October 19, 2017 · 3:05 am

Novel Writing in Novel Ways

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There are many ways to tell a story.  I have yet to try them all.  But I don’t intend to stop trying until I either get a lot nearer, or I am fertilizing the flowers.

So let’s start with the Snoopy way.

We start with a cliche, and goof it up to make it more interesting.

It was a dark and stormy night…  

And that was because the lights went out at George’s house while he was arguing with Mabel.  There was lightning involved.  Mabel got so mad about George watching football that she stabbed the toaster in a fit of uncontrolled anger.  Unfortunately, she stabbed it with a metal fork and it was plugged in.  Her hair never stood up so high and never glowed that particular color before.  Her eyes shown like car headlights.  And she was the main reason it went dark.

Okay, maybe not.  Let’s try again.

It was a dork and smarmy knight…

Sir Jiggs Giggly was a knight from King Percy’s Royal Court, but his manners were so bad that he drove all the women away from the court.  The other knights all decided that their choices were limited.  Either they had to reform Sir Jiggs, or they all had to become gay.  So, they went to the wizard. The wizard’s name was Wizzyfritz.  And Wizzyfritz had a boy working for him who also happened to be his legal ward.  So Wizzyfritz the wizard assigned his Wizzyfritz ward to be the watcher over the wastrel Jiggs. And so, well… that wizard ward was a dork.

Yeah, not this one either.

It was a stark and dormy night…

At Tilbury College in the women’s dormitory, there was a party.  There was lots of beer.  And the local fraternity decided that when they attended the party, they would show up as streakers and be stark naked.  Unfortunately, the Sigma Frakka Pi fraternity were all skinny geeks who wore glasses and had no body hair.  So a large number of women in that dorm died laughing.

Nope, that isn’t it either.

Hmmm…. maybe there’s a good reason this particular story-telling method is always shown in a cartoon as part of a joke.

 

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October 18, 2017 · 3:53 pm

Therein Lies the Treasure

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Yesterday I finished a novel.  Yes, it was a novel that was more playtime than serious attempt at great literature.  But just because it was fun and not painful to write does not make it unworthy of making the effort.

In fact, writing projects like that are really the only thing that keeps me going in spite of pain, illness, and the frustrations of trying to stay alive and thrive.

 

So, here are the Cantos of this book as it appears on this blog;

Canto 1 xxxxxxxxxx Canto 26 xxxxxxxxx Canto 51

Canto 2 xxxxxxxxxx Canto 27 xxxxxxxxx Canto 52

Canto 3 xxxxxxxxxx Canto 28 xxxxxxxxx Canto 53

Canto 4 xxxxxxxxxx Canto 29 xxxxxxxxx Canto 54

Canto 5 xxxxxxxxxx Canto 30 xxxxxxxxx Canto 55

Canto 6 xxxxxxxxxx Canto 31 xxxxxxxxx Canto 56

Canto 7 xxxxxxxxxx Canto 32 xxxxxxxxx Canto 57

Canto 8 xxxxxxxxxx Canto 33 xxxxxxxxx Canto 58

Canto 9 xxxxxxxxxx Canto 34 xxxxxxxxx Canto 59

Canto 10 xxxxxxxxx Canto 35 xxxxxxxxx Canto 60

Canto 11 xxxxxxxxx Canto 36 xxxxxxxxx Canto 61

Canto 12 xxxxxxxxx Canto 37 xxxxxxxxx Canto 62

Canto 13 xxxxxxxxx Canto 38 xxxxxxxxx Canto 63

Canto 14 xxxxxxxxx Canto 39 xxxxxxxxx Canto 64

Canto 15 xxxxxxxxx Canto 40 xxxxxxxxx Canto 65

Canto 16 xxxxxxxxx Canto 41 xxxxxxxxx Canto 66

Canto 17 xxxxxxxxx Canto 42 xxxxxxxxx Canto 67

Canto 18 xxxxxxxxx Canto 43 xxxxxxxxx Canto 68

Canto 19 xxxxxxxxx Canto 44

Canto 20 xxxxxxxxx Canto 45

Canto 21 xxxxxxxxx Canto 46

Canto 22 xxxxxxxxx Canto 47

Canto 23 xxxxxxxxx Canto 48

Canto 24 xxxxxxxxx Canto 49

Canto 25 xxxxxxxxx Canto 50

So there it is, all 43,403 words of it, published for free on WordPress, accessible by this post if you bookmark it.  Comments, suggestions, humiliations, and conflagrations are all welcome.

