As I continue working on my work-in-progress, I get ideas for how I am going to make a cover for it. I have kicked around ideas and even tried executing a few of them. And when I say that, it doesn’t mean I literally kicked anything or shot anything in the head. I did drawings and thought seriously about how to put them together.
Remember this one? I drew this because my current novel has two people in it that claim they are actually dragons in human disguises.
One of those people is the girl Fiona Long, who goes by Fi most of the time. She is an aggressive red-headed girl who makes the boys cringe on occasion. She tells them her real name is Firefang, and she’s a red dragon wearing a human meat-disguise. Of course, the boys in Norwall, Iowa immediately believe her, because dragons are so common in Iowa.
So, I took these two image-ideas and slapped them together.
Oh, I forgot to mention, the story happens in 1976, the Bi-Centennial year, and the story climax happens during the 4th of July celebration.
I wasn’t really happy with how this first one looked, so I tried a second shot at putting them together in a slightly different manner.
Of course, the novel is not yet done. It is maybe only half done. So, for that reason, the cover does not have to be done also. And it does bother me a little that the title is The Boy… Forever, and yet, I have a picture of a girl and a dragon on the cover. Maybe Icarus needs to be in the picture too. Icarus Jones is the boy from the title. So, I need to work on that, and maybe redo the whole cover. We shall see. And that will make a possible future blog post too.
Gaijin is one of the most beautiful worlds in human space according to those humans who have visited enough of them to compare. Its lush, tropical-sea environment is pleasant always and fully climate-controlled by old Sylvani technology. It has far fewer cold places than an Earth-like world such as Talos III or Martin Faulkner’s Dream. It has more resources than an ocean-world like Dancer or Design where no land masses are present. And its greatest features are the people themselves. They are disciplined by the Bushido code, and beautified by the natural Sylvani grace. It was no surprise, then, that Vince Niell and the crew of the Megadeath did not want to leave.
“I have to go to
at least three other worlds,” argued Xavier Tkriashav. “I have important missions to complete. You have the only available spaceship on the
planet.”
“Dude, like, we
don’t got no orders from Ged boss-man,” said Vince Niell. “This ship is his.”
“Ged is very busy
now. I am his friend and agent. I tell you, I have important things to do for
Ged Aero!”
“And we tell you,
Psion Dude, that we don’t go to space for nobody but Ged Aero.”
Xavier smiled. “Can you call him and ask?”
“Dude, we have
commo units on board. Did he take a
walkie-talkie or a commo dot?”
“No.”
“Then ain’t no
way we’re gonna move from this spot.”
Tkriashav looked
at the stubborn rock-and-roll starship pilot.
He saw only two angry reflections of himself looking back from Vince’s
mirrored sunglasses. The hippie freak
had started wearing a pair of red Moko-bird feathers in his hair as if he were
some kind of Native American from ancient Earth.
“I am going to go
and disturb Ged now, and get him to write a note to let me use this starship
while he is training to be Gaijin’s new White Spider.”
“Sounds good to
me, Daddy-o.”
Fuming, the
turbaned Psion stalked back into the city, making his way swiftly through crowded
streets to the Palace of One Thousand Years.
Ged was on the
practice field with Junior, teaching martial arts.
“You were
impressive in the arena,” Tkriashav said when Ged acknowledged his
presence. “Tell me, how is it you already
know the martial arts they teach here?”
“It’s not
something I’m proud of, but I absorbed it by eating the flesh of the man they called
the Black Spider. I inherited the
ability to alter myself into the patterns of his finely trained muscles. Muscle memory is the key to absorbing the
skill. Just like the instincts I’ve absorbed
from animals I’ve eaten.”
“Did you actually
eat one of those invisible cat things?”
“It was during an
episode of survival training on the planet Samothrace when I was young. I guess I had my powers even then, though I
didn’t know it until the last few years.”
“It’s that kind
of knowledge I need you to pass on to other Psions, Ged. Do you mind if I use your starship to round
up a couple of students for you?”
“I would be
honored to serve,” said Ged with a bow.
“Teaching seems to come naturally too, though I don’t ever remember eating
a teacher.”
Xavier laughed. “I need a note for your crew, Ged. They don’t want to leave this place. They won’t take my word.”
“No problem. Will you revisit Don’t Go Here?”
“Yes. After completing the missions I have in mind.”
“Check on Tara
for me. Tell her I miss her. And tell Ham about what’s happened here. I want him to come here and learn about this
place too.”
“I would be happy
to. You like it here, don’t you?”
