a writer too, and you find value in the ramblings of an old man who used to be a writing teacher and is now, very definitely, one of the goofier varieties of writer whom you can learn significant lessons from (even if only what not to do, because you are not as stupid as I am when it comes to writing).
Many of the things that happen now in my silly, stupid old head happen in places like the planet Mars or on board a star-ship headed to other parts of the Orion Spur of the Sagittarius Spiral Arm of the Milky Way Galaxy.
I often live, as well, in the part of my head that is entirely made-up from galvanized, sauteed, or even moldy pieces of imagination. I live in places like the Mothership of the Telleron Explorers now in orbit around the planet Galtorr Prime. Or Animal Town in the middle of the country of Fantastica where I met my wife, seen here as Mandy Panda from the Pandalore Islands.
Or even in the Willow-Tree Fortress known as Cair Tellos, the Capital of the Fairy Kingdom of Tellosia in Wright County, Iowa.
Living in the world when your body betrays you constantly can be horrible and hard. But living inside your head is easy. And I actually plan to do more of it before the final page is turned in the Book of my Life.
Naylund Smith was dressed in a formal
silk jacket with an embroidered Japanese-style phoenix raising its wings across
the chest and turning to flaming ashes on the back. A white chord ran down the left leg of the
blue silk pants and ended in an embroidered white spider, the first time Ged
was to see the White Spider’s personal logo on anything.
Ged couldn’t help
but admire the strong-looking, erect posture of this amazing man. He wore a gold earring in his left ear; his
head was shaved and hairless except for white eyebrows, a white bun at the very
back of the head, and a white goatee.
The man’s iron-gray eyes glared like the stare of an eagle. Only the golden walking stick hinted at any
weakness in the man, and he never seemed to lean upon it.
“The web of space
is locked in an ever-expanding spiral dance,” said Naylund as ceremonial armor
was strapped to Ged’s arms and chest.
“The spiders that move from strand to strand are merely a counterpoint
to the great dancing flow of the web itself. When spiders contend for space on the web,
then the dance reaches its most violent and most beautiful point. I cannot help you with the next few steps of the
dance. The prophecy says that you will
be victorious, but no prophecy is ever absolute unless it can be proven to come
from God himself.”
“You sound like I
am about to have some kind of duel,” said Ged cautiously. “I thought this was just a welcoming
ceremony.”
“It is that. It is also deadly serious.”
Little Ham Aero
Junior was brought to Ged dressed in a milk-white kimono, and an embroidered
white spider picked out in light blue covered the heart. The female attendants left him with Ged.
“I am to stand
with you, Ged-sensei,” the boy said.
“Did Frieda teach
you to speak so well?” Ged asked the little Nebulon.
“No. I learned your language long ago by telepathy.”
“Why didn’t you
ever teach it to your mother?”
“She hardly ever
spoke to me. I was nothing but a
reminder to her of the shame of her servitude.”
“I’m so sorry for
you, Junior.”
“Don’t be. Now I belong to you and you belong to
me. I will stand at your side and die
rather than leave you.”
“A very handsome
and noble child,” said Naylund. “He
deserves to be treated well by you, Ged.”
“Don’t worry,
Naylund-sensei. I am learning to love my
nephew too.” Ged smiled at Junior.
Naylund motioned
to Ged to leave the tent where he had been dressed in armor. He was now done up in the armor of a Japanese
daimyo or feudal lord, a samurai. He had
everything but the demon mask on him.
As Ged, Naylund
and Junior stepped out into the arena, 40,000 people cheered. Ged was stunned to see so many people. Being a spacer meant being alone more often
than with other people. He’d never in his
life been with so many at once.
“Behold! The so-called White Spider,” said a man
across from Ged in the arena. He gestured
with a silver katana sword to Ged and his two companions. “What do you say that I test this
gaijin? Do you really believe he is the
white spider?”
The crowd roared
that they did believe.
“Well, we shall
see,” said the man, drawing his katana in front of him.