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October 17, 2017 · 1:46 am

Stardusters… Canto 68

galtorr-primex-1

Canto Sixty-Eight  – Return to the Moon Gundahl

The golden wings that could be retrieved touched down on the moon base where Biznap and Xiar had established a new colony for the Telleron people.   Material synthesizers were busy churning out components for a new Telleri-swamp enclosure.  The ruined Galtorrian fortress was swiftly becoming the kind of homey organic mess of a construct that the Tellerons had left behind and lost track of at Barnard’s Star.

The entry doors of Harmony Castille’s mission wing popped open with a snap-hiss worthy of a cobra celebrating victory over a mongoose.  Many mongooses in fact.  Harmony and Shalar both led the way down the ramp, rushing into the arms of their beloveds, Biznap and Xiar respectively.

“Bizzy, we have conquered a planet for you at last,” Harmony said happily.

“The evil Senator and his minions are defeated?”  Biznap asked.

“Defeated and eaten and dead,” said Shalar.  “Those the man-eating Lester-flowers didn’t eat were turned into food by material synthesizer and fed to starving Galtorrian survivors.”

“How about the little ones?” Xiar asked.  “The missing children from our ship and the little wounded lizard girl?”

“We found all the tadpoles alive and well, except for Tanith and Davalon, who got a little bit crunched under a falling space ship. And they are recovering in the same hospital room with Sizzahl, the little lizard scientist.  That one will be invaluable to us if we are going to help the natives rebuild a society here.”

“Tanith and Davalon?  Is that the one who saved our behinds on Earth and his nestmate, the pretty one?” asked Xiar.

“Xiar!  You don’t know your own offspring even yet?” said Harmony.

“Well, I, uh… hey, I remembered them correctly, didn’t I?”

“You did,” said Shalar.  She practiced the human thing about kissing him on the cheek affectionately.

“And they stayed on the planet?” asked Biznap.

“Yes.  Alden and Gracie Morrell are looking after all the tadpoles, along with their new children, the half-human, half-lizard fusions.”  Harmony’s eyes twinkled as she talked about it.  “They will be great parents, even though they are perpetually child-sized themselves.  They even have me thinking about adopting some children myself.”

“We have plenty of Galtorrian orphans right here,” said Biznap.  “Teenage lizard boys and teenage lizard girls.  Still think you can handle teenagers?  Even the toothy ones?”

Harmony laughed a Sunday-school-teacher laugh.  No mere child would ever get the best of her and her beloved Bible.  She’d have those heathens tamed in no time.

“And just think,” said Xiar with a grin, “none of this could’ve happened if your Earther primate wife hadn’t corrected your math.”

Biznap grimaced.  “Yeah, working on math and star-charts is going to be a thing for the next few years.”

“You’re not looking forward to living here?” Harmony asked.

“I guess I’d better get used to the idea.  We are not going anywhere else until the coordinates to everything in the universe have been fixed.  We don’t know where Earth or Barnard’s Star, or even Telleri were misplaced at now.  Their correct positions have to be fixed.”

“Fixed in your charts, you mean,” Harmony said.  “I think they are still right where God originally put them.”

“Yes, I guess they are,” Biznap finally admitted.

So now, dear reader, after having posted a chapter every Tuesday for over a year, I have managed to post an entire novel, three years in the writing, for free on WordPress.  Now that I have accomplished such a stupid feat, I am going to try to publish this thing, along with many other things I have finished writing.  Fair warning.  I am certainly not done inflicting Mickian fiction on the world.  This world… not Galtorr Prime.  Sorry if I misled you there.  I know lots of Galtorrian lizard folk are looking forward to reading this story.  But they will have to be extremely patient.

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October 16, 2017 · 2:46 am

Better Daze

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I finished the picture of Dunderella and the Wolf Girl.  I suppose it isn’t much of a picture, but it has inspired a story.  Dunderella is the clumsiest Storybook in the fairy kingdom of Tellosia.  The Wolf Girl is supposedly her friend whom she talks to when nobody else is around, but it is very possible that they are the same fairy, just two different personalities, one of which is only encountered by others during the full moon.

Finishing something in the midst of a miasma of misfortune, unfinished projects, and illness counts as a turn for the better.  Doesn’t it?

