Goofy Me from Long Ago
While still in college I was trying to create a number of children’s book type stories. I was young and stupid then, not knowing that you had to have experience of the world to be a writer, even a writer of children’s stories. So, not knowing any better, I created the character you see in today’s Paffooney, Horatio T. Dogg, super-sleuth. He was a dog, but he could talk and smoke a pipe and he had the mind and observational powers of Sherlock Holmes. Problem was, though, you had to create a mystery for that sort of character to solve. I have never been any good at that. My stories were unable to shock or surprise, since I always telegraph my every move about three different ways. Anyway, this is a pen and ink drawing with watercolor wash of Horatio T. Dogg.
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Double Character Study; Mike Murphy and Blueberry Bates
Mike Murphy and Blueberry Bates are recurring characters in my hometown novels. So far they have appeared in The Bicycle-Wheel Genius and Magical Miss Morgan, both of which are now published and available through Amazon.
The Bicycle-Wheel Genius is now available on Amazon through this link;
Magical Miss Morgan is available through this link;
The first book documents their star-crossed romance, beginning as ten-year-olds and following through until they are going on thirteen. Blueberry is a girl with a terrible secret. She is not like other girls and has to protect this secret, which will only become harder and harder to contain as time goes on. She lives with her father who barely notices her, an aunt, her father’s sister, who knows the secret and punishes Blueberry for it, and her two older sisters who cherish her and dote on her, and probably are the only reason she is still alive. Her mother, unfortunately, died when she was a baby. But both books she appears in so far are comedies. I will not go into the possible tragedies lying wait in ambush for her in her distant future. The tragedies are simply not funny enough to be a part of everything. Like many of my characters, she is based on people from my own life and experience. She is a combination of a girl I once loved and a boy I once taught. If that’s not confusing enough, I can add that Blueberry loves to draw, a detail that comes about because she is also partly based on me. She particularly loves to draw pictures of Mike Murphy. She might have drawn the next Paffooney (if she were a real person and not just some made-up girl that only lives in my weird old imagination).
Mike Murphy is a Norwall Pirate. Not just any Pirate, but their best athlete, tree-climber, and wild-story believer. He does everything the Pirate leader, Tim Kellogg, (the grand and glorious and mostly notorious Pirate leader) thinks up for him to do. He believes every lie Tim tells him, and faithfully defends the Pirates and their leader, even when it gets him detention (again!) from their favorite teacher, Miss Francis Morgan. He starts out running away from Blueberry, as any red-blooded, normal American boy would. But he eventually lets her catch him, as any red-blooded, normal American boy would at about that age, the middle of the wonder years. He becomes her best friend and greatest white-knight-sort-of protector, even though he is torn between that and loyalty to Tim and the Pirates and the lies they tell.
I am now planning a third book that will allow these two characters to adventure together. I will call this novel Kingdoms Under the Earth. It will begin with Blueberry being kidnapped by evil flu fairies that take her away to the dark parts of the fairy world under the surface of this world in a feverish coma. Mike Murphy must decide to follow her and rescue her, which he will do via the bad advice of a fairy friend, kissing Blueberry on the lips, contracting her disease, and sharing in her comatose suffering. Then Mike’s best friend, Tim Kellogg, and his big sister Dilsey both agree that they must follow also to help rescue both Blueberry and Mike. It will be a great adventure through illness, imagination, and the many hidden kingdoms of fairy magic that lie directly under our world.
Now, I suppose you are wondering why I am giving you details about characters in a book, or rather books, that I haven’t even finished writing yet. Well, if you are dedicated enough to reading my loopy and boring old posts to get this far, it is probably safe to tell you that I don’t really know either. I also want to find out. What do the next sentences say? Oh, yes. Mike Murphy already exists as a Pirate in my published book Catch a Falling Star. He is an established character that I have to twist and tweak into fitting into new stories. Blueberry has been prancing around in my imagination and drawing colored-pencil Paffoonies since the 1970’s, but I am only now weaving her into the stories I have in me and are burning with a red-hot flame to get told. So I’m not completely crazy to do this. Only about ninety percent… right?
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Missing the Mayhem
School is approaching. A new school year. Looming chaos. And for the first time since 1981 I won’t be participating as a teacher. I have retired. I knew all the crying and goodbye-ing at the end of last school year was not the worst of it. The worst is now. No classroom to prepare. No new names to learn. No endless hours of in-service training where principals and experts blah-blah-blah endlessly. (Okay, I don’t miss everything.) But I am not dead, merely retired. I should not have to feel so bad and left out. Still, I linger in bed in the mornings, and I really don’t feel blessed by being retired. I know many, many teachers who live for the day when they can retire. They count the hours. Not me. I had to retire because of poor health and money woes. But I taught long enough to get a full pension, and should not have to worry for whatever years I have left. But it makes me sad not to be there. I miss it. And life will never be the same.