“How could I help
it? I’m not a monster here. I’m a hero to these people. But I have to say, I don’t understand the
praise any more than I understood the fear.”
The message was
quickly written, and within the hour, the Megadeath roared out of
Gaijinese orbit, headed directly into trouble.
The Chinese Dragon that I have drawn for today is a part of the planned cover illustration for my work in progress, The Boy… Forever.
But it is also more than that. The villain of the story claims to be a dragon in human form. And even though this may be a metaphor-like lie, it is an apropos symbol of the underlying conflict that informs almost all of my work. There is always, it seems, a hidden evil that is far more dangerous and life-consuming than it portrays itself as. The blizzard in Snow Babies, the real werewolf, the murderer, in The Baby Werewolf, suicidal depression in When the Captain Came Calling and Sing Sad Songs, and the serial killer in both Sing Sad Songs and Fools and Their Toys all kill other characters in my stories. They all bear the stamp of the evil dragon, magically powerful and dangerous in ways that guns alone cannot protect you from. They are evils embedded in human nature. They are the dragon that the White Knight of the story must defeat.
So, I show you this dragon today as a way of acknowledging my own dragons that must be fought.
An infinite number of monkeys with and infinite number of word-processors will supposedly eventually type out everything I have ever written and everything I am going to write… As well as everything I will ever write with a random word misspelled or replaced with the wrong word. It would be an infinite mess. After all, infinite monkeys and infinite word-processors would fill infinite space and leave no room for infinite bananas. The monkeys would all starve after the initial typed manuscripts are completed, and any surviving monkeys that randomly evolved an ability to eat word-processors would die from exposure to infinite rotting monkey corpses. The whole thing gets gruesome after a while.
But let’s get serious for a moment. (Something that is generally difficult for Mickey.) Monkeys with type-writers will not solve my essential problem. I will not run out of stories before I run out of time for story-telling. And I find it totally creditable that my time is almost gone.
I am ill again, with a viral infection that gives me headaches, low-grade fever, and a wicked cough. I feel horrible. I had chest pains last night that led to a serious debate yet again. If it had been a heart attack, that would’ve been the end. I cannot survive economically another hospital bill. So, I have to go on the theory that since the last heart-attack scare was only arthritis in the ribs and the strange effect that has on EKGs, this one must also be the same. I can’t afford any other conclusion. And since I am still alive to write this, it was obviously the correct conclusion to draw.
The titles I have listed above, still in my stupid old head, are eleven more books I will add to my growing list. This is, of course, entirely dependent on how much longer I have before the darkness claims me for all time. I have writing to do. No more days off. And if I get five more years of two books a year, I just might make it. But last night convinced me that the effort may end at any time. So, though I am sick, I better get busy and write something.
The case has been made in an article by John Welford (https://owlcation.com/humanities/Did-King-Henry-VIII-Have-A-Genetic-Abnormality) that English King Henry the VIII may have suffered from a genetic disorder commonly known as “having Kell blood” which may have made having a living male heir almost impossible with his first two wives. The disorder causes frequent miscarriages in the children sired, something that happened to Henry seven times in the quest for a living male heir. If you think about it, if Henry did not have this particular physical conflict at the root of his dynasty, he might’ve fathered a male heir with his first wife, Catherine of Aragon. Then there would’ve been no opening for the machinations of Anne Boleyn. It follows that Elizabeth would not have been born. Then no Elizabethan Age; no sir Francis Drake, Spain might’ve landed their armada, no Church of England, possibly no William Shakespeare, and then Mickey would never have gotten castigated by scholars of English literature for daring to state in this blog that the actor who came from Stratford on Avon and misspelled his own name numerous times was not the author of Shakespeare’s plays.
History would’ve been very different. One might even say “sucky”. Especially if one is the clown who thinks Shakespeare didn’t write Shakespeare.
Conflict and struggle is necessary to the grand procession of History. If things are too easy and conflict is not necessary, lots of what we call “invention” and “progress” will not happen. Society is not advanced by its quiet dignity and static graces. It is advanced and transformed by its revolutions, its wars, its seemingly unconquerable problems… its conflicts.