And the football Cardinals, whom I have loved since they were in St. Louis when I was a kid and fledgling football fan, won yesterday.  Sure, they had a 38 to 20 lead that turned into 38 to 33 by the end of the fourth quarter, but they won instead of losing like they have three times in the previous five games.  And it was partly because they now have future Hall-of-Famer Adrian Petersen on their team.  He scored two touchdowns in his Cardinal debut.

And it didn’t hurt that Carson Palmer, the Cardinal Quarterback, threw three touchdowns, something he hasn’t done in a while.

So things are looking better in Mickey land.  I still have a great deal of back pain.  I still can’t seem to get signed up properly to be an Uber driver.  I still haven’t seen progress on my novel with Page Publishing.  But yesterday proved good things can still happen too.

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October 15, 2017 · 4:18 pm

You Are Not Alone

Mary Murphy's Children

Losing the pool this summer was a humbling experience.  I had repaired it before and got it working properly again, so I knew in my heart I was capable of salvaging it.  But everyone was against me.  The city was convinced that I was a deadbeat letting it slide and simply lying about it taking a long time because illness and financial reversals were slowing me down.  My family was against me because they no longer had any confidence that I could still do it, and they feared me killing myself in the attempt.  And then Bank of America won their lawsuit and prevented me from paying for the effort, thoroughly punishing me for the mistaken notion that I had any right to get myself out of medical debt even with the help of a lawyer.  And the electrical problems, which I could not correct myself, put the pool restoration out of reach.  I failed to do what I knew in my heart I was capable of.  I failed.  I was the only one who believed I could do it, and I only managed to prove everybody else right.

But Michael Jackson’s somewhat creepy nudie video with the weird Maxfield Parrish parody in it is actually a theme song for what I learned about myself.  I was alone in the pool-restoration struggle.  But I am not alone in life.  I will never be alone, even if somehow I ended up the last person alive on the planet.  Because we are all connected.  We are all a part of one thing.  We are not alone, even when we are.

Mina & Val

I think I learned that best from my Grandmother, Mary A. Beyer.  She was a rock-solid believer in Jesus through the pragmatic Midwestern arm of the Methodist Church.  She also gradually became an isolated, lonely individual, living by herself in Mason City, Iowa.  Grandpa Beyer died in his fifties, when I was about ten.  Great Grandpa Raymond, who lived with them for as long as I can remember, passed away a few years later.  But she was never really alone.  Jesus Christ was a real person to her.  She read her Bible and her weekly copies of the Methodist publication, The Upper Room, constantly.  And she was always a central part of our lives.  Christmases at Grandma Beyer’s place are deeply woven into the fabric of my memory.  The bubble lights on the Christmas tree, the carefully saved and re-used wrapping paper from the 1940’s, the hot cocoa, and Christmas specials on her RCA color TV…  I still draw strength and love from those things, and from her faith, even after almost twenty years pretending Christmas was evil as a Jehovah’s Witness.  Simple truth and faith shared are some of those essential things that bind us together even though they are invisible to the eye.   My Grandma Beyer is still with me even when I am fighting off the pool harpies all by myself because the things she taught me and the love she had for me still live in me, still affect who I am and how I act and what I truly believe in.

I am not alone.

And you aren’t either.  I am here for you.  I value you as human being.  God tells me I should, even though God is probably not real, and I believe Him, even though I am a fool who probably really doesn’t know anything  And it is true even if I do not know you and never met you.  Heck, you may be reading this after I am long dead.  And it is still true.  Because we have shared life on this planet together.  We are both humans.  We both think and feel and read and believe stuff.  And I love you.  Because my Grandma taught me that I should, just as someone, somewhere in your life taught you.

You are not alone.

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October 14, 2017 · 7:44 pm

The Encounter

Life, like a good Dungeons and Dragons game, is basically controlled by rolling the dice of random encounters.  Even if there is a great over-arching plan for this reality in the brain of the Great Dungeon Master in the Sky, it is constantly altered by the roll of celestial dice and ultimate random chance.

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Thusly, I managed a D & D encounter in the middle of the night last night.

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I generally have a sleeping skill of only +1.  That means, that if sleeping is a simple skill, I can add my +1 to the roll and only have to get a 6 or higher on a twenty-sided dice.  At 3:10 a.m. I rolled a 3.  I had to get up and wander bleary-eyed to the bathroom, a -2 for terrain effects to successfully to make it to the bathroom and pee through a prostate that is swollen to the size of a grapefruit, most often a difficult task, requiring a 15 on a twenty-sided dice.  I got lucky.  I rolled a 19.  Then, on the way back to bed, the dog rolled a natural 20 on her get-the-master’s-attention roll and let me know she had to go to the bathroom too.