“He will now try
to kill you, Ged,” said Naylund. “If he
succeeds, he will kill the boy and me as well.”
“But, wait!” said
Ged. “I am unarmed!” He sounded panicky.
“According to
prophecy,” said Naylund, “that’s not supposed to be a problem.”
“I am the Black
Spider,” shouted the man. Ged noticed
his black silk robes bore a red spider-symbol on the chest. “I will kill you now, Ged Aero!”
The man charged at Ged with lightning speed. He was obviously martial-arts trained, and knew precisely what to do. Ged tried to dodge, but the katana came down on his right shoulder in a perfect arc. Ged’s right arm was neatly severed at the shoulder.
The crowd
gasped. Ged fell to his knees gasping
also. Junior tried to run to him, but
Naylund grabbed him and firmly held him.
“Patience, little
one. Ged must pass this test himself.”
Ged’s mind swirled,
but fixed on an image from his mind implanted there when Tara helped him return
to his rightful form. His inner eye
sharpened and fixed the image with crystal clarity. Immediately the arm grew back into
place. The crowd was silent with shock.
“So!” said the
Black Spider. “You are a magician! It will help you not! I have killed many magicians before you.”
Ged didn’t bother
to listen. Power was surging through
him. He could feel the rightness of each
shape as it came to him.
“Tara?” said
Junior, amazed at what he saw. Ged had
changed first into the lithe figure of Tara Salongi so that the bulky clothing
and armor would fall away. Then, as the
nude female Ged stepped free of the binding clothing, he was already turning
into the fearsome raptor dinosaur from Don’t Go Here.
“Try this!” cried
the Black Spider as he leaped onto Ged’s scaly back and tried to sever the
saurian head. Ged’s clawed foot nimbly
came up and swept the attacker off, as easily as a horse knocks flies off his
flanks with a twitching tail. The other
clawed foot found the Black Spider as he hit the ground, the wicked hook
slicing into the flesh of his stomach.
The Black Spider
wobbled to his feet again, defiant and angry.
His intestines began to droop out of his wound. “Good trick, spider, but
I’m not beaten yet!”
Even as the Black
Spider was bragging, Ged remembered one other beast he had been forced to kill
and eat. He morphed almost immediately
into a Samothracian Shadowcat, one of the most difficult creatures he had ever
hunted. On the colorful planet of Samothrace,
with its many xeno-flowers, shadowcats had developed the ability to change
color so masterfully; they could practically disappear from view. As soon as the first paw touched the sand of
the arena floor, Ged shimmered and disappeared.
“What? Where…?” cried the Black Spider, swinging his
sword wildly. Attacks battered him from
three sides. Ged it seemed, had turned
into the wind. It looked like puffs of
air were slashing the Black Spider; until finally, the sword fell from his hand
and the Black Spider fell dead and thoroughly bloodied. Ged remained invisible so as not to disgust
the crowd as he replenished himself by feeding on the flesh of the enemy. He also ate his own severed arm before he
finally reappeared in his own form.
Naked, he quickly
dressed in the samurai armor once again, though not bothering with the many
straps and ties. The crowd was utterly
silent, which left Ged wondering what it meant.
Shen Ming
approached solemnly, holding two sheathed swords in his hands.
“You have done well,
my son. Take your swords of office.”
Ged humbly
received the swords from Shen-sensei. He
bowed. There was a beautiful silver
katana with a white ivory pommel and a smaller golden wakizashi with a blue
woven pommel. The crowd now began to cheer
riotously.
“I have defeated the Black Spider?” asked Ged of Naylund.
“You have defeated the first of many Black Spiders, Ged-sama. We will never be at a loss for villains.”
As a new week begins and a new month begins tomorrow, I admit, I have been under pressure. But now the monsters are temporarily under control, either beaten back, or caged.
As you can see here, I have tightened up the cover design for part two of my novel re-write AeroQuest. The work on that has picked up pace. And the pressure is off because I have already completed and published the novels most essential to my writing life to finish before I die. But there is still the pressure to produce more.