My Dick and Jane book, 1962
Similarly, a novel, a story, a piece of fiction is no earthly good if it is static and without conflict. A happy story about a puppy and the children who love him eating healthy snacks and hugging each other and taking naps is NOT A STORY. It is the plot of a sappy greeting card that never leaves the shelf in the Walmart stationary-and-office-supplies section. Dick and Jane stories had a lot of seeing in them. But they never taught me anything about reading until the alligator ate Spot, and Dick drowned while trying to pry the gator’s jaws apart and get the dog back. And Jane killed the alligator with her bare hands and teeth at the start of what would become a lifelong obsession with alligator wrestling. And yes, I know that never actually happened in a Dick and Jane book, except in the evil imagination of a bored child who was learning to be a story-teller himself in Ms. Ketchum’s 1st Grade Class in 1962.
Yes, I admit to drawing in Ms. Ketchum’s set of first-grade reading books. I was a bad kid in some ways.
But the point is, no story, even if it happens to have a “live happily ever after” at the end of it, can be only about happiness. There must be conflict to overcome.
There are no heroes in stories that have no villains whom the heroes can shoot the guns out of the hands of. Luke Skywalker wouldn’t exist without Darth Vader, even though we didn’t learn that until the second movie… or is it the fifth movie? I forget. And James Bond needs a disposable villain that he can kill at the end of the movie, preferably a stupid one who monologues about his evil plan of writing in Ms. Ketchum’s textbooks, before allowing Bond to escape from the table he is tied down to while surrounded by pencil-drawn alligators in the margins of the page.
We actually learn by failing at things, by getting hurt by the biplanes of an angry difficult life. If we could just get away with eating all the Faye Wrays we wanted and never have a conflict, never have to pay a price, how would we ever learn the life-lesson that you can’t eat Faye Wray, even if you go to the top of the Empire State Building to be alone with her. Of course, that lesson didn’t last for Kong much beyond hitting the Manhattan pavement. But life is like that. Not all stories have a happy ending. Conflicts are not always resolved in a satisfying manner. A life with no challenges is not a life worth living.
So, my title today is “Conflict is Essential“. And that is an inescapable truth. Those who boldly face each new conflict the day brings will probably end up saying bad words quite a lot, and fail at things a lot, and even get in trouble for drawing in their textbooks, but they will fare far better than those who are afraid and hang back. (I do not know for sure that this is true. I really just wanted to say “fare far” in a sentence because it is a palindrome. But I accept that such a sentence may cause far more criticism and backlash than it is worth. But that is conflict and sorta proves my point too.)
Here’s a blog where I find that the very last paragraph is still true. Do I expect you to read the whole thing? Who knows? I needed a post to cover the day of substitute teacher orientation.
Yesterday I burbled purple paisley prose all over the page and, in trying to answer the question “Why do I Blog?”, only managed to come up with a lame sort of “I don’t know.” but I also referenced Douglas Adams’ answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything which turned out to be 42. You see, in the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy we learn that the Earth is nothing but an alien-designed supercomputer run by highly intelligent mice to find the actual question that goes with that ultimate answer. Unfortunately, after the planet Earth is destroyed by Vogons to make way for an interstellar bypass, the question is put on hold. That’s really what I did yesterday. I put the question on hold.
But today, feeling ill and a little blue, I decided to percolate the old teapot of wisdom one more time to see if I could find…
Ged, Junior, Tkriashav,
Naylund, Sara, and Friashqazatla were all gathered in the office of Shen Ming
inside Akito House.
“Honorable Ged
Aero-sama, we are here to determine the course we must follow to honor the prophecy.” Shen Ming smiled his unnerving crooked smile.
“So, what
prophecy are we talking about?” asked Ged.
“The prophecy of
Shan,” answered Naylund.
“The prophecy of Xan,”
answered Tkriashav.
Shen Ming
chuckled. “Ah, so… a matter of spelling,
ha? It is the wisdom of my ancestors
that the two prophecies are the same.”
“How do you know
this, Shen Ming-sensei?” asked Naylund.
“What does the
prophecy of Shan say is the White Spider’s first task?”
“He will teach
students the Way of the Spider.”
“And what does
the prophecy of Xan say he will do first?”
“He will teach Psions
to use their inborn powers,” said Tkriashav.
“Is this not a
similarity rather than a difference?”
Neither Naylund
nor Tkriashav was able to dispute that.
“Well, then, I
will discuss this first with the Black Wolf.”
Shen Ming smiled at Friashqazatla.
“Who is the Black
Wolf?” asked Naylund. Ged looked
confused as well.
“I am the Black
Wolf,” admitted Friashqazatla quietly.
“And how do you
know this to be true, little Freddy?” asked Shen Ming very patiently.
“I see the Black
Wolf in my inner eye. He constantly
tells me, Come and be me.”