I have to tell you at this point, that since I am trying to be more of a nudist, I seriously considered taking her out naked (by which I mean me, not her).  Dressing up in the middle of the night can be daunting.  And no one was going to see in the dark of the park at 3:15 a.m.  But I thought it probably wasn’t a good idea to go adventuring without armor in the darkness, so I at least put on shoes and a magic +4 bathrobe.

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So, we went out to let the dog poop in the park, a thing she can do profusely on a roll of 3 or higher.  We got it accomplished with little fuss.  Oh, there was some complaining and growling, but the dog manage to ignore me when I did it.  Then we had to find our way safely back to the house, and bed…. but we had a random encounter roll that didn’t go in our favor.  I am always on the lookout in the dark for aliens or black-eyed children or even the onset of the zombie apocalypse.  But what I got was the monster from under the bridge.

One of the denizens of the city suburbs that most enjoys the nightlife in the city and thrives even though it isn’t human is the horrorific creature known as a raccoon.  She’s a sow that I have seen a number of times before at night.  She lives under the bridge in the park and often has three or four cubs trailing behind her in the spring.  And she has nothing but contempt for humans with dogs.  She immediately launched into her fear-based hiss attack.  And coming from a possibly seven-foot tall monster sitting atop the pool fence and hissing in the night, it seized the initiative with a very effective attack.  She rolled an 18.  The attack succeeded.

I tried the ever-popular pee-your-pants defense, but failed, rolling a 2.  The reservoir was previously emptied, and I wasn’t wearing pants.  The dog bolted for the kitchen door and dragged me with her.  Her magic bark attack wasn’t even tried.  We were in the house before my heart skipped its third beat.

Surviving the encounter in this way is probably good for the heart.  It beat really hard for a bit and got thoroughly exercised.  But I went back to bed and reflected on the fact that random encounters like that are entirely dependent on the roll of the dice.

 

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October 13, 2017 · 2:12 am

Adjusting the Barbie Shelf

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I put up Christmas lights over my bed again to use as winter night lights.  But this year I installed hooks to hold them.  Needless to say, the drilling and hammering of hooks made numerous Barbies and other dolls leap headlong off the shelf and into my bed below.  So, once the construction stopped I had to lift them back up into place.  But there were new places for old residents and new residents to fill old places.

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Most of the Minions now occupy new spots where they are less likely to dive off the edge.  Their little unposeable feet don’t balance very well, so it is helpful to put them where they are held back from suicide a bit by Barbie legs and other Minions.  Frankie Stein from Monster High joined the guitar-girl Barbie next to Stacy dolls and My Little Pony Fluttershy.

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Esmeralda is a Goodwill-rescue Disney doll that joined the shelf near bare-chested Ballerina Barbie, also a Goodwell rescue doll.  I haven’t figured out how to keep Ballerina Barbie’s bazzoom-ohs covered by the buttonless jacket she wears.

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The third and final picture shows the remaining shelf leapers back on the shelf with Cat-Burglar Barbie added where she’s never been before.  My Little Pony Applejack decided she was too tired for upright just before the picture was taken.  Oh, well, leaping off shelves really takes it out of you.

I know there is more to show of the Barbie shelf, but it will have to be saved for another day.  All the leapers came from the East end where all the hammering happened.

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October 12, 2017 · 3:01 pm

The Creature I Have Become

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I identify as a humorist, writer, cartoonist, and certified fool (Yes, I have a certificate from the Children’s Writer Institute that proves I once foolishly believed I could learn how to make money as a writer).  But my current novel project is a horror novel, The Baby Werewolf, which I twice before tried to turn into a completed rough draft novel. This time I mean to follow through to the bitter end.

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Torrie Brownfield, hypertrichosis sufferer and possible werewolf.

In order to reign in the goofiness enough to deal with the issues in this novel I have been doing a lot of horror reading. I have also undertaken the reading of a very good author examination of the life of Edgar Allen Poe.