My health has reached a point where immediate worries of death have been pushed back enough that the pressure is off. At least for now. My heart is still pumping properly in spite of the 2017 heart-attack scare. I still can’t afford insulin for diabetes, but careful attention to diet is still reducing the times I have to take to my bed all day due to high blood sugar. I have taken positive steps to secure a position as a substitute teacher in the local district. After next Tuesday I may actually be back in classrooms again, doing what I was born to do. Yes, I mean babysitting middle-school monkey-house denizens. I love it, and I have missed it. You may have noticed (if you’ve looked at any of my novels) that all my books are about school kids. Old teachers never die. They just lose all their class.
Money worries have loosened their grip on my heartbeat as well. Texas legislators were turned more friendly to teachers and retired teachers by the Blue Wave election of 2018. I got a healthy cost-of-living increase paid to me in September. I got a refund of a tax penalty that I paid to the IRS and didn’t actually owe. I was able to buy the new prescription glasses that I have needed since last January and wasn’t able to afford until now. I can actually see again.
And, assuming I can actually teach again, money will be coming in as a substitute. And when I don’t feel well enough to teach, I don’t have to.
The thing is, I will still be preparing for future bad turns of fortune. Good times never last for long. And I am naturally a pessimist. But even though I will always be living under pressure, that is not a bad thing. The fire in the forge tempers the metal as it is hammered. And in that metaphor I find my strength.
As a writer of novels, like all passable to good writers of novels, I read novels. Not just any novels. Novels that are the kind of novels I aspire to write myself.
David Mitchell is one of those novelists who can write the way I want to write. His stories are detailed and yet, compelling enough to follow wherever the story leads you. Characters are vivid and seem to have an actual life beyond the pages of the novel. And there is a chance that you will meet them again in another David Mitchell novel, even if they died in the previous David Mitchell novel you read. He writes across swaths of time and gives the story a sense of history.
Slade House is basically a haunted house story, a horror story about a house that is itself a sort of ghost. It can only be entered by a single small iron door that only appears in an alleyway every nine years. And every time it does appear, in October of 1979, 1988, 1997, 2006… , at least one somebody will go in and never come out again.
The story is side-linked to the masterpiece Mitchell novel, The Bone Clocks. It is also a plot less convoluted and multifaceted than Bone Clocks and Cloud Atlas, so much easier to follow
David Mitchell is an author I study to learn about writing and storytelling. I don’t copy him. I do take note of his bag of tricks, his writer’s toolbox, so to speak, and I pick up and play with those same tools and magician’s secrets. I would like to suggest that if you truly wish to be a writer of fiction, you must put David Mitchell’s books on your must-read-before-I-die list. If you can’t put Mitchell on that list, then here are a few others on my list; Michael Crichton, Terry Pratchett, Neil Gaiman, Louis L’Amour, Charles Dickens, Thomas Hardy, H.P. Lovecraft, Steven King, Mark Twain, and J. K. Rowling. It should be obvious that these names are all on my list for different reasons. And if you don’t read David Mitchell, there are artisan’s techniques there you can get nowhere else. But you are the reader. And if you have chosen to read this far through this essay, then you are at least fool enough to want to know the things I am telling you in this book review.
As a storyteller, David Mitchell is Rumpelstiltskin. He weaves straw into gold. And if you are canny and careful enough of a reader, you can gain some of that value from his work without giving up your firstborn.
All art on this planet (with the possible exceptions of paintings by monkeys and elephants, and the songs of whales and dolphins) is about people. What is art, after all, if it is not a reflection of who and what we are?
“Tell me a story with our people in it.”
I am the man from the setting sun who comes from the past to deliver the future.
Every bit of art I do now is done as my own mortality, the end of my own story, is soon to reach the final page. I have lived six decades complete and have begun to live the seventh. I am close to the sunset. But I have wisdom to share from a lifetime of struggle, and reversals, and successes, and joy. And in a dark time when it appears the world could actually be ending, I wish to do the only thing I can to help, provide pictures and stories that might prove useful to you.