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A New Toy
Okay, I admit it, a grown man playing with dolls is somewhat worrisome. But, hey! I’m a retired school teacher that survived 23 years of seventh graders. I’m entitled to be a bit mentally damaged. But I recently saw Guardians of the Galaxy, and I was so inspired that, when I saw this doll… er… action figure at Walmart for only ten dollars… Okay, I know I don’t have any money. I do remember what teacher pay is all about (self-satisfaction, enough money to keep you from qualifying for food stamps, and all the pencils and chalk you can fit in your pockets). But ten dollars… and I have only bought a new toy one… er… two other times in 2014. And, Rocket Raccoon! Right?
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Brent Clarke; A Character Study
Brent Clarke is not a main character, but a critical part of the plot of my novel Superchicken. He’s a farm boy and a child who dreams of growing up to be a hero. He can’t wait to get out of the little town he lives in, but he realizes that he has a certain responsibility to the other kids in town because of his dreams of the future. He is one of the founding members of the boys’ gang they decide to call the Norwall Pirates. It is basically a liars’ club, and spends all of its time making up stories of the wonderful things they wish they had really done. Along the way he has to battle a little bit of evil in a large black tom cat that has taking to killing chickens on the Clarke farm. He becomes a leader because Milt Morgan, the Merlin to Brent’s Arthur, appoints him as such. He is at first a bully and an obstacle to the story’s main character, Edward-Andrew, nicknamed the Superchicken. He has to learn not to be cruel to those less blessed than he, and he eventually shoulders the burden of protecting others and working together with the Superchicken to right wrongs and be a super hero… of sorts. You can see by the Paffooney that he is a handsome boy, strong willed and very independent. But he does have a softer side that eventually helps him to become the police officer type hero he always intended to be.
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Heroes From Yesteryear
When I was a boy in Iowa, growing up in the 1960’s, I remember being seriously infected by the notion that true heroes were like Astroboy. I watched the show on a black and white Motorola TV every day at four after we got home from school. Astro could fly. He was super-strong. He could battle the evil monsters and machine men from my worst nightmares and always come out the winner. I thought a lot about Astroboy and I played Astroboy games with my friend Larry in our back yard. The theme song played over and over in my head.
The Astroboy March
Music by Tatsuo Takei; Lyrics by Don Rockwell
There you go, Astroboy, on your flight into space.
Rocket hi—-gh, through the sk—-y
For adventures soon you will face.
Astroboy bombs away,
On your mission today,
Here’s the count—-down,
And the blast—-off,
Everything is go, Astroboy!
Astroboy, as you fly,
Strange new worlds you will spy,
Atom ce—-lled, jet pro—-pel—-led
Fighting monsters high in the sky,
Astroboy, there you go, will you find friend or for,
Cosmic ran—-ger, laugh at dan—-ger, everything is go, Astroboy!
Crowds will cheer you, you’re a he—-ro, as you go, go, go, Astroboy!
What can I say? I was a stupid child with an imagination easily manipulated by television. My world consisted of Astroboy every afternoon, Red Skelton on Wednesday nights, and Wonderful World of Disney on Sunday evenings. I cried for the Astroboy characters who sometimes suffered and died during the adventure. I cringed when Astrogirl stumbled into danger. But I knew in my stupid heart that everything would be all right in the end.
When President Kennedy was murdered, or when the Apollo Astronauts burned, I didn’t really feel those events. I still thought a happy ending would come to save the day. I believed that I had the power to make things right the way Astroboy did. I was doomed to learn the hard way.
I had heard from my friends about weird things that a fifteen-year-old neighbor would do sometimes. I understood that he liked to “do things” to younger boys. I should have been scared to death of him. But, the cosmic ranger laughs at danger. I was ten when he caught me near his yard. He forced me down into a hidden place behind a pile of old truck tires. He got my pants and underpants down and forced me to stop fighting. I remember it as pain and shame and horror. It was a monster I never dreamed of, and no one came to my rescue.
We used to believe that the future held undiscovered treasures and wonder. We believed that when a hero was needed, one would always step forward. I wanted to be that hero. I would go forward, however, wondering if it all led to an unhappy ending. “Crowds will cheer you, you’re a hero, as you go, go, go, Mickeyboy!”
I know that this is not a very funny post. I get that way at times when diabetes gives me depression, and I am confronted by some of the really hard things that I faced in the past. But I still believe in happy endings, Disney movies, the Wizard of Oz, and… Astroboy. It is the power of our past, earned by trial and error, that lets us bash the monsters in our future.
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From the D&D Table
We like miniature figures and homemade illustrations in our D&D campaign. Let me show you a bit of the excessively obsessive results of this preference.
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Catch a Falling Star 