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Poe’s life was highly instructive.  You may not have realized this, but most of the giants of American Literature prior to and contemporary with Poe did not make most of their money as writers.  Emerson was a clergyman.  Nathaniel Hawthorne worked as a customs clerk. Poe, the first to try to make a living solely on work as a writer, editor, critic, and poet, was subjected to the horrors of poverty, illness, and want.  His wife was chronically tubercular and ill.  He never made the money he was obviously worth as a creator of popular horror fiction, poetry, critical essays about other authors, and as an editor for profitable magazines of the day.  Other people made loads of money from his work.  Poe, not so much.

It is instructive to a writer like me who can’t seem to land any sort of income from my own creations.  There is no demand because there is no recognition of my work.  I have come close, having my work praised by editors and fellow authors, and being a finalist in novel writing contests twice.  The goal is good writing.  I will probably never see a return on my investment in my lifetime.  My children may not acquire anything by it unless one of them really devotes a lot of effort to it.  Like Poe with his drinking problem, chronic depression, and ill wife, I face physical limitations and poor health, grinding financial issues, and family factors that make it near impossible to put marketing effort into my literary career.

And this novel is a hard journey for me.  I was sexually assaulted by an older boy when I was ten.  A lot of the fears outlined and elucidated in this particular story leap right out of that iron cage in my psyche where they have been contained for fifty years.  Fear of nakedness.  Fear of sex.  Fear of being attacked.  Fear of the secret motivations in others.  Fear of the dark.  And, most of all, fear of what fear can make me become.  Fear of being a monster.

But I have not become any of the dark and terrible things that fear can make me into.  Instead I became a school teacher, mentor to many.  I became a family man, father of three children.  I became a nudist, hopefully not a dark and terrible thing in itself.  I became Mickey.

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October 12, 2017 · 2:57 am

1,200 Followers

The-Muppets

There are now more than 1,200 people following my blog, Catch a Falling Star.

That’s more than 4 times as many people as lived in the little town where I grew up back in the 60’s and 70’s.

It is hard to believe there are that many foolish or incredibly daring people cruising WordPress.  I wonder if any of them are actually Muppets?  None of the ones whose blogs I have read seem to be Muppets.  Some of them seem to be businesses or corporations.  Probably more properly, Buppets and Cuppets.

I wonder if my blog has caused mental issues for any of them.  It certainly has that potential.  My blog is a lot like a boomerang fish act.  I throw a stinky fish into the wind and if you don’t get it when it comes back around, it can smack you in the head.

Concussions are mental issues, right?

I hope more people will read and like my goofy blog in the future.  And if the stinky fish ideas come back around too often for your taste, you don’t have to catch them.  You can always duck.70512-lewzealand_and_fish

This image of Lew Zealand and his Boomerang Fish Act was shamelessly stolen from an interesting blog called The Muppet Mindset.  But the stinky fish metaphor is entirely my fault.

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October 11, 2017 · 2:44 pm

So the World Ends Dinky Finky Doo

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He says things daily that are provably untrue.  He makes huge messes that nobody is willing to clean up, both internationally and domestically.  He throws fits and Tweets like a Twit on Twitter.  He insults people with impunity and tries to wreak vengeance on those that give as good as they get from him.  How can he possibly be the President of the United States?  Well, he can’t.  If this were an actual democracy, he’d never have been voted in, let alone stay in the office this long without being impeached and removed.  Most intelligent people who haven’t been hitting themselves on the head with hammers of prejudice and party ideology can see that.  Even some Republicans.

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The selfish, orange-headed moron only cares about what affects him directly.  He constantly seeks attention and plays to the camera and to friendly audiences.  He is deliberately provocative because it gets him the attention he craves, whether it is positive or negative doesn’t seem to matter.  His decisions are guided by virulent racism and misogyny.  He will provoke conflict and do irreparable damage to the functioning systems that keep this country running.  And the Republican controlled Congress will let him do it because they got that control by cheating.  All the levers of power are in their corrupt, feckless little greedy hands.  And they will let the monkey throw poop everywhere until we all succumb to poop-related diseases.

I am already today feeling quite ill.  It helps slightly to take out some of the bad feelings on the Nazi clown that is now in charge.  But only slightly.  At some point I’m still going to die.  And we the people are probably never going to be in control of the government again.

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Much scarier than Batman’s Joker, isn’t he?

So I am bummed.  Things are not going well.  I have hand cramps from shooting the bird at the TV news every day, every time Monkey-face Cheetos-head is talking.  Bile is my ruling humor this morning.  And I need a nap so I can feel better.

 

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