“We are beautiful as the day is ending, because the day was worth living in.” “Magic, like lightning, infuses the sky with that which makes us wonder. What is it? How do I use it?”What we are is based on what we were. Our hopes for the future have their foundation in our past. We only have to see it and identify it. Then we can build on it.Why am I obsessed with naked people? Because naked people are exactly what you see. Naked hides nothing, and honesty is like sunshine, the more we walk in it, the healthier we become.
Laughter is an essential part of who we need to be and how we deal with where we need to go. Laugh at mistakes, and chuckle with satisfaction as you correct them.Life is like Moose Bowling because… in order to knock down all the pins, you have to learn how to throw a moose!Art exists because it simply has to exist. My art exists because I exist. So, my art exists because you all made the mistake of allowing me to exist.
So, all art is about people. Even the art with no people in it. That art, at least, has a creator who was most probably a people… or a monkey… or an elephant.. or a… well, you get the idea, don’t you?
What is the use of Kartoon Kops? I mean, why do we possibly need cartoon policemen with rubber whack-bats, squirting ink guns, and face pies? Why, to control cartoon misbehavior, of course.
If I work on the roof of the house because the shingles are weather-damaged, and then I walk off the end of the roof, and I just stand there in the air because I know better than to look down, I am breaking the law of gravity. I deserve a strawberry pie to the face for that crime. (Not blueberry pie, though. I’m allergic to blueberries.)
If I run in place and my legs go faster and faster until they look like blurred leg-colored circles, and then I take off, faster than a speeding bullet, leaving only poofy clouds behind, I am breaking the law of acceleration and inertia. I deserve a blast of black ink in my face for that.
And if I put an extremely hot towel on my face, and Bugs Bunny is my barber, my face will come off in the towel and leave the space on the front of my head blank. I will be breaking the law of… of… well, keeping my face on in public. Rubber whack-bat bruises are in my future for that.
“But, Mickey!” you say to me, “The real world doesn’t work that way!”
“Well, duh! Didn’t I tell you this was about cartoons from the start?”
Catch a Falling Star 
Under Pressure
As a new week begins and a new month begins tomorrow, I admit, I have been under pressure. But now the monsters are temporarily under control, either beaten back, or caged.
As you can see here, I have tightened up the cover design for part two of my novel re-write AeroQuest. The work on that has picked up pace. And the pressure is off because I have already completed and published the novels most essential to my writing life to finish before I die. But there is still the pressure to produce more.
My health has reached a point where immediate worries of death have been pushed back enough that the pressure is off. At least for now. My heart is still pumping properly in spite of the 2017 heart-attack scare. I still can’t afford insulin for diabetes, but careful attention to diet is still reducing the times I have to take to my bed all day due to high blood sugar. I have taken positive steps to secure a position as a substitute teacher in the local district. After next Tuesday I may actually be back in classrooms again, doing what I was born to do. Yes, I mean babysitting middle-school monkey-house denizens. I love it, and I have missed it. You may have noticed (if you’ve looked at any of my novels) that all my books are about school kids. Old teachers never die. They just lose all their class.
Money worries have loosened their grip on my heartbeat as well. Texas legislators were turned more friendly to teachers and retired teachers by the Blue Wave election of 2018. I got a healthy cost-of-living increase paid to me in September. I got a refund of a tax penalty that I paid to the IRS and didn’t actually owe. I was able to buy the new prescription glasses that I have needed since last January and wasn’t able to afford until now. I can actually see again.
And, assuming I can actually teach again, money will be coming in as a substitute. And when I don’t feel well enough to teach, I don’t have to.
The thing is, I will still be preparing for future bad turns of fortune. Good times never last for long. And I am naturally a pessimist. But even though I will always be living under pressure, that is not a bad thing. The fire in the forge tempers the metal as it is hammered. And in that metaphor I find my strength.
2 Comments
Filed under commentary, feeling sorry for myself, humor, novel writing, Paffooney