“Do you know the
process to become the Black Wolf?”
“I do not. It distresses me.”
Friashqazatla, or, more simply, Freddy, was a very comely and attractive child. His skin was a rich, reddish brown in color. His hair was jet black and shiny. His eyes were two glowing-blue sky-colored sapphires.
“The Way of the Spider is to look within,”
said Shen Ming. “The Way of the Spider
is self-fulfillment and the honing of personal skills and moral strengths. Can this Way not also mean the development of
Psion powers?”
“Yes, honored Shen
Ming-sensei. I understand how to teach shape-changing
power like my own,” said Ged. “But how
can I teach the Way of the Spider if I do not know it?”
“Have you a
personal code of morality and honor, Ged-sensei?”
“Yes.”
“Then teach that
as the Way of the Spider, for the White Spider is you.”
“And is that all
that I must teach?”
“I believe in the
combat with Ginjiro, the Black Spider, you actually consumed his flesh, did you
not?”
“Shamefully, I
did.”
“And your Psion
power allows you to change into any living creature you have tasted or
otherwise genetically analyzed, yes?”
“Yes.”
“Then the Way of
Combat will be easy for you to teach, for Ginjiro, though evil, was a master of
powerful martial arts.”
Ged was a bit stunned
to learn that part of what he was to teach was knowledge he had gained by
eating a teacher of martial arts.
“Who will I be teaching the Way of the Spider to?”
…
…
…
…
…
…
…
…
“I see three students here. Lovely Sara, the daughter of Naylund Smith-sama. Your own little blue nephew, Junior Aero. And, of course, the Black Wolf, whom I will always refer to as Freddy because of the lack of ease I have saying his birth name without bruising my tongue and cracking my few remaining teeth. And there is one other we must add to this dojo. We have reason to believe he is a Psion also, a telekinetic. His name is Shu Kwai.” “I accept this assignment, Shen Ming-sensei.”
Ged bowed to Shen Ming humbly. He had become a teacher, complete with the necessary class to be one.
Sometimes we need to get lost in the music of our lives and simply drift away.
My favorite baseball team won their division this year. And in the first round of the playoffs, well, they won the first game and lost the next two. They are not dead yet, but close… Will it be a matter of life and death for me? No. I have seen the Cardinals win the World Series four times in my life. I saw the Blues win their first Stanley Cup this year. I have even seen the hapless football Cardinals play in the Superbowl against the Steelers, and almost win, but lose in the final minute. Wow! I am fully satisfied. And my love has been requited. I can get lost in the song… and drift away.
Truthfully, I never thought that I would be able to teach again when I retired from the job I loved. Yet, the need for supplemental income was forcing me to work again. And as an Uber driver, I was risking my sanity and my life to make… well, not enough money. But now, I am going back to schools as a substitute teacher. The orientation for the CFBISD schools will be this coming Wednesday. And after I attend that, I can go back to classrooms and earn money by teaching, when I can. I don’t have to go in and work every day. I can pick and choose. So, times of illness are not a big whoop. Money worries are now dissolving a bit… and I can drift away.
In my writing quest, I have published all the books I identified as the ones I most needed to publish. I will soon be making the Kindle version of Sing Sad Songs free to click on and own via Amazon. I definitely have more stories to tell and more books in me, but if I died today, putting my stories out there in the world… I am satisfied with what I have already done. I am ready to let go, and get caught up in the never-ending song… and drift away.
So, what is this post actually saying? I love the song. And like the song says, the world out there is hard to live with. But if you give me the beat to free my soul… I can drift away. I am at peace. Life has been good.
The Dragon Within My Writing
The Chinese Dragon that I have drawn for today is a part of the planned cover illustration for my work in progress, The Boy… Forever.
But it is also more than that. The villain of the story claims to be a dragon in human form. And even though this may be a metaphor-like lie, it is an apropos symbol of the underlying conflict that informs almost all of my work. There is always, it seems, a hidden evil that is far more dangerous and life-consuming than it portrays itself as. The blizzard in Snow Babies, the real werewolf, the murderer, in The Baby Werewolf, suicidal depression in When the Captain Came Calling and Sing Sad Songs, and the serial killer in both Sing Sad Songs and Fools and Their Toys all kill other characters in my stories. They all bear the stamp of the evil dragon, magically powerful and dangerous in ways that guns alone cannot protect you from. They are evils embedded in human nature. They are the dragon that the White Knight of the story must defeat.
So, I show you this dragon today as a way of acknowledging my own dragons that must be fought.
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